Seeking peace in El Salvador The struggle to reconstruct a nation at the end of the Cold War 9780230120945, 9781349299096, 9781137012081, 0230120946, 1137012080

Table of contents :
Cover......Page 1
Contents......Page 8
Preface......Page 10
Acknowledgments......Page 14
1 Theoretical Issues in El Salvador's Peace Process......Page 16
2 Ancient Conflicts, Modern Violence: The Causes and Context for Civil War in El Salvador......Page 29
3 Internal Forces Struggle to Resolve the Civil War: The FMLN and FDR......Page 42
4 Internal Pressures for Ending El Salvador's Civil War: ARENA, the Jesuits, and FUSADES......Page 60
5 The United States: Protagonist or Mediator?......Page 74
6 External Influences on the Negotiations to End the War in El Salvador......Page 92
7 Introducing the United Nations......Page 109
8 Four Critical Moments in the Negotiations......Page 127
9 Implementation of the Chapultepec Peace Accords: The Achievements......Page 142
10 Challenges to the Peace Accords......Page 155
Epilogue: El Salvador Today......Page 172
Notes......Page 182
Bibliography......Page 233
Index......Page 249

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Seeking Peace in El Salvador

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Seeking Peace in El Salvador

The Struggle to Reconstruct a Nation at the End of the Cold War

Diana Villiers Negroponte

seeking peace in el salvador Copyright © Diana Villiers Negroponte, 2012. Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2012 978-0-230-12094-5 All rights reserved. First published in 2011 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN® in the United States – a division of St. Martin’s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010. Where this book is distributed in the UK, Europe and the rest of the world, this is by Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. PALGRAVE MACMILLAN is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries. ISBN 978-1-349-29909-6 DOI 10.1057/9781137012081

ISBN 978-1-137-01208-1 (eBook)

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Negroponte, Diana Villiers. Seeking peace in El Salvador : the struggle to reconstruct a nation at the end of the Cold War / Diana Villiers Negroponte. p. cm. 1. Peace-building—El Salvador—International cooperation. 2. Mediation, International. 3. United Nations—El Salvador. 4. United Nations. Observer Mission in El Salvador. 5. Peacekeeping forces—El Salvador. 6. El Salvador— History—1979–1992. 7. El Salvador—Politics and government—1979–1992. I. Title. JZ5584.S2N44 2011 972.84053—dc23 2011023642 A catalogue record of the book is available from the British Library. Design by MPS Limited, A Macmillan Company. First edition: January 2012 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

To John who has always stood beside me

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Contents

Preface Acknowledgments

ix xiii

1

Theoretical Issues in El Salvador’s Peace Process

2

Ancient Conflicts, Modern Violence: The Causes and Context for Civil War in El Salvador

15

Internal Forces Struggle to Resolve the Civil War: The FMLN and FDR

29

Internal Pressures for Ending El Salvador’s Civil War: ARENA, the Jesuits, and FUSADES

47

5

The United States: Protagonist or Mediator?

61

6

External Influences on the Negotiations to End the War in El Salvador

79

7

Introducing the United Nations

97

8

Four Critical Moments in the Negotiations

115

9

Implementation of the Chapultepec Peace Accords: The Achievements

131

Challenges to the Peace Accords

145

3 4

10

1

Epilogue: El Salvador Today

163

Notes

173

Bibliography

225

Index

241

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Preface

The history of El Salvador’s struggle to make peace after twelve bitter years of war has been told from different perspectives. This book integrates the domestic and international context of that struggle to demonstrate that the withdrawal of the superpowers allowed the domestic parties to seek a negotiated settlement. El Salvador’s efforts to negotiate the end to its protracted social conflict is examined in the light of the Soviet resolution to end Moscow’s support for wars of national liberation and Washington’s decision to test Soviet good will in Central America. General Secretary Gorbachev’s call for noninterference in the socio-political developments of each state before the UN General Assembly in December 1988 had profound consequences for the civil wars in El Salvador and Nicaragua. President George H. W. Bush’s decision to test that declaration in Central America and Washington’s evaluation of Gorbachev’s capacity to end Soviet support for the Salvadoran guerilla forces were critical to ending the war. If Gorbachev’s declaration was effective and Cuban support through Nicaragua ended, Washington could begin to wind down its commitment to both the government of El Salvador and the Contras in Nicaragua. The debate between National Security Advisor, retired General Brent Scowcroft and Secretary of State, James Baker reflected both U.S. uncertainty of Gorbachev’s commitment and Secretary Baker’s predominance in the administration’s willingness to deflate Cold War tensions in Central America. This historical work examines the consequences for the Cold War’s proxy warriors in El Salvador. It analyzes internal efforts by private institutions and individuals to end the civil war. To the extent that the protagonists, the Frente Farabundo Marti de Liberación Nacional (FMLN) and the Frente Democrática Revolucionario (FDR) and President Alfredo Cristiani’s government depended upon outside supporters, Gorbachev’s pronouncements, and Washington’s response forced both sides to focus on their own capabilities and goals. Furthermore, the FMLN comandantes faced the consequences of a failed “final military offensive” in November 1989 and the opposition’s victory in the Nicaraguan presidential elections of February 1990. The failure of the offensive brought home the reality that the FMLN had lost both the active support of the Salvadoran people, and their resupply chain in Managua. Also, in November 1989, the Salvadoran armed forces faced the consequences of their brutal assassinations of respected Jesuit priests, their innocent housekeeper and teenage daughter. From defenders against communism Defense Minister Rene Emilio Ponce and the High Command’s

x

Preface

elite brigade became conspirators and alleged assassins. As a result, they lost the support of the U.S. Congress, which determined to bring the murderers to justice. The reluctance of both Moscow and Washington to support, unconditionally, their respective Central American allies caused the Salvadoran conflict to become predominately local and contained. This provided an opportunity for Salvadoran citizens to begin a slow process of dialogue. Domestic factors propelled each of the protagonists to seriously consider a political outcome and to lower expectations of a military victory. The tensions between political negotiation and continued military engagement are familiar to those who study the resolution of conflicts. Both negotiation and military clashes often continue as each protagonist seeks to maximize its position at the bargaining table. In El Salvador, those who slept with their boots on and guns by their side, retained considerable suspicion toward negotiators who exchanged documents and discussed words in airconditioned rooms. There is nothing unusual about the Salvadoran capacity to do both and the protagonists could have continued to fight and talk for several more months, if not years. However, the outside world, particularly Washington, was anxious to end this war and rid the U.S. domestic debate of the “Central American quagmire.” Therefore, Washington actively sought ways to negotiate a peaceful solution to El Salvador’s war. When the Latin American presidents gathered in the Contadora group failed to deliver a peaceful solution, the State Department accepted the Central American presidents’ effort within the Esquipulas process. However, neither intervention legitimated the guerilla forces and, therefore, could not provide an acceptable peace process to the FMLN. With few options left, Washington accepted the mediating role offered by the United Nations (UN). Peacemaking in Latin America was new to the UN. During the Cold War, Washington had ensured that the UN did not intervene in hemispheric conflicts, even when “threats to peace and security” were evident. Amid cautious steps to end the Cold War, Secretary Baker no longer insisted that the UN stay out of hemispheric security affairs. However, the UN Secretary General, Javier Perez de Cuellar was not sure that he should seek the role as mediator. Were it not for the activism of his Special Representative, Alvaro de Soto, it is unlikely that the UN would have assumed the key role in ending El Salvador’s civil war. Alvaro de Soto’s role in achieving several peace accords is central to the peace process. He was supported by UN Security Council authority both to pursue an investigation into human rights abuses and to create a peacekeeping force. Later, UN economists would mediate the complex issues of land for ex-combatants and international reconstruction. However, while the UN called for nation building, the International Monetary Fund called for a more restricted government role and privatization within a financial paradigm known as the “Washington consensus.” The contradiction between the policies of the two multilateral organizations caused bitter dispute and harmed efforts to reconcile the protagonists in the postwar El Salvador. This history reflects domestic efforts to reach an enduring peace after twelve years of bitter war, 75,000 dead, and half a million displaced persons. It also reflects external pressures, particularly from Washington, to reach an agreement rapidly. The deadline of the departing Secretary General Perez de Cuellar, and his replacement

Preface

xi

by an Egyptian Secretary General with less interest in hemispheric affairs drove the U.S. government and the UN to push for peace. With a time limit of December 31, 1991, neither side consulted adequately with its constituents. Instead, the elite of the FMLN, its partner the FDR, and the Cristiani government reached agreements far away from their respective supporters. The consequence of the decisions made by a selected small group was that few had a stake in the outcome, and implementing the peace accords proved to be more troublesome than negotiating the agreements themselves. Students of conflict resolution can derive several lessons from the experience of El Salvador’s peace process: ● ● ● ● ● ●

maintain political negotiations despite the violence of ongoing military engagements; create consultative processes with constituent groups; recognize the value of private institutions and individuals as internal mediators; accept that external mediator(s) can never be completely neutral; insist on external financial support for the reconstruction in the postwar period; and seek an international sponsor to sustain interest in the nation building enterprise for a reasonable period after the war.

El Salvador’s civil war ended in 1992, but ten years later random violence from gangs of youth began to plague the country. Growing up in the context of war and the absence of parental guidance, young men and women created new identities in youth gangs, known as the maras. These gangs fought viciously with each other for territory, resources, and allegiance. Contemporaneously, transnational criminal organizations shipping illicit drugs through Central America, heightened the conflict with El Salvador’s law enforcement. The mara and the criminal organizations fought principally in cities and harmed innocent citizens. The newly created police and the reformed courts have so far been unable to curb the violence. Many Salvadorans now ask whether the war ended, or whether there was merely a pause before another violent process obsessed the nation. This book provides a detailed review of the past, but it is written at a time of fear for the future of El Salvador. Diana Villiers Negroponte May 2011

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Acknowledgments

Many people in El Salvador, at the United Nations, in Mexico City, former U.S. government officials, and scholars helped me research the facts and underlying perceptions necessary to write this book. At the UN in New York, bureaucrats and observers helped me to understand the Byzantine institution and its political intrigue. There are no records of internal memorandum between the field and headquarters. Papers are zealously guarded and kept secret. Penetrating this monastery was a challenge. Alvaro de Soto provided his personal insights on his mediation efforts to end El Salvador’s civil war. Iqbal Riza, who worked closely with Secretary General Kofi Annan, shared the dilemmas of establishing a UN peacekeeping force in El Salvador. Observers from the Institute of Peace Academy gave me wise insights into comparative theories on peacemaking and reconstruction. Thanks to their hospitality, I spent a productive summer working in David Malone’s offices overlooking the UN headquarters and New York’s East River. Brent Scowcroft, Bernie Aronson, William Walker, Peter Romero, Cresencio Arcos, and Alex Watson shared their memories of the struggle to make peace in El Salvador. I hope that I have respected their call for discretion, while placing their narrative within the broader context of an integrated history that looks at diplomatic, political, and social events. At Yale University, Jean Krasno opened the cabinets that housed her oral interviews with the leading participants of El Salvador’s civil war and the peace process. She remained generous with her time and her observations on the key actors. At Georgetown University, John Tutino, Nancy Bernkopf Tucker, and David Painter guided my studies as I excavated documents on the end of the Cold War and El Salvador’s peace process. Chester Crocker stimulated me to find the contradictions and omissions in both his courses on Conflict Resolution theory. Despite his focus on Africa, he encouraged those of us with a passion to end the conflicts in the American hemisphere. Later, while working at the U.S. Institute of Peace, I came to understand the role of civilians in making peace; persons now given the accreditation, “Track II” mediators. More recently, I spent time with Salvador Samayoa, Ruben Zamora, and Oscar Bonilla; men and women who had struggled to find a political solution in the midst of war. Also, I met with President Cristiani and Roberto Murray Mesa, leaders of the ARENA party. They impressed me by their dedication to heal the country, as well

xiv

Acknowledgments

as to confront the problems of public insecurity and economic development. Also, I thank the people of El Salvador for allowing me to probe their lives and history through articles, movies, and books. Anu Prasad and Bradford Barker carefully read the manuscript, finding mistakes and making editorial comments. Sarah Nathan led me through the editorial procedures at Palgrave Macmillan. The factual mistakes and interpretation are mine and may offend some with whom I have discussed ideas on making peace in El Salvador. Finally, I thank my family who has watched me bounce from parenting to teaching to writing in spare moments when I hoped that no one needed me. I read through their childhood illnesses, travelled when a supportive husband could assume family responsibilities, and wrote while the family was asleep, hoping to be alert and inspired when they awoke.

Chapter 1

Theoretical Issues in El Salvador’s Peace Process El Salvador’s civil war was a violent, destructive, and dynamic process that evolved over twelve years, with shifts in the framing of issues on both sides as the external context changed. It was a domestic war, captured by the broader Cold War between the superpowers. The internal protagonists, namely the Salvadoran government and its armed forces battled against the Frente Farabundo Marti de Liberación Nacional (FMLN) and their political allies in the Frente Democrática Revolucionaria (FDR). Salvadoran non-governmental communities lent their support to each of the respective protagonists with the result that the whole of society was captured by the deadly and protracted social conflict. No one escaped unless they migrated northward. Each of the protagonists had within their midst extremists, for whom moderate solutions were unacceptable. They were the “spoilers” who sought to prevent a political or negotiated resolution of the war. Balanced against the extremists were a few moderate men who sought to mediate, or act as a bridge, between the protagonists. There were three significant domestic mediators: first, the Archbishop of El Salvador and the Catholic Church, second, moderate conservative businessmen gathered together in a newly created non-governmental organization, and third, the leadership of the Jesuit community. Furthermore, mayors, teachers, and community leaders sought to act as mediators in small towns to enable daily chores, such as passage through road blocs, transporting the sick to hospital, and holding local elections. They are the unsung mediators. External forces played a critical role. They cannot be considered protagonists, but they aided and abetted their respective allies with arms, communication equipment, intelligence, finance as well as space for rest and recuperation. The U.S. government supported the Salvadoran government and El Salvador’s armed forces (ESAF). Cuba and the Sandinista government in Nicaragua—with indirect support from the Soviet Union—helped the FMLN. Consequently, a civil war was exacerbated by the larger global conflict between the United States and the Soviet Union. Both

2

Seeking Peace in El Salvador

sides to the prolonged conflict saw an advantage to belonging to the U.S. or the Soviet bloc. They relied upon communications, equipment and in the case of ESAF, U.S. military training and funding. Consequently, both sides voluntarily accepted participation in the broader global conflict, known as the Cold War. When the Cold War began to ratchet down in early 1989, Washington and Moscow made Central America a test of a new, non-confrontational policy. The strategy of both superpowers evolved forcing the Salvadoran protagonists to consider shifts in their own priorities. So long as both the FMLN and ESAF were dependent upon outside support, they were unable to determine when they would end their war. To a significant degree, both had become pawns in the global chess game. Furthermore, regional players with little direct interest in the outcome, beyond a determination to avoid spillover into their respective nations, intervened with the intent to resolve the conflict. They became regional mediators. The Contadora foreign ministers played an active role in the early years, but were replaced by the Central American presidents, gathered together at Esquipulas. Contadora—the Panamanian island—gave its name to the broader group of Latin American national leaders from Panama, Colombia, Venezuela, and Mexico. Esquipulas—the colonial Guatemalan town—gave its name to the Central American neighbors. The latter group had a greater interest in pursuing peaceful resolution under the leadership of Costa Rican President, Oscar Arias Sanchez. For his mediation in resolving both El Salvador and Nicaragua’s civil wars, Arias received the 1987 Nobel Prize in Peace. Finally, both the United Nations (UN) and the Organization of American States (OAS) played a role in Central America. The UN Secretary General’s choice of a Peruvian as his Special Representative respected the desire of hemispheric leaders to end U.S. and Soviet intervention. From a “hands-off ” policy toward Latin America, the UN played the principal role in mediating between the protagonists and balancing the interests of the external parties to the conflict. This chapter examines the nature of the mediators, both domestic and external. What was the purpose of those who intervened in Salvador’s civil war? Who held the trust of the parties? Was it necessary to be seen as impartial to the conflict, or could a biased mediator with known relationships to one or the other of the protagonists be effective? Did the UN mediate effectively? What leverage did the respective mediators bring to the negotiation? As indirect participants in El Salvador’s war, how did the U.S. and Soviet governments contribute to a negotiated peace settlement? Finally, what role did non-governmental organizations (NGOs), community-based organizations (CBOs), and grassroots organizations (GROs) play in implementing the peace process?1 The Protagonists The protagonists are defined as those who led the fight, the political leaders and warriors who made decisions that directly impacted the war and peace effort. They should be distinguished from “the parties” who participated in the war as allies or supporters but were not engaged in the decision-making process. On the government side, the principle protagonists were threefold: the Salvadoran president and his civilian cabinet; the High Command of ESAF; and the conservative political

Theoretical Issues

3

party, the Alianza Republicana Nacional (ARENA) under its founder, retired Major Roberto d’Aubuisson. Furthermore, the traditional landed families and the private security forces retained to protect their interests remained constant factors to be considered. The latter had the potential to be “spoilers” of any negotiated outcome.2 The Salvadoran government was arraigned against the FMLN, an alliance of five military comandantes, leading six distinct groups, each of which held geographic influence, tactical preferences, and ideological distinctions.3 By 1980, they united under the umbrella of the FMLN. This coalition was joined with the FDR; itself a coalition of political activists who rejected armed conflict in favor of negotiation and participation in the political process.4 Closely allied with the FMLN and FDR were popular organizations that acted in local communities to protect citizen’s interests. Notable among them were women’s groups, formed to search for family members who had disappeared during the conflict. The Comite de Madres (COMADRES) was not created to participate directly with the FMLN. However, the sympathy of its members lay more often with the guerilla forces because the majority of their relatives had disappeared at the hands of the Salvadoran government security forces. Mediators—Partial or Neutral? Seeking to communicate between the protagonists, if not to act as bridge builders between them, were the mediators. These third parties helped both the government and the FMLN–FDR find solutions that they could not find by themselves. Mediators may be partial (sympathetic) to one side or another, or neutral. Such a determination is not made objectively, but is the result of the protagonist’s perception. This subjective assessment may change over time. The mediator should also be perceived as credible to one side or the other. Internal mediators are better known to the parties at war because they live within the community and have a history of participation in society. Consequently, they are more likely to be trusted. For example, after the assassination of Archbishop Oscar Romero in March 1980, the Catholic Church was viewed as favoring the FMLN. Also, ESAF viewed the efforts of the Rector of the Jesuit University to engage in a dialogue with President Cristiani in 1989 not as a neutral intervention, but as a partial and effective influence that favored the FMLN. On the other hand, NGOs associated with the Salvadoran business community were perceived as supportive of the Salvadoran state. In theory, external mediators may be considered more objective. For this reason, as well as the international resources at their disposal, multilateral institutions, such as the UN and the OAS, are invited to mediate between the protagonists. However, the history in El Salvador suggests that the external mediator soon assumed preferences, policies, and tactics that were perceived, by one or other of the protagonists, as more favorable to one side than the other. The UN can acquire the reputation of favoring one protagonist over the other. In this instance, both the Salvadoran and U.S. governments perceived the UN Secretary General’s Personal Representative, Alvaro de Soto as partial to the FMLN. The brief appearance of the OAS Secretary General was perceived as favorable to the Salvadoran government. Due to the widespread belief that the OAS was a U.S.-dominated body, its Secretary General, Baena Soares soon abandoned a mediating role.5

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Seeking Peace in El Salvador

Analytical Framework for Mediation Fen Osler Hampson developed a paradigm of third party mediation to understand the resolution of civil wars in Cambodia and Angola.6 This paradigm can be adapted to El Salvador’s peace process. Hampson suggests that mediation cannot be analyzed in isolation from the underlying causes of war. Rather, a close relationship exists between the efforts to mediate and the mediator’s understanding of the structural causes of the violence. The mediator’s assumptions on why civil war occurred give rise to distinct proposals on how to solve the war. Adapting Hampson’s categories to the context of El Salvador’s civil war, we can identify three relevant categories of mediators: those who seek a politically based solution; those who want a governance approach to strengthen democratic institutions; and those who favor a social, psychological solution.7

I.

Politically Based Solutions

Mediators who subscribe to politically based solutions are state-centered and focused on power at the national level. They understand the balance of power, relative influence, and know that one protagonist is stronger than the other and is more likely to suppress the weaker party. These mediators understand the cause of war to be economically and socially constructed. Therefore, in addressing these underlying causes, politically based mediators seek to persuade, extract promises, manipulate, offer side payments, or withhold resources from protagonists. They prepare the groundwork for democratic practices, and build security provisions for the losers of a democratically held election. Power sharing may be a solution, but it is more likely that constitutional guarantees must be agreed upon to protect the rights of the losing party. These mediators ask the protagonists to be flexible and adaptable in addressing solutions. They employ appropriate inducements to deter and to prevent spoilers. Finally, these mediators need incentives to hold the protagonists to their negotiated political commitments. In January 1983, Contadora, an external group of mediators, sought a politically based solution. Contadora consisted of the foreign ministers of Venezuela, Mexico, Colombia, and Panama who analyzed the causes for Salvador’s civil war principally in economic and social terms.8 They recognized that the presence of the U.S., as well as the Cubans as proxies of the Soviet Union in the Central American isthmus had exacerbated historical and fundamental socio-economic inequities.9 Cold War protagonists had used these deep and historical divisions to further their own security and political interests. Therefore, the political problem had to be solved first. Contadora ministers applied leverage on the protagonists to the conflicts in Nicaragua, El Salvador, and Guatemala. “[They] also strove to apply this same leverage towards powers outside the region that sought to influence the outcome in favor of one side or the other.”10 In other words, Contadora mediators believed that their collaboration could decrease active intervention by the U.S. in Central America and force the protagonists to each of these disputes to dialogue, if not negotiate. Contadora’s preferred method of work was through dialogue among Foreign Ministry officials. It acknowledged no role for parliamentarians or citizen interlocutors

Theoretical Issues

5

or observers. In so doing, they denied political status and legitimacy to opposition forces in all three countries, namely the Contra forces in Nicaragua,11 the URNG in Guatemala,12 and the FMLN–FDR in El Salvador. This exclusion resulted in cynicism, if not outright opposition, from the FMLN–FDR, who only two years earlier had won recognition as legitimate political actors, known as “insurgents,” from the governments of France and Mexico.13 Under the Geneva Conventions of 1949, insurgencies are recognized and legal status is granted to “insurgents.”14 The Conventions grant no such legitimacy to guerilla forces, rebels, or irregular forces. In carrying out their work, the Contadora ministers drafted legal documents that applied to all Central American governments, but excluded any participation by guerilla forces, which were considered to be illegal and therefore without standing. In so doing, they protected their own governments against potential claims from opposition armed groups within their respective countries. The ministers also sought to exclude the U.S. and Cuba from any military role in Central America in order to reduce the level of military violence. Their intent was to allow the national leaders to pursue their own settlement without outside interference. In the words of the Venezuelan ambassador to the UN, Diego Arria, “For Latin Americans, Contadora was considered a tremendous moral force for political integrity.”15 Contadora’s success, however, depended upon the acquiescence of the guerilla forces and the cooperation of the U.S. government. It achieved neither. The FMLN remained opposed, and individuals within the U.S. State Department set out to stall the process.16 This occurred despite skeptical support for the negotiations from Secretary of State, George Shultz.17 In El Salvador, President Jose Napoleon Duarte declared his support for democratic national elections, but was unable to give the FMLN the security guarantees needed to ensure their participation in government.18 Duarte shared Contadora’s desire to see the withdrawal of Nicaraguan and Soviet bloc interference in El Salvador. However, neither he nor his military high command had sufficient strength to survive the withdrawal of U.S. military support. Therefore, he publicly endorsed the effort of the Contadora mediators, but privately rejected their proposals.19 When it became evident that the Contadora mediators could not reach an agreement, presidents Vinicio Cerezo of Guatemala and Oscar Arias of Costa Rica each drafted their own plans to resolve the Central American conflicts. Cerezo focused on excluding external forces.20 Arias focused on democratization.21 Both accepted that only Central Americans could logically understand and emotionally feel the dependency of relatively weak states on the U.S. government, as well as the need to balance external economic support with skilful tactics to withstand overwhelming external political pressures.22 They therefore developed a three-part negotiating strategy that focused on democratization, national reconciliation, and international verification. These goals were acceptable to all parties, but neither President Cerezo nor President Arias included the “insurgents” as legitimate interlocutors of any peace process. In order to avoid legitimizing opposition groups that had taken up arms within their respective countries, they avoided direct communication with the FMLN-FDR as well as the Contras in Nicaragua. Instead, they preferred to use external interlocutors, such as the Mexican Secretary of Interior to communicate with the FMLN and its partner, the FDR.23

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Seeking Peace in El Salvador

President Oscar Arias’ plan, later known as the Declaration of Esquipulas II, differed from the Contadora proposal in several respects, most notably in addressing the political causes of violence. Arias noted and lamented the exclusion of critical sectors of Central American people from effective participation in the state. The issue of political participation was to be addressed by focusing on the need for effective democracy and the incorporation of the insurgents into the political process through internationally supervised democratic elections. This was critical to Arias, whose focus was Nicaragua and the spillover effect of the Sandinista revolution into Costa Rica.24 Salvadoran President Duarte held strong reservations about the Arias plan, but publicly endorsed the proposal for democratization.25 FMLN Comandante, Schafik Handal’s response was that the Arias proposal was not directed toward El Salvador, but rather at Nicaragua. The FMLN had not been consulted in the development of the peace plan and he recommended to his leadership that the plan be rejected.26 Despite the fact that the Soviet Union signed on to the Esquipulas II agreement through the support of a UN Security Council Resolution, the FMLN-FDR refused to accept the legitimacy of a plan that had not been negotiated with them.27 Excluded from the process, they rejected a mediated outcome. The reality was that in 1987, the FMLN believed that they could succeed militarily. Therefore, they did not need external mediators. II. Governance-based Model that Seeks to Strengthen Democratic Institutions

Under this model, third party mediators examine the context of civil war to determine the existence or denial of due legal process and civic intolerance. Interveners examine domestic institutions and seek to reform political institutions and participatory governance structures at all levels of society so as to restore civil society. Mediators focus on the legal and judiciary system and the interaction between public services and the private sector. They give priority to democracy and human rights as preconditions to a lasting peace. These mediators seek enduring political change, including measures to insure accountability and justice over the long term. To achieve this, they seek to promote new norms, greater accountability, new codes of conduct, and transparency. They seek to reform state institutions that are perceived as instruments of state coercion, such as the police and the military. In the case of El Salvador, the UN Secretary General identified the lack of political space for addressing critical socio-economic problems as the principal cause of the fundamental discord.28 When invited to act as a go-between in January 1990, the Secretary General’s personal representative, Alvaro de Soto insisted upon reform of the Salvadoran constitution, the judiciary, and the police as well as reform of ESAF. This proposal met with fierce opposition from President Alfredo Cristiani due to the adamant opposition of the military High Command. De Soto insisted and persisted. It would require more than a year of ongoing pressure to persuade Cristiani that constraints on the power of ESAF and the creation of a new police force were necessary components of any peace agreement with the FMLN. In a prolonged three-week meeting held in Mexico City in April 1991, de Soto and the U.S. Assistant Secretary of State, Bernie Aronson succeeded in persuading the

Theoretical Issues

7

protagonists of the need to amend the Salvadoran constitution and thus reform military and security institutions, the judiciary, and the electoral tribunal. Although irritated by the presence in Mexico City of multiple Salvadoran politicians from the opposition parties, as well as FMLN field commanders, Alvaro de Soto came to recognize that the presence of key domestic players assisted both protagonists in making significant concessions. Those members of the National Assembly, who would later vote on the constitutional amendments, urged solutions that strengthened a democratic Salvadoran state. The Mexico City agreement engaged directly the need to promote new norms and legal standards, as well as create new state institutions. However, the leader’s commitment to reform the judiciary and the police left unanswered the sense of social injustice and revenge. The psychological aspects of a decade-long civil war remained unanswered. III.

Social-psychological Approach

Scholars and practitioners of conflict-resolution, who stress the role played by nonofficial mediators, grassroots organizations, and citizens, find compatibility with the third paradigm, known as the “social-psychological” approach.29 For these mediators, the causes of conflict are a matter of “perception, a subjective phenomenological social process.”30 A strong sense of victimization with personal experience of intense violence leads to a spiral of violence. Breaking this perception of violence can only be addressed by seeking solutions that change the attitudes of the protagonists. To achieve this change, protagonists must be willing to modify their roles and procedures. In seeking solutions, combatants must be willing to drop a “we/them” approach and search for commonalities. This is not an easy task and both Harold Saunders, the U.S. diplomat and former Middle East negotiator and Hampson, the observer of the Angola and Cambodia peace talks believe that this cannot be done without the intervention of third parties.31 Third party mediators should seek to balance the subjective sense of victimization with public recognition by the perpetrator of his responsibility for the harmful acts. In their opinion, the perpetrator should come to recognize the injustice and ask for forgiveness.32 One method for accomplishing this task is the establishment of international tribunals. For example, UN-sponsored Truth Commissions bring an element of impartiality, allows multiple voices to be heard, and can restore grains of faith in the judicial process. In the case of El Salvador, the first director of the UN’s Observer Mission to El Salvador (ONUSAL), Iqbal Riza addressed directly the FMLN’s sense of victimization.33 In January 1991, the Pakistani diplomat and long-time UN bureaucrat, Ambassador Riza received Security Council authority to create a Human Rights’ Division to investigate abuses and protect citizens. This division was placed within ONUSAL offices, but reported directly to the UN Under Secretary for Political Affairs in New York. In July 1991, 100 UN observers investigated the sites where massacres had occurred, visited jails where political prisoners were interned, and listened to complaints from victims and their families. Philippe Texier, the first Director of the UN’s Human Rights division, invited members of the public to come forward with their complaints against abuse by either side and also sent UN officials to investigate the validity of those complaints.34

8

Seeking Peace in El Salvador

Later, at their meeting in Mexico City in April 1991, the protagonists agreed to the formation of a UN Commission on the Truth in El Salvador. Led by 3 international jurists, the commission investigated complaints and corroborated the evidence before drafting the formal UN report on the Truth in El Salvador.35 80 percent of the complaints were directed against the Salvadoran state and its security apparatus. Due to the complaints against the government security forces, the Commission’s work was highly controversial, but the intent of the UN mediators was to address the subjective sense of victimization and the phenomenology of violence throughout El Salvador.36 Furthermore, the UN mediators sought to legitimize the FMLN, a status that no previous official mediator had succeeded in extracting from the Salvadoran government. President Cristiani refused to accept the legitimacy of the FMLN and he criticized the manner in which the UN treated both the government and the FMLN as equals. Nevertheless, the UN insisted that the FMLN had acquired legitimacy through Security Council Resolution 637 that recognized the guerillas as “insurgents,” a term of international law that accorded them legitimacy under the 1949 Geneva Conventions on Armed Conflict.37 Furthermore, Security Council Resolution 637 bound the U.S. government, which, in turn, pressed Cristiani into recognizing that any dialogue with the FMLN required its legal recognition, as well as the recognition of their supporters gathered together in community-based and non-governmental organizations. In conclusion, all the three methods of mediation—political-based solutions, governance-based, and the social-psychological approaches—were used at one time or another to help achieve a settlement to El Salvador’s civil war. The politically based solution was tried but failed, because it did not include the FMLN as a legitimate partner to any resolution of the conflict. The social-psychological approach contributed to the process by providing a legitimate, public, and highly respected method for denouncing charges of abuse. Although the Salvadoran government believed that the UN Truth Commission was intrusive and favored the FMLN, Cristiani recognized that the Presidency lacked sufficient power and independence to investigate on its own military and security forces.38 Therefore, Cristiani accepted the UN’s presence, despite fierce opposition from members of the extreme right wing and its allies within ESAF.39 The UN Truth Commission’s investigative work throughout El Salvador proved to be dangerous with numerous personal threats to its staff members.40 The most effective approach to resolve Salvador’s conflict was the governancebased model that sought to strengthen democratic institutions. This was agreed upon at the Mexico City negotiating session that proposed amendments to the Salvadoran constitution. It was put to the test during the implementation of the peace accords. The UN’s insistence on changes to the institutions of government was critical to the overhaul of the security structures. Thanks to U.S. and European funding, these institutional reforms were made possible. However, external mediation was not sufficient. The political will of the Salvadoran protagonists to change the judicial system, the electoral system, the new civilian police, as well as to create an effective Ombudsman for Human Rights office was essential to implement the mediated texts.41 It was not easy and because critical constituent groups had not

Theoretical Issues

9

formed part of the negotiating process, there existed considerable opposition to the reforms from both the Supreme Court judges and ESAF’s officer corps. The members of the legislature may have been present during the Mexico City negotiations, but they failed to communicate with the justices of the Supreme Court and the military High Command. Therefore, when it came time to implement the reforms, the legislature was unable to carry forward the changes. Only significant external pressure forced the members of a new National Assembly to agree to these constitutional amendments; pressure that had to be impressed also upon the president of the Supreme Court and the High Command. Mediators Who were the mediators in El Salvador and what role did each carry out? Five categories may be identified: ● ● ●

● ●

Official mediators representing multilateral institutions, that is, the UN and the OAS; Foreign Ministers of the Contadora group and the Presidents of the neighboring Central American states gathered at Esquipulas; U.S. government after 1991 when the State Department moved from its traditional position as the protector of the Salvadoran state to a catalyst for resolving contentious issues between the state and the FMLN;42 Catholic Church and Jesuit priests at the University of Central America (UCA); and Community-based and grassroots organizations.

The role of the UN will be discussed at length in Chapter 7. The role of Contadora and Esquipulas officials has been reviewed earlier in this chapter. The role of the U.S. government is more complex. Given its overwhelming historical support for the Salvadoran government, it is hard to assume that the U.S. could be perceived as a neutral mediator. Bernard “Bernie” Aronson, the Assistant Secretary of State for Latin American Affairs was knowledgeable of the underlying multiple causes of violence and he was nonideological. Upon assuming his official responsibilities in June 1989, Aronson was prepared to use the leverage of U.S. financial, military, and humanitarian aid to pressure the Salvadoran government and ESAF into accepting a negotiated end to the civil war. Furthermore, confronted with the assassination of the Jesuit fathers in November 1989, Aronson persuaded Secretary of State James Baker to cut off future military aid to ESAF without prior action from the U.S. Congress. With these actions, Aronson presented a radical change from the previous officials responsible for Latin America. This unilateral cutoff reflected a significant shift in U.S. policy toward El Salvador. Secretary of State James Baker’s purpose was to withdraw from the bitter political controversy or “quagmire” of Central America and to give the UN the principal role in seeking a solution. In pursuit of a negotiated settlement, one might consider the U.S. government from 1990 onward as an “insider partial mediator.”43 No one could claim that the U.S. was disinterested or

10

Seeking Peace in El Salvador

did not hold historical prejudice in favor of the anti-communist Salvadoran state. The U.S. government was never neutral, but Aronson’s unpublished papers indicate that Baker was prepared to accept the FMLN as a legitimate political actor as part of a U.S. commitment to seek a negotiated, political settlement to end El Salvador’s civil war.44 Beyond the official level of mediators, there were unofficial but influential persons and institutions with access to the leadership of each contending protagonist. In El Salvador, the Catholic Church and the Jesuit Community played significant roles as facilitators and sometime mediators between the protagonists.45 As facilitator, the Catholic Church could act as a go-between and arrange the procedural aspects of two meetings between the parties. The church had credibility and a following based on its role as the predominant religion. Within the Catholic Church one man sought to act as mediator. The Spanish Jesuit priest, Ignacio Ellacuria S. J. engaged in dialogue with both the FMLN and the leadership of the conservative political party, ARENA. During Salvador’s civil war, Ellacuria went into exile, but returned in early 1989 to continue his work as the Rector of the University of Central America—Jose Simeon Canas, hereafter known as UCA.46 On his return, Ellacuria established a personal relationship with the newly elected president, Alfredo Cristiani. The two men met on several occasions and established an understanding of how to move forward to a peace settlement. Based on these meetings, as well as conversations with the guerilla leader, Joaquin Villalobos and other members of the FMLN, Ellacuria put forward proposals that might be acceptable to both sides.47 In his mind, the parties could have reached an agreement between themselves.48 Only U.S. government interference prevented the parties from resolving their own conflict.49 It has been argued that ESAF’s High Command was determined to eliminate Ellacuria precisely because he had access to Cristiani and sought to mediate between the president and the FMLN.50 However, the Salvadoran military never saw the Catholic Church, Father Ellacuria, or lay workers as impartial. Instead, since 1980 they sought out priests and religious leaders from protestant denominations for assassination.51 Despite that, church communities and the Catholic hierarchy continued to seek dialogue and negotiated with both sides. This level of internal and unofficial mediation was key to enabling a broader peace process.52 These sub-elite citizens were not accountable for decisions at the state level. However, they were influential in Salvadoran society through their intellectual capacity, status, use of the pulpit, and access to the international news media. Tragically, the Jesuit dialogue ended with Ellacuria’s assassination on November 16, 1989. Another informal level of mediation was composed of community-based (CBO) and grassroots (GRO) organizations, which were active from 1985 onward.53 They may be distinguished by the formal and legal structure given to the former, versus the informality of local groups that suffered daily indignities and injuries. The narratives of these indignities and injuries justified the search for political and financial support from international NGOs. The funds were distributed to the CBOs, which in turn shared them with the GROs. The principal focus of CBOs was the organization of local communities into cooperatives to provide sustenance and food, as well as to create collective defense against ESAF.54 In doing so, they took advantage of new government regulations

Theoretical Issues

11

that permitted legalization and receipt of international funding.55 CBO leaders communicated with local military commanders to negotiate transport to hospitals for wounded civilians, access to water, information on detained prisoners, improved access to local markets, and other issues of critical importance in the daily life of the urban and rural population of El Salvador. These groups were not impartial: their sympathies lay with the FMLN. However, they had to survive and found ways to relate and negotiate with municipal and military authorities in order to support daily life. At this level of negotiation, a strong sense of victimization affected those participating in the peace process, but these local mediators held various identities that helped compensate for the strong emotions of hatred and vengeance.56 For instance, a FMLN sympathizer was also a school teacher with responsibilities toward education authorities, and a member of the conservative ARENA party was also a sharecropper with long-held grievances against the tenant farmer or landowner.57 Natan Sharansky calls these people “double thinkers” in their public affiliation with the authorities and their private sympathy for the dissidents. Sharansky does not decry this double life, but recognizes the necessity for individuals to accommodate in order to survive in authoritarian regimes.58 In the late 1980s, campesinos (men and women from the countryside or campo) returned from the refugee camps in Honduras to resettle in their own communities or create new ones. They brought with them the organizing skills learned or further developed in the UN High Commission for Refugee camps at Colomoncagua and Mesa Grande.59 Upon return, the refugees applied those skills to reconstruct the productive capacity of their communities, creating workshops and cooperatives.60 Although sympathetic to the FMLN and suspicious of the government, it was hoped that the former refugees would assert a political autonomy that could advance the interests of their community rather than the politics of the FMLN.61 The community leaders had shown great pragmatism as they sought to create collective communities and negotiate with the UN authorities in the refugee camps. Now, it was hoped that the same commitment to autonomous communities—both political and economic—would translate into a capacity to act as bridges between the FMLN and the local government. It did not happen, principally because the level of insecurity during the two years of peace negotiations forced the inhabitants to demonstrate cooperation with the government forces, while at the same time working quietly with the FMLN. When peace arrived in 1992 and the level of violence decreased, there was great hope that the former refugees and now community organizers would focus on economically productive activities and become more politically independent. However, after twelve years of war, the campesinos of northern Morazan were not interested in participating in national efforts at reconciliation. Instead, they withdrew to pick up the previous threads of their private lives. Their opinions had not been sought during the peace negotiations and they had no stake in the national experiment of making peace. Consequently, they withdrew to recreate their lives and those of their families. Even during the peace talks, the inhabitants of Morazan had to defend themselves against the government and the military, which seized materials, inhibited their commerce, and publicly accused organized civilians of being FMLN “fronts.”62

12

Seeking Peace in El Salvador

The Mennonite scholar, John Paul Lederach, called for the empowerment of indigenous communities as the necessary ingredient of any sustainable peace.63 This empowerment could be achieved through the inclusion of GROs and CBOs within the peace process (either as observers or participants). The purpose is twofold: first, to enable the local communities to engage with the process and understand its relationship to their own lives and that of their communities; and second, to transmit “cultural modalities” to the elite negotiators so that peace agreements encompassed the real needs of those most affected by the war. Neither of these purposes was carried out on a sustained basis in the peacemaking for El Salvador. Instead, the elite among both protagonists focused on the reform of the Constitution, the armed forces, the judiciary, a cease-fire, and demobilization. Not until September 1991, some four months before the end of negotiations, did the issue of reintegrating FMLN combatants through access to land, credit, and training arise. No one was present at the negotiating table to convey the needs of campesinos and city folk who had fought on one side or the other. Only in the course of implementing the peace accords, did the Salvadoran government and the FMLN–FDR discuss in detail how to implement the demobilization and reintegration of soldiers into civilian life. Issues so vital to the men and women who had supported the FMLN and fought within ESAF, were not addressed until the end of the peace process. Spoilers Those who wish to prevent resolution or have an interest in perpetuating the conflict are known as “spoilers.” They exist on both sides of disputes and hold distinctive reasons for destroying the peace process. In the case of El Salvador, those FMLN comandantes, who rarely participated in the talks with the government, were convinced that the FMLN leadership had become seduced by the good life of negotiations in luxurious Mexican and Costa Rican hotels. Until the end, they remained skeptical that their goals and those of their men in arms were represented. However, they were not prepared to ruin the chances of a peace that would permit them to participate in the political life of their country. What had failed to be achieved through the gun might still be achieved through the ballot box. On the right, Roberto d’Aubuisson the founder of the ARENA party and author of Archbishop Romero’s murder might have succeeded in spoiling the negotiations. His popularity with the petit bourgeoisie could have provided the base for military or political action that would have damaged significantly the delicate peace talks. However, d’Aubuisson was diagnosed with cancer in 1988 and moderated his behavior to support a peaceful resolution to the decade-long civil war. Counterintuitively, members of the Atlacatl Battalion who murdered the six Jesuits, their housekeeper and her daughter caused domestic and international outrage that resulted in greater support for UN mediation. We must conclude that in the case of El Salvador, potential “spoilers” came to recognize greater interest in a peace process than in continued war.

Theoretical Issues

13

Zartman’s “Hurting Stalemate” Mediators, of whatever persuasion, are ineffective unless the protagonists have reached a critical juncture in their war. A “hurting stalemate” must be reached, in which the parties recognize that no further advantage can be gained by fighting and that only negotiation can advance their cause.64 Such a moment was reached in late November 1989 when the FMLN uprising of that month failed to mobilize the popular sectors in the rural areas, as well as the capital city of San Salvador. At the same time, ESAF recognized that for a period of approximately one month, 47,000 troops had failed to maintain control over the capital city by night. It became clear to both protagonists that neither side could win; both sides were losing physical and moral support. In the circumstances of a military and political stalemate, the time was ripe for UN intervention. In December 1989, the FMLN approached Alvaro de Soto and agreed to meet in a neutral setting, the International Airline Association offices in Montreal. In January 1990, Secretary Baker strongly urged President Cristiani to seek the good offices of UN Secretary General, Javier Perez de Cuellar. Tentatively, Cristiani began the dialogue with the UN.

Chapter 2

Ancient Conflicts, Modern Violence: The Causes and Context for Civil War in El Salvador El Salvador’s war lasted approximately twelve years, took approximately 70,000 lives, displaced one quarter of a million people, and destroyed $2 billion worth of property. It began on March 9, 1980, the day after the Civilian-Military Junta initiated a program of agrarian reform.1 The coffee elite, whose land was threatened, turned to their allies in the military in an effort to reverse the legislation and to obstruct the changes proposed by Salvador’s Christian Democrat party and their allies in Washington. They would also crush the upsurge from leftist sympathizers with a wave of violence. On March 24, Major Roberto d’Aubuisson ordered the murder of Archbishop Oscar Romero y Galdamez, and fellow officers persecuted those who gathered for his funeral mass by shooting and killing them as they gathered on the steps of San Salvador’s cathedral. The response and the extraordinary security measures taken by the armed forces resulted in the disintegration of El Salvador’s governing Junta. Civilians holding centrists and leftist leanings resigned leaving only military officers to run the government.2 With their departure, El Salvador dissolved into a civil war that pitted the state against a coalition of disaffected middle-class revolutionaries. A weakened government relied for its existence on El Salvador’s armed forces (ESAF) and its use of force. In turn, the armed forces sought and obtained increasing U.S. government support. Washington financed the training and equipment of ESAF in order to prevent another Central American state from turning to Marxism/Leninism like Nicaragua.3 The Salvadoran military and security forces became autonomous from the elected government and more powerful than the President. On January 11, 1981, the Frente Farabundo Marti de Liberación Nacional (FMLN) launched a coordinated, nationwide offensive with the intent of provoking a people’s

16

Seeking Peace in El Salvador

insurrection similar to that which the Sandinistas had undertaken in Nicaragua. The offensive lasted one week, but the ESAF counteroffensive was fierce, and killings on both sides reached 1,000 people a month in the period 1980–1981, two-thirds of which were attributed to the military and security forces.4 What reasons lay behind the violence? This pattern of large-scale violence and assassinations perpetrated in the early 1980s was not new to El Salvador, a nation with a land mass of 8,236 square miles,5 a population of 4.625 million, and a per capita income of $1,032 in 1982.6 The nation, whose name translates into “Savior of the World” possessed several features that distinguished it from the other Central American states: densely settled populations competing for inadequate agricultural land; historically rich fertile soil appropriate for intensive cultivation; a technically advanced coffee production system; and, as with Guatemala, a laboring class that had suffered violent repression throughout the country’s history as an independent state. President Alfredo Cristiani’s chief negotiator in the peace talks, David Escobar, spoke of the historic nature of El Salvador’s internal violence, An internal conflict, such as Salvador’s always has causes that are very remote and ancient; in this case, there are causes that date back to the time of independence, to the time when we were still a colony of Spain. And causes of the kind that are economic, that relate to our social structure, and our juridical structure in society.

Escobar’s analysis is significant because he was a close personal friend of President Cristiani and led the government delegation in the peace dialogue. He recognized the underlying socio-economic issues and the lack of an independent and transparent judicial system. However, he chose not to raise these critical issues during that dialogue. The government would not instigate any substantive themes for discussion. It would respond, but not initiate. Escobar left it to the coalition of five guerilla groups, unified under the umbrella organization of the FMLN, to raise issues of importance to them and to seek redress for these underlying causes. The FMLN preferred to achieve political power through participation in the government, and subsequently to address the underlying socio-economic grievances, as well as the independence of the judiciary. Only in September 1991, three-quarters of the way into the peace talks did the former guerilla leaders raise the issue of land reform and the reincorporation of their forces into productive peaceful occupations. Why did they wait so long to raise fundamental socio-economic issues? Did the FMLN perceive socio-economic causes as secondary to the loss of political space within which they could exercise influence? Why did the FMLN give priority to achieving political power? Escobar’s recognition of socio-economic causes and the FMLN’s focus on political grievances produced disparate goals in their search for peace. Finally, the presence of the United States and its government’s support for the Salvadoran state provoked the enmity of the FMLN and the resentment of the Salvadoran military. The principal reason was that the direct presence of the U.S. in support of ESAF and the indirect presence of the U.S. in both the export economy and its aid programs were perceived to have resulted in a loss of Salvadoran sovereignty. This chapter will examine each of the structural causes for the war.7

Ancient Conflicts, Modern Violence

17

Underlying Socio-Economic Causes Salvador’s intellectuals on the left, as well as observers of El Salvador’s tortured history have examined the underlying socio-economic nature of the nation’s past. Their claim is that the causes are threefold and found in the nature of the liberal reforms of the late nineteenth century, land patterns of an agro-export economy, and the domination by an agrarian elite allied with the military to ensure social stability and agricultural productivity. The result was a polarized society with minimum space for political action, an electoral system that could not produce real change, a judiciary that was beholden to an alliance of military and landowning elite. Furthermore, large sectors of a restless middle class found no political party within which to express their political opinions. They became exasperated by their inability to bring about peaceful change and concluded that revolution was the only means to carry out significant reform. El Salvador’s violence can be traced back to the middle of the nineteenth century and the end of the export boom in the natural dyes, cochineal and indigo. Protection offered to small and medium-size planters by the Indigo Growers Society in the late colonial period ended as synthetic dyes made cochineal and indigo uncompetitive in world markets.8 In their place, coffee was chosen as the preferred export crop based on climate, Salvador’s fertile soils, and the capacity to dry and store the beans from one season to another. The transition to coffee required larger tracts of land and the financing of coffee bushes, fertilizers, and de-husking mills. Small peasant farmers, protected by the paternalistic leadership of conservative and authoritarian leaders, were now forced to sell their land to more prosperous coffee estates. In turn, they become day laborers. In El Salvador, as in many other parts of Latin America, for more than a century after independence, “coffee production was associated with a profound transformation of landscape and society.”9 General Gerardo Barrios, the Salvadoran liberal who assumed power in 1858 encouraged the transfer of land cultivation from cochineal to coffee and accelerated a process of modernization and economic reforms. When the conversion proved slow, General Barrios decided to “abolish any aspect of man’s ownership, use or settlement of the land that hindered the rapid establishment of coffee plantations.”10 The general and his liberal followers believed that expanded productivity and exports would lead to an industrial revolution that would lead Salvadoran society to a multilayered economy similar to that enjoyed by the United States and Western Europe.11 Based on the greater income generated by an export economy, general standards of living were expected to rise and secondary industries would emerge to satisfy the population. The doubling of coffee exports in the early 1880s created new wealth and a demand for arable land. Furthermore, the determination of General Barrios to transfer land from cochineal to coffee resulted in the liberal reforms of 1881–1882 that legislated the abolition of common and communal landholdings. As a result of this legislation, it is estimated that more than 22 percent of agricultural land in El Salvador became available for sale.12 The effect of both the coffee boom and the privatization of communal lands was that small coffee farmers were persuaded to sell their family plots to larger coffee fincas with the promise of ready cash. When that

18

Seeking Peace in El Salvador

cash ran out, the farmer and his families were forced to become day laborers. Over two generations, land was concentrated among fewer and more powerful coffee producers and a rural proletariat was created. Subsidies, tax exemptions, and the promise of large profits brought new land into cultivation.13 Alongside the large agricultural estates lay numerous small holdings of family farmers whose production provided subsistence living, but no substantial contribution to national production. In criticizing Salvador’s landowning patterns, the slogan of dominance by El Salvador’s “fourteen families” is bandied about widely. It reflects the concentration of ownership in both land and processing that arose gradually between 1920 and 1982. In 1920, the U.S. Consul reported 337 important coffee growers.14 Eight years later, a U.S. survey found 350 coffee growers with farms larger than seventy-five manzanas.15 [1 manzana ⫽ 1.34 acres] The noted increase was slight. However, in the first official coffee census of 1938, 455 producers, representing 4 percent of the total landowners, owned almost 63,000 manzanas (53 percent of total land area) on farms of more than 50 manzanas. In addition, there were some 207 beneficios (de-husking facilities) and a similar number of exporters.16 A leap in the concentration of land and productive resources had occurred between 1928 and 1938, coinciding with the authoritarian rule of General Maximiliano Hernandez.17 Forty-five years later, two Salvadoran researchers at the Central American University (UCA) found that 10 percent of all coffee producers controlled 80 percent of all Salvadoran production, and most millers of coffee individually controlled the production of hundreds of small growers.18 In the same period, the U.S. author, Tommie Sue Montgomery found 114 family groups, comprising 1,309 individuals, dominated coffee production, processing, and export.19 Both the UCA study and Montgomery’s work conclude that land ownership had become increasingly concentrated in fewer and fewer hands. Although the slogan of fourteen families is inaccurate, the reality of social inequality and unequal concentration of land and wealth existed. Throughout the twentieth century, this contributed to the sense of economic injustice.20 The coffee elite exercised influence through their ownership of commercial processing plants as well as extensive arable land. Furthermore, the elite had significant, if not controlling interests in the commercial houses, brokerage firms, and financial institutions. By means of family and marriage ties, they controlled political and professional positions in Salvadoran society. They placed position seekers within the government bureaucracy, thereby creating favors and developing an extensive patronage system.21 Linked to the economic elite were former military officers who had retired at the top of the ranks and played a key role in pacifying the country during one or more periods of upheaval.22 These former military officers provided security to large economic enterprises and, based on their experience in the military, retired to managerial functions in the private sector. The integrated economic elite, its political connections, and its entanglement with the military produced an alliance, known as the oligarchy. The term is used pejoratively and reflects both concentration and abuse of power by the Salvadoran elite. One of several distinctions within the oligarchy will be critical for the later examination of the peace process. The contemporary historian of Central American coffee, Jeffrey Paige identifies an inherent dualism, or two-class “fractions” within the Salvadoran coffee elite.23 The first “fraction” consisted of landowners in coffee,

Ancient Conflicts, Modern Violence

19

and later in cattle, cotton, and sugar. They were closely tied to the banking system. For the most part, they were conservative and traditional defenders of the status quo. The second “fraction” consisted of processors of those same products, who had capital assets in agro-industrial plants and in the service industry. They employed wage labor and financed the processors. Although one family might participate in both “fractions,” different families specialized in one or other fraction. Paige identifies a parallel division between Spanish noble and immigrant families. Their respective backgrounds often reflected, but not always, the split between land ownership and the processors.24 Spanish colonial families such as the Regalados were more likely to be the owners of vast tracts of land and coffee trees, while immigrant families such as the de Solas tended to be coffee processors.25 This may be a distinction of degree, because the Regalados exported coffee and the de Solas families owned extensive land. Nevertheless, observers of the coffee elite in the 1980s believe that this distinction influenced the political ideology, as well as the economic behavior of particular families.26 These distinctions became important in the development of a new conservative party, the Alianza Republicana Nacional (ARENA) in 1980. ARENA comprised both the landowning “fraction” and the commercial entrepreneurs. The former fraction was composed of old-line conservatives allied to the landowners. They remained staunch anti-communists and remained committed to defeating the guerilla insurgency, whom they referred to as “terrorists.”27 Historically, landowning families in El Salvador have reinforced authoritarian politics. In contrast, the agro-industrialists have been more open to democratic initiatives. They held their wealth in machinery, industrial plant, and investment portfolios not land. The agro-industrialists were more open to the search for a negotiated settlement in which the FMLN would participate in the democratic elections. During the early 1980s, both “fractions” held together in the face of both the FMLN insurgency and the government’s nationalization of the export trade in coffee.28 This unity broke down after the 1982 presidential election of the Christian Democrat, Jose Napoleon Duarte and his introduction of socio-economic reforms. The first “fraction” of coffee growers and landowning families assumed a die-hard defensive posture in alliance with the conservative officers in the armed forces. In contrast, the agro-industrialists and other progressive business leaders found alternative options for protecting both their investment assets and their families—they invested in the United States and sent their families out of El Salvador. A group consisting of some notable figures among the moderate conservatives remained in El Salvador, determined to defend their economic interests and seek a solution to the spiraling violence. This group of businessmen would defeat the FMLN and, at the same time, seek to curb ESAF’s power. These moderate conservatives supported one of their own, Alfredo Cristiani Burkard, for the presidency in 1989.29 The alliance of the coffee elite and military officers was pitted against a restless middle class that became active politically in the 1960s. These were the children of men and women who had moved off the land and into the capital and provincial towns where they educated their sons and daughters. They became the decisive political force in El Salvador. The origin of this class is found in the significant economic growth of the post–World War II period when new agro-industries in

20

Seeking Peace in El Salvador

food processing, tanning, and textiles were produced as a result of the quadrupling of revenues from coffee, as well as the diversification into cattle and cotton. Increased production resulted in greater demands upon arable land. Foreign investment trickled in.30 As the agro-industrial coffee families extended their control into sugar and the development of cattle ranches and cotton farms, small holders sold their land at below market prices, or were forced off their land.31 The post–World War II economic expansion created a massive semiproletariat and informal sector with part-time migratory laborers. Lacking sufficient land to support themselves, subsistence farmers and their families drifted into towns where the agro-industrial expansion absorbed some, but not all. Absence of Political Space The emerging agro-industry in processing and manufacturing stimulated the formation of a middle class in San Salvador and small provincial towns. It consisted of a professional class of doctors, notaries, and lawyers, as well as government technocrats and tradesmen. The emerging middle class found only the official military party, the Partido de Conciliación Nacional (PCN) and three other and smaller conservative parties for political action. There was no space for civic action within labor unions or centrist and leftist political parties. Active participation in those areas was immediately suppressed by the military and its security agencies with the result that critical opinions of a more liberal nature found little outlet for expression.32 Radio and newspapers were owned by members of the oligarchy who expected editorials and opinion pieces to reflect the views of the publisher. No space for moderate, centrist political expression existed. Two groups arose within the growing urban, middle class to demand social change; the mildly reformist Partido Demócrata Cristiano (PDC) and the Movimiento Nacional Revolucionario (MNR), which supported a social democratic program. In 1960, reformers with centrist opinions began investigating the possibility of creating a political party that encouraged the participation of all political persuasions and ensured that power went to the real electoral winner. Groups wrote to Christian Democratic parties in Chile and Venezuela asking for information and ideas from Eduardo Frei and Rafael Caldera. They drafted the party’s charter that was signed on November 25, 1960.33 Among its founding members was Jose Napoleon Duarte, a civil engineer and then president of El Salvador’s Boy Scouts. Closely related to the PDC was the MNR, led by Guillermo Manuel Ungo. The MNR received support from banned political organizations on the left, but failed to become a significant political force in Salvador.34 The MNR had received support from members of the Partido Comunista de El Salvador (PCS), but it split between those who sought to pursue popular mobilization and the development of an effective rear guard and those who believed that the time was ripe for armed struggle. The PCS Secretary General, Salvador Cayetano Carpio left the party in 1970 over the issue of armed insurrection and helped to form the Fuerzas Populares de Liberación (FPL), the first of five political-military organizations that emerged to support guerilla warfare. With Cayetano’s departure, Schafik Handal became the leader of the PCS and revamped the party’s ideology. In this he found willing allies among

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21

University students and middle-class intellectuals. Handal was to play a leading role both in the peace negotiations and the implementation of the peace accords. From within the growing middle class, there emerged in the 1970s a new generation of activists, educated for the most part at the Universidad Nacional de El Salvador. Disenchanted by the traditional posture of the PCS that mass mobilization must precede armed rebellion, young student leaders proposed a union between the popular revolutionary movement and armed insurrection. At the same time, a segment from the youth groups broke away from the moderate PDC to create new political parties. These new groups were determined to abandon the “reformist” stage of the revolution and to undertake mass organization and armed struggle.35 Born in the late 1940s and early 1950s, these students came from relatively prosperous homes. They were young, well-educated, and impatient with the protracted process that an earlier generation of revolutionaries considered essential.36 This educated leadership had the energy that propelled a generation of restless and marginalized activists.

Role of Salvador’s Armed Forces Marshaled against the reformist middle-class youth, their parents, and aggrieved peasant farmers was the alliance between the oligarchy and ESAF with its security forces. This alliance joined in the determination to preserve the productive agricultural base of the Salvadoran state, as well as their socio-economic dominance. To ensure this, they reinforced a culture of fear by imprisoning, beating, and even murdering peasant workers, teachers, student organizers, or church workers who might lead, or support subversive behavior.37 Government violence became institutionalized. The military controlled the state in alliance with the economic policies of the oligarchy, which in turn oversaw the modernization of the agricultural sector. Together, they exercised “strict control over any public action.”38 Strikes were outlawed and opposition leaders were jailed or deported. Supreme Court Justices and Departmental Justices were appointed by the President, often on the advice of the Chief of the armed forces, and were accountable only to them. The judiciary had no independence, but acted as an arm of the executive’s authoritarian rule. Regular elections were carried out, but the President in office chose his successor from within the official party and electoral fraud was commonplace. A pattern of military coups reflected divergent political interests within the military, but never posed a threat to the military’s dominance of Salvadoran society.39 El Salvador’s armed forces were created as a professional body in the first decade following independence.40 By 1864, El Salvador’s Constitution permitted the President of the nation to be an active-duty military officer, a marriage that existed from 1887 to 1903.41 A National Police was created in 1882 to maintain order in the cities, and the National Guard was created in 1912 to ensure control in rural sectors. Furthermore, a paramilitary organization, the Organización Democrática Nacionalista (ORDEN) insured that revolts in the countryside rarely went beyond the planning stage.42 In 1933, the Treasury Police was created to control the contraband that eluded Treasury revenues. However, its most active role was the protection of landed estates and processing plants owned by the oligarchy.

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ORDEN was the most hated of all the security forces. Salvadoran scholars explain its creation as a response to growing restlessness in rural areas.43 William Stanley, the U.S. scholar, has claimed that the U.S. Military Group, attached to the U.S. Embassy in San Salvador, created ORDEN to counter communist subversion.44 Further examination reveals that ORDEN was created earlier than 1960, but used by U.S. military trainers as a mechanism for counter-revolutionary work. Its leaders were answerable only to the High Command of the armed forces and to the president. The members of ORDEN were military men, working off-duty, wearing no uniform, armed by the National Guard, and paid indirectly by the oligarchy. Their brutality in carrying out their quasi-state functions was notorious. President Cristiani had little difficulty in abolishing ORDEN in his effort to reform the armed forces because it had no supportive constituency, even among military officers. Together, these police and security institutions ensured public security on behalf of the oligarchy. However, the landowners were unable to control these forces. ESAF and its security forces were accountable to no civilian institution or person. The military budget was partly secret and overseen by no legislative committee of the National Assembly. Together, the four security institutions associated with the armed forces protected crops and property of planters from sabotage and theft. They served as bodyguards against potential kidnappers or assassins. They collected intelligence and provided security for the state. To justify such activities, military leaders developed an ideology that imposed a constitutional duty upon the armed forces to correct corruption, ineptitude, and violations of the Constitution. The existence of a “permanent army” became enshrined in the Constitution.45 The military perceived themselves as the only institution capable of governing the country and directing its development. They assumed a praetorian form of government, guarding the constitution from threats by the majority of the population who were considered incapable of governing for the general good.46 The permanency and unchangeable nature of the Salvadoran constitution became a deeply held principle among conservative civilian and military leaders.47 It would create the single most intractable problem in the negotiations to achieve peace. An official party was formed to support the military in their control of the state. Its name changed in the early twentieth century, but the institution continued to act as a satellite to the military and liked to pose as modernizers.48 The PCN became the official state party in 1962. Its membership was drawn from the bureaucrats of the state ministries and trades unions. Membership was advisable for advancement within the state, though not essential. The party gave a civilian veneer to military rule, but no Salvadoran considered it to be independent of the armed forces. The PCN presidential candidate was assured of electoral victory until 1972 when a coalition of centrist and middle-class opponents led by the PDC emerged to challenge the dominance of the military class and its alliance with the oligarchy. Despite popular support for the PDC leader, Jose Napoleon Duarte, the PCN declared victory, physically assaulted and then banished Duarte into exile. In his place, the military imposed its PCN candidate, Colonel Arturo Molina.

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The Oligarchy Versus the Armed Forces and its Reformist Colonels Traditionally, the landowning elite had governed the country, but the preponderance of power shifted to the military after General Maximiliano Hernandez Martinez’s brutal suppression of rural dissent, known as la matanza, in January 1932. With the horrific massacre of approximately 30,000 peasant farmers and their families, the oligarchy withdrew from governing to cultivate their economic interests, and a military man retained the presidency until 1979. The Salvadoran sociologist, Mario Lungo bemoans the retreat of the oligarchy from the management of the state because of their restraining influence on the military.49 However, Lungo’s thesis ignores the economic power and the control over financial and trade policy that the oligarchy historically had exercised. Those landowning families, together with the processors and financiers of export and import merchandise, continued to exercise political influence. They demanded limits on the degree of social reform that young military officers could carry out. From the 1940s and with ongoing regularity, young army colonels attempted to enact social and economic reforms with the intent of introducing greater equality and limiting the dominance of the landed coffee growers. In 1964 and again in 1972, 1979, and early 1980, attempts at socio-economic reform came from young colonels who grew up in the emerging middle, urban class. With no future in politics, these young men entered ESAF and sought political influence and change through that institution. When those reforms threatened the interests of the economic elite, the oligarchy persuaded more conservative and senior military men to expel the young officers and stamp out reform. A military coup by conservative officers ensued; accompanied by increased state repression and brutality. This cycle of reform and brutal repression contributed significantly to the outbreak and continuation of social conflict in El Salvador. Typical of the military officers’ attempt at social reform was the young officer coup of October 15, 1979. That month, a group of reformist colonels with socialist goals overthrew President General Humberto Romero and installed a military/ civilian Junta to institute major social reforms. The coup was acceptable to the U.S. Embassy so long as it had a civilian face and was committed to significant socioeconomic change.50 There were high hopes for a reformist government and space for politicians from the PDC and MNR parties. In the following months, the Junta proposed the investigation into the “desaparecidos,” the disbandment of ORDEN, a minimum wage for day laborers, the nationalization of the banks, as well as the savings and loan institutions. Finally, the Junta proposed the creation of a government institution that would control the price and quantity of coffee exports.51 The oligarchy viewed the proposals as communist and revolutionary, threatening their economic livelihood. They vowed to oppose both the Junta and the reforms. On the extreme left, the Junta was perceived as a tool of “Yankee imperialism and the bourgeoisie.”52 A coalition of peasants, workers, and students, estimated at 30,000, demonstrated against the Junta, confronting rightist groups, some of whom were off-duty policemen.53 Confrontation was inevitable and violence ensued. There appeared to be no place for moderate, centrist voices.

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In December 1979, Duarte returned to El Salvador and agreed to work with the military, but at the same time other civilian democrats despaired of their capacity to affect change and left the government.54 To protect its authority, the Junta declared a state of siege and introduced a limited form of martial law to protect the reforms from violence by the extremes of both the left and right. The stringent measures taken to protect the social and economic reforms provoked savage killings and a catastrophic loss of life. According to Socorro Jurídico, the human rights office of Catholic Archdiocese of San Salvador, approximately 1,000 people were murdered in the last 75 days of 1979. That number increased to between 9,000 and 10,000 in 1980 and 12,500 in 1981.55 Despite the violence that included four American nuns, the U.S. Embassy sustained the military/civilian Junta and Duarte’s leadership against the threats from ESAF. The socio-economic reforms were put into effect, protected by the U.S. Embassy that was determined to implement both agrarian and financial reforms. Without that protection, we may assume that the traditional pattern of military response and repression would have followed. Only the investigation into the “desaparecidos” was dropped, perhaps due to the Embassy’s lack of commitment to that program in 1980.56 Under U.S. Embassy protection, President Duarte was elected to head a civilian PDC government in 1982, ten years after he had won the election, but denied victory. His supporters were given portfolios for social policy, but found that they had minimal capacity to affect change. The centrists lent legitimacy to traditional military rule, but they damaged their reputations and undermined public trust in electoral politics. Real power remained in the hands of the Salvadoran military and its most powerful council, the tandona.57 The Role of the United States Due to the dominant role of the U.S. Embassy in the political and economic life of El Salvador, the role of the U.S. government in the events, which led to the Juntas of 1979 and 1980, cannot be ignored. The U.S. government and its Embassy were and remained players before, during, and after Salvador’s civil war. The thesis of this book is that internal forces within El Salvador provoked the war and obtained relative peace. However, the U.S. Embassy played a constant role that at times exacerbated the violence through its training and equipment of ESAF and later moderated the conflict as the George H.W. Bush administration sought to extricate itself from the wars in Central America. No study of Salvador’s civil war is complete without an examination of the U.S. government’s role: ● ● ● ●

First, it contributed significantly to the government’s economic dependence upon Washington; Second, it exacerbated the internal fight due to Washington’s argument that El Salvador was caught up in the broader war against communism; Third, the Embassy cultivated and protected a centrist president who lacked the capacity to win the war; and Finally, it failed to control the human rights abuses by death squads and security forces associated with ESAF.

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Each of these four elements must be examined further. An underlying cause of violence in the Central American isthmus was the existence of small, weak states, which resulted in a blurring of the distinction between domestic and international politics throughout the region. As a result, regional leaders had taken a keen interest in the domestic politics and ideological orientations of their neighbors.58 In 1986, President Vinicio Cerezo of Guatemala sought to persuade his Central American colleagues to distance themselves from Washington’s interference in the hemisphere. They should end the civil wars in neighboring Salvador and Nicaragua by excluding external forces from the region, namely the U.S. and, indirectly, the Soviets through Cuba.59 Cerezo proposed a Central American parliament and sought a foreign policy of “active neutrality.” In this he was joined by President Oscar Arias of Costa Rica who expanded upon Cerezo’s initiative to persuade the regional presidents of the need to find peace through democratization and demilitarization.60 Both presidents recognized that ideological and political violence in one of the weak isthmian nations could not be contained, but necessarily spilled over into the neighboring states.61 Sovereignty in each of the five states was limited not only by the desire of the neighbors to influence events in the region, but also by the long history of U.S. intervention. Historically, Central American leaders saw the U.S. president as the “natural protector,” a phrase used in 1880 so that the “Yankees” might be played off against Great Britain, Mexico, and even Guatemala, the region’s power center at that time.62 Washington interfered frequently in the region to assure that pro-north American regimes were maintained in power and that U.S. investors had access to a potential trans-isthmian route linking the Atlantic and Pacific oceans.63 When political influence failed to remove unfriendly regimes, direct U.S. military intervention was often used. As a result, there existed an expectation of U.S. intervention and the recognition of a quasi-colonial domination of the isthmus.64 In the case of El Salvador, U.S. interests began in the 1960s with the Alliance for Progress and the defense against communism. In October that year, the U.S. charge d’affaires intervened directly in the affairs of the Salvadoran military Junta, recommending policies that were anti-communist.65 He recommended that Washington refuse to grant diplomatic recognition to the Junta that had assumed power by a coup d’état, and he publicly contested its leader, Fabio Castillo. From then onward, Castillo claimed that “members of the U.S. Military Mission openly intensified their invitation to conspiracy and rebellion.”66 Writing about U.S. interference in Salvadoran affairs in the decade that followed, Roque Dalton the Salvadoran poet and communist intellectual wrote, . . . And the United States’ President’s more my country’s President than my country’s President is, the one who like I say right now is named Colonel Fidel Sanchez Hernandez.67

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Seeking Peace in El Salvador

Overt U.S. influence on Salvadoran politics and its choice of preferred leaders led to the expectation that the U.S. would always intervene if the Salvadoran choice of president was unacceptable to Washington. Furthermore, the investment of both private and public U.S. monies to influence economic and political decisions in El Salvador has long been a tool of U.S. foreign policy in the region. U.S. total funding amounted to less than $5 million per year from 1960 until 1981, when President Ronald Reagan began a significant increase in funding for the Salvadoran government. With the outbreak of civil war in October 1979, the U.S. government began to increase significantly its grant of both military and economic aid. In 1980, U.S. funding to ESAF amounted to $5.9 million. The following year, that sum had risen to $35 million. By 1984, the U.S. Congress had appropriated $206.6 million to combat the insurgency in El Salvador.68 The U.S. government’s economic aid program through the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) increased from $57.8 million in 1980 to $113.6 in 1981 and to $433.9 million in 1985.69 The consequence of such increased economic aid levels was to create the Salvadoran government’s dependence upon USAID for existence. Washington paid for the salaries of local mayors, construction of schools and low-income housing, roads connecting farms to markets, and also supported the local currency, the colon. It was generally agreed that without that funding, the Salvadoran government could not have survived one day.70 Throughout the decadelong war, “U.S. aid (plus the remittance of thousands of Salvadorans in the United States . . .) impeded the collapse of the Salvadoran economy.”71 In the minds of both protagonists, Washington was intimately identified with the Salvadoran government. “U.S. advice and financing defined the direction of the war from the government’s side. . . .”72 Whether or not Washington was able to dictate Salvadoran government policies, Salvadorans and their neighbors in Nicaragua believed that U.S. economic assistance was indispensable to the survival of the state. After the fall of the Nicaraguan dictator in July 1979, the U.S. government was determined to prevent another Central American country’s fall to MarxismLeninism. This determination, which characterized U.S. policies in the Cold War, provided the justification for intricate involvement. President Jimmy Carter and his administration set out to support the Salvadoran government, despite the October 1979 coup d’état by reformist colonels, in order to prevent a “domino effect” in Central America.73 Within ESAF, the High Command was persuaded that that they were carrying out the global cause of anti-communism. Trained in U.S. counterinsurgency measures and armed with tactical weapons, the Salvadoran security forces concluded that they contributed to a broader and vital goal, namely the suppression of Soviet communism within the Americas.74 This confidence bred arrogance, if not a sense of impunity that the Salvadoran security forces were above the law. It fed on a historical tradition of superiority and exacerbated their independence of action and ruthlessness in eradicating “subversivos.”75 Furthermore, it encouraged those elements in the security forces that believed that eradication of “terrorists” was a necessary element in the war. The Treasury Police and National Guard, successors to the hated ORDEN, carried out their own violent reprisals against labor leaders, peasant farmers, and students with impunity. In the minds of

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their leaders, if Washington was determined to contain communism, they would vigorously carry out their responsibilities. The security forces raided people’s homes before dawn, dragged off people to known and unknown jails where torture was the norm. Then, the bodies of citizens were tossed off pickup trucks to be left on the streets and garbage dumps of provincial towns.76 This brutality was carried out in the name of anti-communism. The level of violence and gross abuse of human rights horrified the human rights community, including those within the labor movement, students, and intellectuals in the United States. To protest this behavior, if not curtail it, Congress appropriated funds to train ESAF in the rule of law and appropriate respect for human rights. Furthermore, Congress agreed to support the counterinsurgency in El Salvador only if a centrist government was in power, based on the ideal that the U.S. should support a moderate, democratic center. At the time, many observers considered that the existence of such a center was a fiction. Violence had driven the moderates to the barricades and Washington had stumbled into backing a right-wing reign of terror. To Richard Alan White, a senior fellow at the Council on Hemispheric Affairs who spent one month in El Salvador in the fall of 1980, the U.S. government contributed to ESAF’s brutal repression through its foreign aid.77 White saw dangerous parallels between U.S.-sponsored programs in El Salvador and those that had been carried out in Vietnam, Through the strategic hamlet strategy, tens of thousands of peasants are being displaced. Then these people, through civic action programs, are made dependent upon the very government that has uprooted them for food and health care. In turn, these new demands upon a beleaguered and corrupt government create the necessity for even greater assistance from the United States.78

Before the onset of the civil war, John McAward, writing under the pseudonym of Ted Moran, severely criticized U.S. policy for contributing to the violence within El Salvador.79 Washington’s inability to control the very institution that it funded created the impression that it acquiesced in the counterinsurgency tactics. Prominent U.S. leaders, including Vice President George H.W. Bush in 1983 and Vice President Dan Quayle in February 1989, sought to correct that impression. Both men went to El Salvador to shore up support for the civilian leadership of Jose Napoleon Duarte and to publicly condemn the abuse of human rights by military and security forces.80 In 1982, John McAward, now a special consultant to Freedom House, wrote that the U.S. government’s search for a moderate center and a democratic alternative was correct and wise.81 USAID funds were directed to the reform of the judiciary and the training of police in civil procedures and the rule of law. The effort may have been noble, but policies of moderation and tolerance were drowned out by the violence of a civil war characterized by entrenched hatred and fear.

Chapter 3

Internal Forces Struggle to Resolve the Civil War: The FMLN and FDR Inadequate land for cultivation, endemic poverty, an agricultural export economy that relied upon low-cost labor, as well as exclusion from any meaningful political process are among the factors that led a majority of Salvadoran citizens to sympathize with the guerillas in the late 1970s. Some took up arms, but most demonstrated their support by carrying messages, preparing food, hiding activists, or simply not cooperating with El Salvador’s armed and security forces. In Chapter 2 we examined the causes for Salvador’s civil war. Here, we analyze the socio-political dynamics leading to a peace agreement and the elements needed to move Salvadoran society toward reconciliation. This chapter will look at the guerilla forces and the popular movements gathered behind the Frente Farabundo Marti de Liberación Nacional (FMLN) and the Frente Democrática Revolucionaria (FDR). The next chapter will examine the social forces that supported the state, the armed forces, and the Alianza Republicana Nacional (ARENA) party. The political process by which the protagonists negotiated peace was carried out by the political elite of both sides. With few exceptions, FMLN leaders came from the middle class with university education. For the most part, those who negotiated on behalf of the FMLN and FDR had no experience of rural, economically unsustainable living. Instead, their education and relatively prosperous lives prepared them to seek political status and engage on an international stage. After the war, several FMLN leaders entered national politics and won seats in the National Assembly and mayoralities. The FMLN leaders and their FDR allies shared ambitions to participate in, if not lead, the political process. However, seventeen years would elapse before the FMLN won presidential elections in El Salvador. Arraigned against the FMLN-FDR was the Salvadoran presidency, the High Command of El Salvador’s armed forces (ESAF), and the business community. Their

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representatives entered into a dialogue on behalf of President Alfredo Christiani, but refused to consider the talks a negotiation, a term that implied concessions. Situated between the FMLN-FDR and the Salvadoran presidency was a group of parliamentarians and social organizations. This group, known as la Comisión Pro-Paz (COPAZ), assumed a formal role to observe the negotiations. However, its role was minimal, except for a critical series of meetings to amend the constitution in April 1991. At all other times, the UN mediator marginalized the presence of COPAZ1 and Schafik Handal, the head of the Salvadoran Communist Party, was contemptuous of its contribution.2 Furthermore, the participation of El Salvador’s labor unions, church leaders, and civil society was minimal in the negotiations to resolve the civil war.3 Instead, political leaders from both sides led the peace process. Due to the sense of urgency to reach an agreement, the political leaders kept the various constituent groups on the margin, if not outside the peace process. This decision was to prove mistaken when it came time to implement the accords. What domestic forces led the FMLN leadership to engage in political negotiations? How did grassroots supporters express their needs throughout the peace talks? Could a peace accord, in which constituents were not invited to participate, be imposed upon followers? This chapter examines the constituent parts of the FMLN and its relations with the more moderate FDR. It analyzes the key elements that moved the leaders and their followers to engage in political negotiation and move toward social reconciliation. This examination is undertaken in the course of twenty-three months of negotiations to achieve three separate peace agreements. After signing the culminating peace agreement at Mexico City’s Chapultepec Castle in January 1992, the dynamics changed. In the course of implementing the accords, a new relationship developed between the political leaders and their constituents. These developments are examined in chapters 9 and 10. Frente Farabundo Marti de Liberación Nacional and the Frente Democrática Revolucionaria The origins of the FMLN were found within the growing, urban middle class that emerged from the relative prosperity of the 1950s and participated in the more open political space of the late 1950s and early 1960s.4 They shared differing degrees of political exclusion based on their social class, resentment against the abusive military and security forces, and a desire for greater social equality. Decades later, their sons and daughters grew into the new generation of activists, educated for the most part at the Universidad Nacional de El Salvador. Young dissidents within the major factions of the Left and Center Left split off from the political movements of their parents in order to develop new political projects. In the early 1970s, disenchanted by the traditional posture of the Partido Comunista de El Salvador (PCS) that mass mobilization must precede armed rebellion, younger leaders proposed a union between the popular revolutionary movement and armed insurrection. They proposed an alliance with elements of the Partido Demócrata Cristiano (PDC). This was a period of political fragmentation with challenges to the traditional parties and the emergence of new political groups.

The FMLN and FDR

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Young activists were determined to undertake both mass organization and armed struggle. Born in the late 1940s and early 1950s, these students were Caucasian and for the most part came from relatively prosperous homes. Joaquin Villalobos’s father owned a printing shop. His second-in-command, Ana Guadalupe Martínez Menéndez was the educated daughter of a Salvadoran police chief. Eduardo Sancho Castañeda (alias Fermán Cienfuegos) was born to a wealthy family and educated at a Jesuit high school. María Concepción Valladeres (alias Nidia Díaz) came from a landowning family, which had fallen on hard times requiring Díaz to obtain a scholarship to continue at a private Catholic high school. Schafik Handal was the son of Christian Palestinian immigrants, who were retailers of moderate wealth. Born in 1932, and educated at the Universidad Nacional, he was older than his peers in the leadership of the PCS. Both Handal and other educated leaders were impatient with the protracted reform process that an earlier generation of revolutionaries had considered essential.5 Two prominent exceptions to these well-educated, middle-class leaders led the insurgency. Salvador Cayetano Carpio was the son of a shoemaker who did not complete high school. He began to work at fourteen years picking coffee and then worked in a bakery before becoming the leader of the baker’s union. In this capacity he led several strikes, was exiled and arrested upon his return to El Salvador. Upon his release he went to Moscow and to China for Marxist studies. In 1964, he was elected Secretary General of the PCS, but his focus on armed struggle caused dissension within the party and he left to found the Frente Popular de Liberación (FPL). Cayetano was considered the most doctrinaire of the FMLN comandantes and “liked to be referred to as the Ho Chi Minh of Central America.”6 To his colleagues, he constantly claimed that his working-class background gave him the authentic basis for leading the revolutionary movement.7 In 1983, he committed suicide after ordering the murder of Melida Anaya Montes, a colleague who held distinct opinions regarding the unification of the FPL with other leftist organizations. The second leader was Salvador Sánchez Ceren (alias Leonel González), who was elected Vice President of El Salvador in the March 2009 presidential elections. Sánchez Ceren came from a lower-middle class family in the provincial town of Quezaltepec and went to teacher training school instead of the university. His father was a carpenter and his mother sold home-made pastries in the town’s market. Both parents were devout Catholics who sympathized with the plight of the poor and, despite their own poverty, gave food to those who could not afford it. Sánchez Ceren participated in the student protests of 1959–1960 and became a militant leader of the teacher’s union for which he was arrested and beaten. For thirteen years he taught school. “For seven of the thirteen years that I was a schoolteacher, I was in the rural sector, and this was an experience that sensitized me to the problems and the role of the people of the countryside.”8 Upon Cayetano’s death, Salvador Sánchez Ceren replaced him as the leader of the FPL. For many of these students, the first taste of social action came in support of the teacher’s union at the National University. The teacher’s union was composed principally of women, who were discriminated against with lower wages than their male colleagues. They found substantial support from within the student body. Their students sympathized with their low pay and demonstrated in their favor, only to meet

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the brutality of the Salvadoran Policía de Hacienda (Treasury Police) and the Guardia Nacional (National Guard) known for their violent tactics and readiness to murder. After the war, Ana Guadalupe Martínez Menendez, the second- in-command of the Ejército Revolucionario del Pueblo (ERP) recalled, I believe that [the war] did not begin as a guerilla struggle, but as a social struggle. Because in its beginning, the basis and the strength for development into an armed struggle came from the activities of the unions, the teachers, the university youth, the unions, but most of all the teachers, the teacher’s struggle.9

On one occasion, Schafik Handal watched the National Guard forcibly expel students from the National University buildings. After the war, Handal recalled that “[t]his provided me with a first realization that let me know who ruled in the country. Civil society and civil power were superseded by military and police power.”10 His experience was shared by many in the younger generation who turned social action of the 1960s into the armed struggle of the 1970s. Attachment to the Catholic Church and pursuit of Liberation Theology was a key factor in the lives of these youthful leaders. Strong Catholic parents, or close personal attachment to the new theology influenced many of them.11 Youth groups had been influenced significantly by Liberation Theology, its preferential treatment of the poor, and the call for social justice. Many in these groups had become politically conscious in the Comunidades Eclesiásticas de Base (Christian base communities) that developed throughout El Salvador in the period leading up to, and after, the Catholic Bishops meeting in Medellin, Colombia, in 1969. Eager for change, but repressed by the internal security forces, they sought new avenues for political action. Youth ministers, as well as church activists became energized after the murder of Archbishop Oscar Romero y Galdamez on March 24, 1980. Gathered together in San Salvador’s Cathedral to celebrate his funeral mass, they were attacked by government security forces. Forty of them died. Other students and Catholic activists were energized by Archbishop Romero’s perceived martyrdom to take up his crusade for social justice. In this, Salvadorans were supported by foreign missionaries and teachers, among them the American, Father Conner who wrote, That day I got a fresh perspective . . . as I huddled with 4,000 terrified peasants inside San Salvador’s cathedral while bombs exploded and bullets whistled outside in the plaza where we had gathered to celebrate the funeral of Archbishop Oscar Romero.12

The activists of the 1970s found separate ways to channel their anger and burning need to change Salvadoran society. Accordingly, options existed to join one of several distinct groups that emerged, split off, regrouped, and later consolidated into the FMLN, or El Frente, as it was also called. The FMLN consisted of five military leaders and six distinct political groups on the left, which sought separately in the 1970s to contest the dominance of the state and its close affiliation with the oligarchy. Their leaders advanced goals that ranged from Marxist/Leninist to social democratic transformation.

The FMLN and FDR

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Partido Comunista de El Salvador The oldest group was the Partido Comunista de El Salvador (PCS), the only significant Marxist organization in the country. Founded by Agustín Farabundo Marti in 1930, the party was associated with peasant groups that planned the insurrection of 1932, but after the capture of Marti and the brutal killing of approximately 30,000 peasants, the PCS was destroyed. It emerged a decade later and formed close links with the Soviet communist party. The party’s stronghold was the Universidad Nacional de El Salvador where many of its members were on the faculty. Due to the illegal status of the PCS, some of its members participated in politics through the Unión Democrática Nacionalista (UDN) that ran candidates in the Salvadoran elections. It described itself as the “noncommunist” left, but was strongly influenced by the PCS.13 Its members joined with the Christian PDC in 1971 to form a permanent coalition not just for elections but on a continuing basis. However, it never established a strong following and the UDN remained a minority party. In 1970s, then leader of the PCS, Salvador Cayetano Carpio argued that the PCS should abandon the traditional Soviet approach to revolution—development of popular consciousness through peaceful participation in politics. Instead, the PCS should engage in “military struggle” as well as “mass struggle.”14 Despite the length of his experience in revolutionary movements, Cayetano Carpio failed to persuade his colleagues and he withdrew from the PCS to assume the leadership of the FPL. Schafik Handal succeeded him as the leader of the PCS. Under Handal, the PCS joined in electoral politics in 1972 and 1977 as a coalition partner with the PDC.15 In 1972, the coalition won the presidential campaign, but the official political party of the armed forces snatched victory from the PDC and PCS and exiled presidential candidate, Jose Napoleon Duarte. Handal, excluded from national politics, went into exile in Chile. There, he received training in social mobilization and developed his skills as a writer and communicator to create a sizeable personal following. His goals went beyond military victory and he envisaged the day when he would become a prominent Salvadoran statesman.

Fuerzas Populares de Liberación Founded and led by Salvador Cayetano Carpio, the Fuerzas Populares de Liberación (FPL) was the largest of the revolutionary groups in the 1970s. It focused on political mobilization based on a strategy of “prolonged popular war.” This organization advocated a protracted struggle that was modeled on the Vietnamese experience. Cayetano understood the need to construct a new kind of revolutionary party, but his rigid ideas on military insurrection and dogmatism concerning the “correct” political and military policy met opposition from other groups within the FMLN coalition. As the FMLN became more unified, Cayetano found himself increasingly the odd man out.16 After his death through suicide, the FPL became a Marxist/ Leninist party, with its members working intensely to incorporate large numbers of workers and peasants into the organization. The FPL’s focus on building up cooperatives and participatory local governments earned it the applause of leftist intellectuals.17 It also gained the support of Salvador Samayoa, a professor of philosophy

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Seeking Peace in El Salvador

who would become a key figure within the Comisión Negociadora that negotiated the peace accords on behalf of the FMLN and the more moderate, FDR. Bloque Popular Revolucionario In 1975, the FPL established an alliance with the Bloque Popular Revolucionario (BPR), a popular organization that included unionized teachers, students, and peasants.18 By the late 1970s, the BPR, together with the FPL, was the largest popular organization with the capacity to coordinate mass demonstrations and strikes. The presence of the teachers provided both organizing capability and numbers. The BPR supported the formation of local popular groups, known as poder popular local (community councils) that became the bedrock for political organization in defense of community interests. Its members held progressive opinions, but did not subscribe to any revolutionary project, reflecting deep divisions on the specifics of struggle. The BPR’s political focus distinguished it from another critical faction within the opposition, the more militant revolutionary army. Ejército Revolucionario del Pueblo Christian youth groups and dissidents from the Salvadoran Communists (PCS) formed the Ejército Revolucionario del Pueblo (ERP) in 1972. Its members were younger and more likely to identify with the middle class and the Christian Democrats (PDC) than the PCS. In the mid-1970s and under the leadership of Joaquin Villalobos, the ERP became the most active and ruthless of the guerilla organizations.19 Its focus was principally military and it sought to use the poder popular local for military purposes by demanding that local organizations support the insurrection and the revolutionary process.20 After the political opening of 1984, the ERP promoted the founding of peasant cooperatives and built up a political as well as a military capacity.21 The intent was to use these grassroots organizations as support structures for the military endeavor. Through his use of the broadcasting station, Radio Venceremos, Villalobos established a dominant role within the ERP and argued forcefully against negotiations and political concessions until such time as the FMLN achieved military superiority.22 His second-in-command, Ana Guadalupe Martínez had joined the ERP as a student activist in 1973. Captured, tortured, and jailed by the National Guard in 1976, she was released after nine months as part of a prisoner exchange.23 Martínez went into exile in Algeria and thence to France, where she worked with groups supportive of the Salvadoran guerilla movement. From there she went to Mexico where she advocated in favor of the FMLN and raised funds for popular organizations. When she returned to El Salvador in 1985, Villalobos sent her as the ERP’s representative on the comisión política diplomática. Resistencia Nacional The Resistencia Nacional (RN) sought to join two trends of the revolutionary struggle: preparation for mass uprising and military insurrection. Its leadership

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believed that they could bring about the Salvadoran revolution only by joining the two facets.24 The RN placed more emphasis on political action, but was not adverse to kidnappings for ransom. Its second-in-command, Roberto Cañas left Salvador in 1988 for Mexico City and later became the spokesman for the FMLN’s commission to negotiate the peace under UN auspices, the comisión negociadora. Cañas was the initial contact person for the U.S. State Department in 1989, but his proclivity for the comfortable life gained him less credibility among the FMLN in El Salvador.25 Partido Revolucionario de los Trabajadores By far the smallest group within the FMLN was the Partido Revolucionario de los Trabajadores (PRTC). For this reason, as well as the fact that it had no military comandante, it is often ignored in descriptions of the FMLN. Students from the National University had formed the PRTC as they became more militant in the 1970s. Unlike the other parties, it placed greater emphasis on regional cooperation rather than national identity. Founded in Costa Rica, the party remained small but contributed to the comprehensive nature of the FMLN. Its leaders also served as mediators when conflict arose between the other parties over strategy and tactics.26 An uneasy alliance existed among all the parties. They held different political philosophies and distinct tactical preferences, but they were united in seeking to destroy ESAF and repulse the U.S. presence in El Salvador. Holding the different parties together required both skilled political leadership and external help. In October 1980, Fidel Castro invited the five FMLN comandantes to Havana to discuss unity.27 He held out incentives and persuaded them that a united effort was necessary to confront both the Salvadoran state and its U.S. supporters. The success of the Sandinistas in Nicaragua was held out as a goal to pursue. Handal emerged from these meetings in Havana as the FMLN’s nominal leader. However, he was careful not to overwhelm Joaquín Villalobos, Fermán Cienfuegos, Eduardo Sancho, and Salvador Sánchez Ceren all of whom remained articulate and forceful leaders of the FMLN’s constituent groups.28 Frente Democratico Revolucionario The Frente Democratico Revolucionario (FDR) also joined the FMLN, but never lost its identity as a separate organization that rejected the use of violence and was committed to seeking political advantage through diplomatic engagements and electoral politics.29 As such, the FDR was acceptable to foreign governments as a legitimate interlocutor. Its objective was to unite the political parties and social organizations, gathered on the left and center-left of the political spectrum. In pursuit of this, the FDR included three political allies, namely Rubén Zamora’s followers in the Movimiento Popular Social Cristiano (MPSC), Guillermo Ungo’s followers in the Movimiento Nacional Revolucionario (MNR), and the moderates within the Unión Democrática Nacional (UDN). Office space for the FDR in Brussels and Mexico City, as well as an articulate representative at the UN, Father Rafael Moreno, S.J. enabled the FDR coalition to reach out to sympathetic governments and socialist movements.

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Despite the Cuban initiative, the FMLN comandantes were determined to assert their independence from both the Soviet Communist party and Castro’s political interference.30 This required that they achieve an economic independence from any single source of support. To do this, a wide range of contacts was established with socialist parties and supporters in Western Europe, as well as in Washington, D.C., and Mexico City.31 The FDR was best placed to carry out this diplomatic and public relations activity. Its nonviolent posture provided a democratic status and enabled both its own followers and FMLN individuals to establish relationships with socialist politicians, sympathetic journalists, university groups, and members of the Catholic church that were affiliated with Liberation Theology. The FDR was also successful in creating a web of international relationships that provided access to funding from the European Economic Community and prosperous NGOs such as Doctor’s Without Borders, Arms for El Salvador, and Medical Aid for El Salvador.32 Access to international NGOs justified the funding and staffing of offices in foreign capitals with a cadre of FMLN and FDR diplomats, skilled in advocacy and fundraising.33 The FDR remained key players in the lead up to the negotiations. However, the party was not represented in the actual UN-mediated dialogue, preferring instead to participate in the 1991 elections for the Legislative Assembly. La Comisión Política Diplomática Relations between the FDR and FMLN coincided when discussion focused on international fundraising, outreach to the international community, and support for popular organizations. Their relations diverged when strategic issues such as military offensives clashed with the FDR’s desire to appear moderate and compatible with international diplomatic practice. In pursuit of diplomatic outreach, the FMLN and FDR created a comisión política diplomática in 1981 led by Schafik Handal, the head of the PCS, Ana Guadalupe Martínez, the ERP’s second-in-command, and Salvador Samayoa,the FPL’s intellectual leader. On rare occasions, they were joined by Joaquín Villalobos, or in his place Sánchez Ceren, who would later be elected Vice President of Salvador.34 Samayoa became the intellectual leader of the comisión, but all members wrote frequently and at length on FMLN strategy.35 Samayo had been Minister of Education in the civilian-military Junta of 1979, but disgusted at the inability of civilians to bring about political transformation, he withdrew from the Junta and examined alternative ways to bring about change in El Salvador. After the war, Samayoa wrote the history of the UN-mediated peace negotiations.36 Unlike Martínez and Samayoa, the FMLN military comandantes had an intricate relationship with the popular organizations in the countryside and to a lesser extent in the towns. The poder popular locales (community councils) originated in the Christian base communities that were established in the early 1970s to discuss Liberation Theology and the church’s “preferential option for the poor.” By 1975, peasants and workers in many villages were participating in small cooperatives and agricultural collectives. That same year, ERP leaders entered the northeastern zones some distance from the capital, San Salvador.37 There, they helped to radicalize the “natural leaders” in rural communities who were linked to the Christian base

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communities, and formed local military committees with their help.38 This sowed the seeds of armed opposition. The state’s security apparatus, ORDEN observed this work, but did not repress it until 1976 when arbitrary arrests and beatings of catechists began.39 By 1979, the repression had developed into the disappearance and assassination of priests and their lay followers. Death squads conducted nighttime raids on isolated hamlets and the next morning the bodies of teachers, catechists, and members of cooperatives were found by the roadside.40 ORDEN and the Guardia Nacional were ordered to “sweep” the countryside so as to deprive the ERP of human support. Thousands of peasants from the northeastern departments fled to Honduras and the refugee camps of Colomoncagua and Mesa Grande. There, they formed tight-knit communities organized to advance their interests before the UN High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) personnel and the staff of the international NGOs who contracted to care for them. Social organization was critical to the community’s survival in the camps, as well as to access the tools and training provided by the foreign NGOs.41 The development of social organizations and technical skills became critical when the time came for the Salvadoran refugees to return home. With the election of the Christian Democrat, José Napoleón Duarte in 1984, the UNHCR urged Salvadorans to return to their homes. In support of this, the “returnees” received a minimal grant of money. Both the government and the FMLN supported their homecoming.42 However, the repatriation presented challenges in seeking and retaining the loyalty of the returning communities: which side in the ongoing civil war would the returnees support? To influence the decision, both the Salvadoran government and the FMLN engaged in concentrated efforts to organize the communities and, on the government’s part, to punish those who supported the FMLN. In the areas dominated by Sánchez Ceren’s FPL, the returning communities focused on forming agricultural communities, cooperatives, schools, clinics, and autonomous governing councils. Many of these were built upon pre-existing poder popular locales.43 From 1984 onward, President Duarte’s government embarked upon a two-pronged counterinsurgency strategy entitled, “Unir para reconstruir” (United to reconstruct). To develop civilian loyalties, Duarte’s government encouraged economic development with the largest proportion of funds provided by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). However, failure to exhibit loyalty to the government risked the second prong of the strategy, namely the physical destruction of the conflicted areas through bombings, or continued cleansing operations by ORDEN and other security forces. According to Elizabeth Wood, by 1987 “Unir para reconstruir” had displaced an additional 500,000 people, or 10 percent of the population.44 Women became directly involved in the organization of their respective communities. Experienced in the refugee camps and now raising families as single mothers, these women assumed the tasks of educating children, running clinics, kitchens, and starting up micro-enterprises. They were drawn by the comradeship and solidarity of other women who had suffered the same repression and loss of family members.45 When forced to leave the countryside, these women found support in COMADRES, a Salvadoran NGO dedicated to helping women find their

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family members and loved ones, as well as providing food and emotional support to survivors. Through its quarterly publication, COMADRE claimed that the year 1985 witnessed extraordinary violence through widespread bombing of rural villages, followed by the invasion of security forces to “mop up” those left behind. The purpose was to leave no rearguard areas that might support the insurgency.46 The Development of Grassroots Organizations Government repression was combined with a political opening that allowed the creation of grassroots organizations. President Duarte’s strategy in the mid-1980s was a derivation of the U.S. counterinsurgency policy in Vietnam. To those willing to return and become productive, the government allowed political space for social organizing. U.S. social scientist, Michael Foley describes this period as the rebirth of the “popular sector.”47 The FMLN responded to this new government policy by dispersing throughout the country in small units.48 The leadership of both the ERP and the FPL emphasized the building of political as well as a military capacity. In the departments of Usultan and Morazan, the ERP promoted the founding of peasant cooperatives.49 In the department of Chalatenango, the ERP defied its reputation as a military organization and worked with the refugees from the camp at Colomoncagua to create an autonomous self-governing community that sustained itself through micro-enterprises and manufacturing cooperatives. In 1991, Ciudad Segundo Montes gained international recognition as a model for alternative economic development and participatory self-governance.50 With the passage of time, cooperative leaders and leaders of the women’s movements became politically conscious and active. They challenged the FMLN comandantes whom they considered to be perpetrating a destructive war and preventing their own return to planting and harvesting crops. The FMLN had assisted in the construction of poder popular locales and had played a critical role in bringing their needs before an international audience so as to acquire funds with which to support the Frente’s politics. However, as the war dragged on, these organizations did not remain committed to a multiyear struggle. Trained in political organization within the refugee camp at Colomoncagua, the community leaders became more assertive of their own economic needs in contrast to the needs of the fighting force. They communicated to the FMLN through their own form of participatory democracy. However, extensive participation and contradictory ideas were considered dangerous during violent periods when government offensives and FMLN counter-offensives could result in loss of life and further destruction of property. Therefore, in wartime, the freedom to express opinions on the nature of the revolutionary war was limited by the reality of daily threats and constant fear. Many of these grassroots organizations sought legal status so that they might openly organize and receive external funds.51 This was a radical change from earlier government policies of denying legitimacy and legal status to community organizations, but the present intent was to register the organizations both for security and for tax purposes. The FMLN encouraged community organizations to register, but behind the apparently peaceful face, several local organizations continued to support their military efforts.

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Forms of Civilian Cooperation with the FMLN Three forms of cooperation existed between local communities and the different entities of the FMLN. ● ●

●

The leadership of some organizations was directly integrated into the hierarchy of the ERP;52 The leadership of grassroots organizations was not directly integrated into the ERP, but consulted extensively and routinely with the local comandantes; and53 A vague alliance existed between the local community—often a cooperative— and the ERP, with the former retaining its autonomy.

In all three forms of cooperation, exchanges between the ERP and community members occurred covertly to avoid implicating civilian groups in military action.54 Consequences followed the tight relationship between the local organizations and the constituent group within the FMLN. Several GROs existed only because of the FMLN support, but that exposed them to retaliation from ESAF and ORDEN. Second, the claim made to international funders that the agricultural or manufacturing cooperative was independent from the war became increasingly fictitious. The fiction was an asset to those funders who sympathized with the plight of Salvador’s opposition, but not necessarily to government funding agencies. Finally, the downside of those close relationships was that funds provided for the local community activities often ended up in the FMLN treasury.55 The challenge for the local communities was to access international funding and sustain the external assistance without the direct involvement of either the FMLN, or the USAID-supported, Fundación Salvadoreña para el Desarrollo Económico Social (FUSADES).56 This became extremely difficult in the context of an ongoing civil war and lack of security. The FMLN, together with the FDR, worked with both governments and NGOs in Brussels, Stockholm, Oslo, and London to create the appropriate relationship between the funder and the Salvadoran NGOs.57 Ana Guadalupe Martínez, the co-leader of the FMLN-FDR’s comisión política diplomática became successful at raising international funds. It was precisely this attribute that kept her on the forefront of the FMLN-FDR.58 However, not all funders supported the flow of their money to the FMLN. Often, knowledge of the close relationship between grassroots organization and the FMLN depended upon the willingness of donors and staff to inspect by travelling to areas in El Salvador deemed insecure. Most relied upon reports from the Salvadoran NGO and did not venture into the country. Consequently, isolated by the insecurity from foreign donors and inspectors, GROs continued to access international funding through their NGO and the comisión política diplomática. This fundraising strategy coincided with the comisión’s desire to make political friends among European governments and civil societies. At this level, shared goals favored unity between the FMLN–FDR’s comisión política diplomática and the FMLN comandantes in the field. Resistance to the pressure used by the FMLN and FDR existed, but it was rare. The Catholic Church and the Salvadoran not-for-profit FUNDASAL (Salvadoran

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Foundation for Development and Basic Housing) were determined to participate in the reconstruction of the conflicted town of Tenancingo, located northeast of San Salvador. Their challenge was to build a community with productive opportunities, schools, and clinics independent of both the FMLN and the Salvadoran government. Faced with the offer of money and programs from both the FMLN and the government, the Archbishopric of San Salvador turned down the offers, including USAID grants, in order to avoid the political conditions associated with receipt of these funds.59 Monies from either side implied a lessening of local political control. However, few organizations had the capacity to assert their autonomy from either the government or the FMLN. The ability to be neutral in the midst of ongoing violence and the threat of military intervention or revenge was minimal. Furthermore, the capacity to communicate between the local communities and the FMLN leadership was limited. Absence of effective communication effected the fundamental decisions from 1989 through the peace process. As the comandantes debated these issues, their ability to listen to their followers was weak. They failed to hear a consistent voice that local communities were exhausted and hurting.60 A Time for Critical Decisions The leadership of the FMLN-FDR shared the same goals: dismantle the Salvadoran government; destroy the existing security structures; and “erect a new power and a new state.”61 However, they held different opinions on how these goals should be achieved.62 Among the FMLN, the debate over the appropriate form of struggle was lengthy and often bitter. Also, the particular context of the war determined the relative weight to be given to armed versus political struggle. Intense violence characterized the early years of Salvador’s civil war. However, with the election of President Duarte a shift occurred in 1984 and there developed gradually an acceptance of the need to pursue political struggle. Dialogue and negotiation became aceptable strategies that could guide the revolutionary movement.63 However, at no point was the commitment to armed struggle lowered. Instead sections of the FMLN recognized that dialogue with Duarte’s government could advance the FMLN’s cause more effectively. Therefore, the FMLN agreed to meet with Duarte in the village church of Las Palmas in October 1984 and to draft an agenda for talks. However, Villalobos, the head of the ERP feared that this opening of a dialogue might lead to the perception of weakness. Therefore, he assured that the subseqent meeting in November failed.64 In the mind of Villalobos, and many of his followers, political engagement could be undertaken on condition that he could demonstrate military superiority. Fidel Castro had warned the comandantes back in 1980 that they should negotiate only from a position of military strength.65 Two consequences followed: achieve military superiority and then agree to talk. Second, maintain military preparadeness and action while talking. Only through these complementary actions could leaders advance their revolutionary struggle. Since 1985, multiple and sustained messages emanated from the Soviet leadership that impacted the FMLN’s struggle to dismantle the Salvadoran state.

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In November 1985, the incoming Secretary General of the Communist Party, Mikhail Gorbachev announced that he was prepared to reconsider the basis of Soviet support for “Third World” revolutions. In February 1986, he announced that the military dimension of national security was no longer central. Confrontation with the U.S. through conflicts in the “Third World” would no longer be given a central position.66 Instead, priority should be given to economic and political struggles. In August 1987, the Soviet Foreign Ministy urged President Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua to seek a negotiated solution to the conflict in Nicaragua and El Salvador. The following year the Soviets further reduced their delivery of oil to Nicaragua’s Sandinista government. In December 1988 at the UN General Assembly, Gorbachev called for non-interference in the socio-political development of each state and tolerance for diverse systems.67 In April 1989, Gorbachev visited Havana and warned Fidel Castro that he was rethinking Soviet policies toward the Third World. In his speech to the Cuban National Assembly, Gorbachev stated that he opposed theories that justified the export of revolution and all forms of foreign interference.68 These changes in Soviet policy with the consequential withdrawal of support for the FMLN were loud and clear. The Cubans might continue to support the FMLN through Nicaragua temporarily, but the hardware and communication equipment necessary to sustain an insurgency was finite. At some time in the future, the FMLN would have to fight on its own, or seek a negotiated outcome. In the face of the Soviet cutoff to Nicaragua and the Soviet leader’s public decision to cease support for national revolutionary movements, the FMLN comandantes made a series of critical decisions in the second half of 1989. First, Salvador Samayoa of the comisión política diplomática received instructions to reach out to the UN official, Alvaro de Soto who, since 1986, had shown interest both in their cause and resolution of the Central American conflicts. Second, the FMLN prepared for a “final military offensive.”69 Third, in October 1989, the FMLN announced a willingness to enter into political negotiations with its High Command issuing a press release that proclaimed an effort in appreciation of the value of negotiation to end the armed conflict through political means in the shortest term possible, to advance the democratization of the country, and to re-unify Salvadoran society.70

This was not the first time that the FMLN had issued press releases of this nature, and the language was similar to its earlier press statements. Consequently, the Salvadoran government gave little weight to the recognition of political negotiations, but the timing suggested that if the FMLN’s “final offensive” failed, political negotiations were offered as the fallback position. The FMLN and FDR’s pursuit of diplomatic outreach, their willingness to enter into political negotiations as well as prepare for a military offensive indicated an all-out strategy to pursue victory through alternative, but coordinated means. If the military offensive failed, the negotiations could start and the UN invited to broker or mediate with an enemy whom the FMLN–FDR distrusted. If the November 1989 offensive succeeded and ESAF withdrew in certain areas, the offer to negotiate would not be taken up.

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Nevertheless, in pursuit of this three-pronged strategy, not all the comandantes shared the same priorities. Comandante Villalobos was determined to demonstrate the guerillas’ capacity to launch a successful offensive and in so doing to animate FMLN cadre and followers throughout the country. The offensive lasted three weeks both in the countryside as well as the barrios and ravines of San Salvador. However, grassroots organizations failed to rise up in support. Previous messages of ongoing support for this military offensive may have been conveyed to placate the FMLN comandantes, or at a minimum prevent further recruitment, but messages of fatigue and the need to reconstruct civilian lives did not reach the comandantes. As a result, the FMLN’s High Command failed to understand the true message of their followers.71 By late 1989, the FMLN’s rank and file was exhausted and fed up with war. When the November offensive failed to deliver a body blow to ESAF and the Salvadoran state, the comandantes were forced to conclude that they could not win militarily. With continued U.S. support to the Salvadoran government and dwindling support from Cuba through Nicaragua, the FMLN would be vulnerable to superior fire power. The failure of the November offensive indicated that FMLN could no longer mobilize a large fighting force for a major offensive. Henceforth, guerilla tactics were the only means available. With only shrivelled enthusiasm for war from the FMLN’s base, it became necessary to pursue the political option. To that end, the FMLN instructed the comisión política diplomática to follow up their contact with the UN envoy, Alvaro de Soto. In December 1989, Samayoa and Martinez met with him in Montreal, Canada, and initiated a process of dialogue, not with the Salvadoran government, but with the UN. Throughout the intense debate over the appropriate use of armed or political instruments, fear of appearing weak or becoming weaker was constant. ESAF’s High Command shared this fear of being perceived as weak. The appearance of strength and the determination to maintain the initiative were key factors in all deliberations of whether to make concessions. In his interview with Jean Krasno of Yale University, Samayoa admitted, “Si, sempre tuvimos miedo todos, en los dos lados, en el gobierno y en el Frente.” (Yes, we were always fearful, on both sides, the government and the Frente.)72 On the part of the FMLN-FDR, the fear of negotiation was provoked by the impression that “tuvo siempre mucho temor de negociar en un momento en que se pudiera pensar que tenía debilidad militar, y que por tanto estaba obligado a aceptar cualquier acuerdo político.” 73 (There always existed the fear that negotiations could be perceived as military weakness and for that reason we were forced to accept any old political agreement.) As a result, the FMLN comandantes believed that they should not negotiate at times of relative weakness. They were supported in this by Fidel Castro, who had advised them to negotiate only from a position of relative military strength.74 Furthermore, prior to entering into talks with the government, an agreement had to be reached on goals. In the course of any dialogue with the Salvadoran government, how would the fundamental debate between armed struggle and political negotiation be carried out within the FMLN and the FDR leadership? What was the nature of the discourse between the comandantes and the negotiators? How did they come to an agreement on the goals and short-term objectives?

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FMLN-FDR Goals to be Achieved Through Negotiations To the UN envoy, Alvaro de Soto, the FMLN appeared as a unified negotiating partner, but behind this facade intense division and discussions prevailed. The key contenious issues that arose repeatedly were: negotiation only from military strength; refusal to accede to a cease-fire; the scope and timetable of the agenda for negotiations; the priority given to demobilizing ESAF and the security forces; and the usefulness, or otherwise, of discussing human rights. Despite the tortured history of economic deprivation, social inequities, and shortage of arable land, the FMLN gave higher priority to political goals over social and economic issues.75 They argued that socio-economic policies could be advanced only after they had achieved power. In their determination to erect “a new power and a new state,” the FMLN-FDR focused its combined efforts on the “depuración” (cleansing) of ESAF and its special U.S.-trained infantry brigade, known as BIRI,76 the demobilization of the paramilitary units and the police. The FMLN argued that the police should be reconstituted as an independent force under civilian leadership to focus on criminality not external subversion. The intelligence service had to be destroyed and recreated as an independent agency, responsible to the Salvadoran president not ESAF. The electoral system had to be reformed to allow a legitimate transition to democracy and the judiciary had to be reformed to make it independent of political influence. All these goals required changes to the Salvadoran constitution—a process that required two consecutive National Assemblies to approve by a two-thirds majority.77 Therefore, participation in the political process was a necessary means to achieve constitutional change. Schafik Handal led this focus on a revolutionary struggle for political power. In so doing, he was determined to avoid divisions within the FMLN, particularly between those seeking political gain and those seeking economic and social justice.78 In the pursuit of political power, the social and economic programs had to be given lesser priority. In the early years of the civil war, Handal had written about the struggle between political goals versus socio-economic objectives, Another question about this same problem is the exaggerated sometimes absolutized, role assigned to the Economic-Social Program in the determination of the character of the revolution, the course of the struggle to obtain victory, its defense and consolidation. [. . .] The history of the world revolution has corroborated this truth over and over: it is not the Economic-Social Program that is central and decisive. The rhythm in which the Social-Economic Program is applied, and the radicality of the economic and social changes depend on the national and international conditions in which each revolution is carried out.79

Handal’s priority was to gain political power and to subordinate socio-economic issues. It is uncertain whether the trades unions and popular organizations that were aligned with the FMLN accepted the focus on political power. For the Asociación Nacional de Educadores de El Salvador (ANADE), the socio-economic conditions of teachers remained central.80 Legalizing the collective occupation of the

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land remained the priority for popular organizations such as the Consejo de Comunidades de Damnificados (CCD), the Unión Comunal de Mesones (UCM), and the Unión Communal de Damnificados de San Salvador (UCDS).81 Displaced by the devastating earthquake of 1986, these organizations sought land and credit in order to resume subsistence farming. Paramount for these social organizations, with a relatively strong grassroots basis, were economic issues, sustainable livelihood for their members, and job creating projects.82 The challenge for these organizations was to find sympathetic ears among the FMLN leadership. In the search for political participation, the socio-economic needs of the FMLN’s natural allies were subordinated to the political goal of defeating the Salvadoran government. Only in September 1991, twenty months into the peace talks, would the FMLN negotiators raise economic and social issues.83 Cynthia McClintock in her study of the FMLN argues that economics did not play a major role in the emergence of the FMLN because there “is no evidence of a sharp overall decline in Salvadoran peasants’ living standards or of a threat to peasants’ subsistence.”84 However, Karen Kampwith in her study of women guerillas argues that McClintock underestimated the underlying long-term factors in Salvadoran society, namely the high degree of economic inequality and increased landlessness.85 In all her interviews with female FMLN cadre, Kampwith heard of economic misery and the need to improve the social conditions of their family lives. If this is the case, Handal’s insistence on the priority of political issues appears to reject the opinion of one third of the FMLN’s cadres, its women fighters, and vanguard supporters. Was he listening to the base, or was he and other comandantes determined to achieve political power for the FMLN? There emerged a political elite within the FMLN that was increasingly out of touch with its base.

FMLN and FDR Negotiating Positions In the first months of the UN-mediated negotiations, the comandantes became engrossed in an important, but less significant internal debate. This focused on the drafting of the FMLN policy paper for delivery to Alvaro de Soto. The FMLN could not agree upon a common position and left it to Samayoa and Martinez to draft a document that was a repetition of previously announced positions.86 To avoid divisions among the leadership, the policy paper should contain no new ideas. This assured their opponents in the Salvadoran and the U.S. governments that the FMLN had adopted a single political and military strategy.87 In his history of the negotiations, Samayoa admits that despite the common position on goals, serious disagreement existed both on the agenda and the calendar for the negotiations. Villalobos and the ERP held out for an agenda “sin plazos” (without a final date) or a time frame. He saw advantage in open-ended talks that would not exclude resorting to military force. In this, he lobbied hard within the FMLN for support.88 The FPL and Samayoa argued that a detailed calendar and precise themes for discussion would demonstrate FMLN leadership in the peace process. Only by retaining this initiative, could the negotiators counter the government’s pressure for a cease-fire; a demand that was not acceptable to the FMLN because it robbed the guerillas of

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their principal leverage in any negotiations. Grudgingly, the comandantes now living in Managua conceded to Samayoa and a detailed agenda. This formed the basis for the agenda for talks, agreed up in May 1990 at the meeting in Caracas. It marked the first important agreement between the protagonists and established the FMLN as a party to be taken seriously in the negotiations. An important test of the FMLN’s cohesion arose two months later in July 1990, when de Soto proposed to raise a second item on the agenda in lieu of the demilitarization of ESAF. This was to allow more time for consideration of the most contentious issue in the whole peace process, namely whether ESAF should be abolished, reduced significantly in size, or merely reformed.89 The FMLN demanded the “desaparición total del ejercito y de sus aparatos paramilitares” 90 (the total disappearance of the army and its paramilitary apparatus.) The government refused to move from the constitutional protection of ESAF as a “permanent” institution. Faced with bitter and determined opposing positions, de Soto proposed to raise an alternate issue on the agenda. He would bring to the fore, the second item on the schedule, Human Rights and the formation of a Truth Commission.91 De Soto argued that other themes should be raised in order to diffuse the contradictory positions over ESAF. From their headquarters in Managua, Fermán Cienfuegos of the RN and Joaquín Villalobos of the ERP protested, furiously. Although there were advantages to be gained by the second agenda item, they should not abandon their focus on the depuración of the Salvadoran armed forces and its security apparatus. The FMLN viewed any distraction from its principal goal as a means to paralyze the discussions.92 Twenty-four hours into the negotiations over Human Rights held in Costa Rica, the FMLN High Command issued a message on July 19, “Hemos cometido el error de subordinar otros elementos de la ofensiva política a la mesa de negociaciones. Esto ha generado una mentalidad paternalista.” 93 (We have committed an error at the negotiating table to subordinate other elements [human rights] of our political offensive. This has created a paternalistic mentality.) From Managua, the two comandantes threatened to return to the military offensive to prove that the FMLN had not retreated from its principal demand.94 Samayoa and Martínez, gathered in San Jose, Costa Rica, had to respond to instructions from the comandantes in Managua, but relations between the parties in the two cities were deteriorating on this issue. De Soto claims that the FMLN’s comisión had proposed the discussion on human rights as a means to maintain the momentum in the talks and to avoid stalemate over the depuración of the armed forces.95 Samayoa claims that he had received no instruction to move forward and faced with this impasse, de Soto agreed to discuss the issue of ESAF.96 Quickly the parties became bogged down in futile exchanges of contradictory positions. When de Soto proposed that the parties move on to discuss human rights, Samayoa and Martinez withdrew from the table to hold internal discussions.97 At the time, it appeared that the FMLN had lost the initiative over demilitarizing ESAF. The dilemma was whether the stalemate over the armed forces represented sufficient grounds to rupture the ongoing negotiations. The FMLN appeared to be on the defensive, but the comandantes were determined to assert a new thrust that would assure the FMLN cadres that their leaders were not losing ground on this critical issue.

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Seeking Peace in El Salvador

Handal, Villalobos, and Cienfuegos decided that either a military or political initiative had to be taken to assert the FMLN’s capacity to act. The choice was not easy, but from Managua, the FMLN, as a unified body, issued a letter demanding the resignation of President Cristiani and calling for a government of national unity.98 At the same time, the FMLN comandantes harshly criticized their negotiators for presenting the theme of human rights at the negotiating table prematurely. The comandantes asserted their leadership over their negotiators and their priority in demilitarizing the Salvadoran state. The Salvadoran government’s team refused to concede: the status of the armed forces as a permanent institution of the state was nonnegotiable. Both sides were deadlocked. The three comandantes in Managua were caught up in their own debate and failed to send clear instruction to the newly formed, comisión negociadora in Costa Rica. In the face of absence of clear instructions, Samayoa agreed to discuss the issue of human rights on the afternoon of July 25, 1990. A working group of three members from each party discussed the draft document prepared by the UN. Samayoa was fearful that the FMLN’s repeated rejection of discussions on human rights would justify the Salvadoran government’s rejection of this issue.99 There would be no political cost to the government’s withdrawal from discussing human rights if the FMLN had refused earlier to discuss the theme. It was, therefore, necessary to find a compromise in which human rights could be discussed without closing the door on the FMLN’s priority theme of destroying ESAF. With the skillful use of footnotes to agreed texts, the mediators found a way to keep open discussions on human rights within the Declaration of San Jose.100 The decision to accept a UN Human Rights Commission was delayed for eight months while negotiations on the armed and security forces continued. Only in April 1991 did both sides agree to significant reforms of ESAF, the destruction of the security forces, and the creation of a new UN Human Right’s Commission to investigate abuses in El Salvador.

Chapter 4

Internal Pressures for Ending El Salvador’s Civil War: ARENA, the Jesuits, and FUSADES El Salvador represented a polarized society in which the capacity to resolve conflicts nonviolently through political negotiation was unknown. Political leaders were relatively weak; El Salvador’s armed forces (ESAF) held a preponderance of military power with 45,000 soldiers, and the Frente Farabundo Marti de Liberación Nacional (FMLN) was a fighting force of 8,000 men and women.1 Violence was acute and voices of moderation were repressed. After a decade of intense conflict, courageous voices from distinct social sectors began to talk publicly about seeking a political outcome. Two separate groups from diverse backgrounds contributed significantly to the movement for peace: moderate conservatives within the Alianza Republicana Nacional (ARENA) and the Jesuit community within the Catholic Church. Both groups found relative encouragement from the 1989 public statements of Comandante Villalobos, the leader of the most militant group within the FMLN. Furthermore, there emerged a modified, but distinct message from the U.S. Embassy in San Salvador urging the protagonists to engage in dialogue and seek a political solution.2 Rejecting these movements toward a negotiated solution was the traditional oligarchy and the military officer’s class of 1966, known as the tandona both for its size and dominance of virtually all troop command positions.3 This chapter examines two domestic groups that pressed publicly for a negotiated solution to Salvador’s decade-long war. John Paul Lederach characterized both these groups as representatives of the mid-level section of his “social pyramid for peace.”4 They represented national leaders with significance in education and economic activity, but did not reach the authority of El Salvador’s military and political leaders. Both the Jesuits and the private organization of conservative businessmen

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Seeking Peace in El Salvador

created new forces that sought a negotiated outcome. Both groups believed that peace was possible, but alone neither could achieve a peace settlement. The emergence of both these groups from their respective traditional institutions and the reasons why they rejected the polarizing effect of military violence is examined. The Jesuits were committed to social justice, dignity for the poor, and a greater equality of income distribution. The business community sought economic development, prosperity, and the resurgence of foreign direct investment. In several respects, they held conflicting goals: they retained their distinctive political preferences and modes of behavior. Neither the Jesuits nor the conservative businessmen were politicians by nature, but both became deeply involved in Salvadoran politics in order to attain their respective goals. Had they remained silent, the traditional poles of power—the oligarchy, the armed forces, and the guerillas—would have continued to dominate the discourse in El Salvador. Both the Jesuits and the conservative business community rejected the traditional arguments and sought to create a new discourse. They demonstrated independence from the institutions that had fostered them. How might they succeed? The emergence of a new will to become involved in the political life of the country was rooted in institutional changes carried out by President Duarte and his Partido Demócrata Cristiana (PDC). Duarte had created space for new civil organizations through a series of social and economic reforms thus beginning a tentative political process to occupy the middle ground.5 Cautiously, moderate conservative businessmen and the leadership of the Jesuit community accepted this opportunity to create a new dialogue that met the need for social community. With quiet assurance, the conservative organizers used their business acumen to create a “parent” civil organization that evolved into a political force. It sought to counter the absolute power of ESAF and its security forces. With increasing forcefulness, the Jesuits garnered their intellectual strength to criticize the structure of Salvadoran society, the impunity of the armed forces, and the power of the U.S. Embassy. These centrist forces acted with caution. Both knew the risks of countering both the militarized Left and ESAF. Alone, it is doubtful that the emerging moderate groups would have been able to overwhelm the traditional extremes. However, the moderates were supported from outside the country, namely Oscar Arias and the other Central American presidents, as well as the U.S. Embassy and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). The challenge for the emerging centrist forces was how to defeat the traditional arbiters of power, namely the landed oligarchy and its allies within the military High Command, who remained dedicated to the defense of the Constitution of 1983 and the permanence of ESAF, as an institution. From the middle of the 1980s, the traditional landowning elite represented a weaker political force. They were divided among owners of coffee plantations with conservative views and the coffee processors and financiers whose business required a more open mind to international commerce and foreign opinion.6 However, both the landowners and processors retained the financial capacity to buy security from after-hours police and military men, as well as to communicate their anti-communist ideology through their ownership of newspapers and radio stations. The agrarian and economic reforms of December 1979 and 1984 had reduced the power of the landed oligarchy, but that same group retained the ability to significantly damage their opponents.7

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Domestic pressures for a negotiated settlement are the focus of this chapter, but the actions of the Jesuit community and the moderate conservative businessmen were stimulated by, and in turn, affected external actors. External pressures to seek a political settlement interacted with the internal societal forces for change. From early 1983, the Contadora Group, as well as the four Central American neighbors, committed to finding a settlement of Central America’s civil wars. In February 1987, President Oscar Arias and the regional presidents sought their own peace through the Esquipulas peace process. Both the Contadora Group and the Central American presidents pressured the FMLN and the Salvadoran government to enter into a political dialogue. Furthermore, in the 1980s the U.S. government, through its Embassy in San Salvador became the single greatest influence in the country.8 Beginning in 1983, officials within USAID proposed to support a group of men within the business community who could act as a counterweight to the oligarchy and ESAF. They used the substantial appropriation of U.S. economic assistance for El Salvador to start up the Fundación Salvadoreña para el Desarrollo Económico Social (FUSADES) that trained Salvadorans from the business class.9 Until then, this group of businessmen had remained outside the political sphere. USAID decided on a policy to draw them into the political process. Six years later, these conservative businessmen selected one of their own as candidate for the presidency. Alfredo Cristiani Burkard emerged from the business not-for-profit, FUSADES, to pursue a dialogue with the guerillas. In this endeavor, Cristiani and his colleagues were not alone. The Catholic Church had been instrumental in the first effort to achieve a dialogue between the government of Jose Napoleon Duarte and the guerillas. The church was the most respected institution within El Salvador.10 For the most part, it was a conservative institution whose religious underpinnings justified subservience to the state and obedience to a quasi-feudal system in which a community of rural peasants acquiesced to the demands of the landowner and his family. Traditional Catholicism was dedicated to an important cult of the saints; an abundant conformity with the present while awaiting a future life, and a definite consecration of the established order. Only a miracle by the saint permitted a peasant to alter his position. Only a miracle could convert him into a rich person, given the belief that the quantity of goods are limited.11

Beginning in the mid-1960s, priests in Latin America began to reject traditional Catholic values and examine the New Testament to find truths that could enlighten a world of starkly unequal wealth and the political dominance of those with money. The progressives, as they were called, sought to awaken the consciousness of the community through Bible meetings in which biblical texts were examined in the light of the contemporary world. The readings and discussions within these “comunidades eclesiásticas de base” (ecclesiastical base communities) raised awareness among thousands of rural peasants and urban slum dwellers of the injustice perpetrated upon them by the traditional hierarchical social structure. They also sought to challenge traditional and fatalistic attitudes whereby the poor accepted their poverty because it was seen to be the will of God. Now, conscious of their

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Seeking Peace in El Salvador

subservient status, many became activists for social justice, as well as followers of the political left and the FMLN. In the midst of this challenge to traditional Catholic doctrine and structure, the Conference of Bishops chose a conservative to become the Archbishop of El Salvador. Oscar Romero y Galdamez came from the conservative tradition, but faced with the violence against innocent church men and women, his thinking rebelled against upholding the status quo. He called for peace and an end to the violence. In March 1980, Archbishop Romero used the pulpit of San Salvador’s cathedral to call upon the soldiers within ESAF to disobey the orders of their superiors and not to shoot their fellow men and women.12 For this homily and other acts that challenged the traditional role of a catholic leader, Major Roberto d’Aubuisson acquiesced to Romero’s murder.13 The Catholic Church had become a victim to the brutality of ESAF, and, thereafter, it struggled to find a role for itself in the midst of Salvador’s savage violence. In 1984, the Papal Nuncio and Romero’s successor, Archbishop Arturo Rivera Damas offered their good offices to arrange a public meeting between the government of Jose Napoleon Duarte and the guerillas. They met on October 16, 1984, within the church of Las Palmas; a small town in FMLN-controlled territory, some 100 kilometers from San Salvador.14 Minimal security precautions existed and the Boy Scouts kept order around the church.15 Inside, both parties sat at two tables facing each other with the Catholic Church representatives at a head table in between. Face to face, the protagonists discussed the process for the talks.16 After five hours, Duarte and the comandantes emerged to a joyful crowd and the international media. They claimed success and promised to meet again a month later. The parties had not discussed substantive issues, but they had talked about an agenda and timing. The result was encouraging and hopes were raised of an ongoing dialogue between the two protagonists.17 The church had not mediated between the parties, but it had used its good offices to invite both the government and ESAF’s High Command to an acceptable place, offer equal status to each party at the meeting, and moderate the discussion.18 In November, with Archbishop Rivera y Damas presiding, the protagonists met again, this time in the small town of Ayaguelo. Once again, the hierarchy of the Catholic Church acted as host and facilitator. Instead of a quiet discussion, the meeting became a shouting match. Villalobos used the occasion to show his followers within the Ejército Revolucionario del Pueblo (ERP) that he would not concede to the president on any matter. Loudspeakers relayed the talks to an expectant audience outside, but they heard staged propaganda speeches not rational exchanges.19 The result was disastrous. Both protagonists returned to violence, fearing to show weakness through their willingness to meet and talk. The FMLN attacked military installations and the army carried out a Christmas offensive against Tenancingo, a town within the zone controlled by the ERP. The Defense Minister, General Vides Casanova strongly advised Duarte against further dialogue.20 In August 1987, under the auspices of the Central American presidents gathered at the Guatemalan town of Esquipulas, a further effort to enter into a dialogue was tried. The presidents invited the Catholic Church to their meeting as an observer. This meeting failed, principally because both sides believed that a military victory was still possible. Civil war continued. Two years later, the Auxiliary Bishop of

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San Salvador, Gregorio Rosa Chavez sought to facilitate a dialogue between the government and the FMLN. In this, the Church joined with President Oscar Arias and the new administration of President George H.W. Bush to invite representatives of both sides to a meeting in Mexico City. Until 1989, the Church had failed to persuade either side to accept a dialogue. Had domestic and external circumstances changed enough to permit the parties to enter into political negotiations? The September 15, 1989, meeting in Mexico City proceeded remarkably well. Villalobos led the FMLN delegation and David Escobar Galindo, the president’s private secretary represented the Salvadoran government. Bishop Rosa Chavez was present, but there is no evidence of any substantive contribution from the Catholic Church. Villalobos was flexible in his positions and clamped down upon Schafik Handal when the latter put forward traditional, propaganda positions.21 With significant pressure from both the Mexicans and the Costa Ricans to make headway, Villalobos accepted the concept of a permanent dialogue with the government. The following month’s meeting in San Jose, Costa Rica, focused on the Catholic Church’s proposal for a cease-fire. This was not an issue upon which the FMLN could concede, because it would give the appearance of weakness and remove their only leverage in any political negotiations. The Church’s offer of a cease-fire reflected its isolation from the political agenda of each protagonist. However, a second proposal to create a commission composed of all political parties, as well as representatives of the Catholic Church, labor unions, and social organizations was accepted in principle. The second proposal became a reality in April 1991 when the government and the FMLN agreed to the creation of the Comisión Nacional para la Consolidación de la Paz (COPAZ). This was the only official forum for legislatures, members of the Church, labor unions, and civil society to participate in the peace process.22 Progress was not due to the good offices of the Catholic Church, but it was present at the two most successful meetings between the protagonists since October 1984. Who were the intellectual authors of this effort and what credibility did they exercise? Ignacio Ellacuria and the Jesuit Community The Jesuit community in El Salvador and particularly the Jesuit priests who led the Universidad Centro Americano–Jose Simeon Canas (UCA) were committed intellectuals who criticized political power wherever they found it. They wrote, publicized, and among other things, taught about social justice and the need for dialogue and reconciliation. Scorned by the oligarchy as complicit with the FMLN, Ignacio Ellacuria, the rector of UCA had an international reputation as a brilliant theologian among academic circles both in Europe and the United States.23 He also held considerable influence in Central America, where he met quietly with political leaders of all persuasions.24 Ellacuria was joined by Jesuit Father Ignacio Martin-Baro, the Vice-Rector of UCA and the founder of its center for public opinion. Martin-Baro’s statistical research pointed to increased polarization and the repression of democratic forces within the country.25 Both men were Spaniards by birth, but after ordination to the priesthood, Jesuit superiors sent them to serve in El Salvador.26 Their commitment to that country was unquestioned.

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Seeking Peace in El Salvador

In 1987, Ellacuria talked of his belief that a dialogue between the FMLN and the government was possible. Each side would establish its principles and conditions, but that did not mean that compromise was impossible.27 Based on his discussions with both protagonists, Ellacuria believed that both Duarte and the FMLN could reach a pragmatic agreement prior to submitting the texts to their respective followers. “No es tan difícil que el presidente Duarte y el FMLN-FDR puedan encontrar una formula prepactada.” (It is not so difficult that President Duarte and the FMLN–FDR can find a previously agreed formula [for peace].) A pragmatic solution could be found so long as the protagonists had the political will to enter into a dialogue and make peace. In the opinion of the Jesuit leaders, the major obstacle to such a peace formula was the U.S. government.28 Ellacuria’s colleague and fellow Jesuit, Rodolfo Cardenal emphasized the power that the U.S. Embassy exercised in El Salvador.29 He believed that in the period 1980–1992, “the embassy” constituted the principal force in the Salvadoran conflict: U.S. advice and financing defined the direction of the war from the government’s side. U.S. aid impeded the collapse of the Salvadoran economy. U.S. diplomacy promoted and managed internationally the cause of the Salvadoran government.30

The solution had to be found in a dialogue between the protagonists themselves, without U.S. pressure. It would not be easy, but alone Ellacuria believed that they could make peace. In this, the Jesuits in El Salvador found support from the Archbishop of Honduras, Monsignor Oscar Rodriguez who believed that the people of Central America only wanted peace and were tired of living in the “battleground between east and west.”31 Ellacuria did not hold himself out as a political figure, but through his discussions with the leading political figures of his time in the region, and the forcefulness of his argument for a dialogue, he became a respected proponent for peace talks. Ellacuria had known Joaquin Villalobos since October 1980, when the guerillas joined to form the FMLN.32 He maintained contact with Villalobos and the other comandantes, meeting them in Managua, as well as in Mexico City. Ellacuria sought to persuade Villalobos that the FMLN should become more flexible in its approach toward a political settlement.33 The results of those ongoing conversations were significant. In the 1989 spring edition of Foreign Policy, Villalobos wrote that the FMLN sought “an El Salvador that is open, flexible, pluralistic, and democratic in both the economic and political spheres.”34 In the summer of 1989, Villalobos wrote about mobilization of the masses and the need to wage both a political and military struggle.35 By October that year, Villalobos displayed a willingness to discuss, though not yield on demands that once seemed immutable. In a Time magazine interview, he said that given the changes in the international climate, the time for violent struggle had passed. “We can’t at this time aspire to an armed revolution that the Soviet Union will subsidize.”36 He suggested that the FMLN would now be willing to embrace a “multiparty system.” Furthermore, Villalobos contemplated participation in democratic elections as a civilian politician, so long as guarantees of freedom and security could be assured.37 This represented a radical change from the

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previous goal of establishing a one-party system after the revolution. The effect of Villalobos articles and statements was to create a glint of optimism among the Jesuits and the moderates among the business community. In reality, Villalobos pursued a dual policy: talk about political participation and prepare for a major military offensive. If the latter succeeded, there would be no need to pursue the former. If the latter failed, the FMLN could fall back on political negotiations. Before the presidential elections of March 1989, Ellacuria established a personal rapport with Alfredo Cristiani, recognizing that a man with strong conservative credentials could command support from his constituents in any dialogue with the FMLN. Ellacuria visited Cristiani, whom he also considered to be a good man and strong enough within the ARENA party to negotiate with the military High Command.38 He told candidate Cristiani, “The guerillas want to settle.”39 Ellacuria placed more faith in the capacity of the conservative Cristiani to enter into peace talks than the ability of the centrist Jose Napoleon Duarte.40 The consequence was a series of private discussions between Cristiani and Ellacuria both before and after the presidential elections of March 1989.41 Throughout the 1980s Ellacuria’s colleague, Jesuit Father Segundo Montes maintained a relationship with military officers that he had come to know at university in the late 1970s. Among them was Colonel Mauricio Vargas, who enjoyed discussing politics and sociology with Montes, and read the academic papers that Montes shared with him.42 Through Montes’s relationship both with Vargas and the head of the army’s press office, Ellacuria learned of the strong opposition within the military to the Jesuits. In 1989, this opposition reached a climax of hatred among members of the oligarchy with the publisher of the daily newspaper El Diario de Hoy, developing the slogan, “Kill a Commie, Kill a Jesuit.”43 Despite the dangers they faced, the Jesuit leaders continued to act as a bridge between the FMLN and Cristiani. Furthermore, Ellacuria recognized the importance of Roberto d’Aubuisson’s support for any dialogue. In his opinion, only d’Aubuisson could persuade the majority of Salvador’s lower middle class that a political settlement would end the violence. He therefore wanted to invite d’Aubuisson to the UCA Forum and have him publicly commit his support to dialogue.44 Ellacuria’s fellow Jesuits rebelled at the extent of his willingness to forgive and asked that the invitation not be extended. Ellacuria conceded, but privately repeated his presumption that d’Aubuisson would become a force for moderation and supportive of dialogue with the FMLN.45 The Jesuit effort to bridge the chasm between the FMLN and the extreme right, ended with the assassination of the six priests, their housekeeper and her daughter on the night of November 15, 1989. The military never saw the Jesuits as mediators or brokers of any peace. Indeed, the High Command saw the advent of peace only through the defeat of the FMLN–FDR not through political negotiations. The latter implied concessions that the military would not undertake unless forced to. The Jesuits in El Salvador tried to act as honest brokers, but they failed. However, the Jesuit community in North America and the Catholic media took up the campaign to end the U.S. involvement in El Salvador and allow the Salvadoran people to make their own peace.46 They lobbied the administration and Congress, working particularly closely with Representative John Joseph “Joe” Moakley (D-Mass.) to find the masterminds who had assassinated the Jesuits.

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They worked hard to persuade the U.S. Congress to cut off funding for the Salvadoran military. The Jesuit magazine America, reflected the opinions of Jesuit religious and lay people in the U.S., as well as those who continued to work and teach in El Salvador. Through America and Jesuit friendships with key U.S. congressmen, the international Jesuit community remained an influential institution on Salvadoran matters and the search for peace.47 Charles Bierne, the Jesuit Vice-Rector of UCA brought the murder of the Jesuits to the attention of Congressman Moakley, “a bread and butter politician” who paid little attention to foreign affairs until the murder of the priests in El Salvador.48 The Salvadorans in his constituency were hard working people who held close ties with the other Bostonian working class members, but the Jesuit murders shocked them and provoked the Congressman to ask Tom Foley (D-Wash.), the Speaker of the House to form a Congressional Investigative Commission.49 Moakley’s Chief of Staff, Jim McGovern led the investigation, which identified senior members of the High Command, including Colonel Rene Emilio Ponce and General Juan Rafael Bustillo as those who ordered the killing of Ellacuria.50 There were to be no witnesses. Moakley’s Commission exonerated the U.S. Embassy, but insisted that no further U.S. military aid should go to ESAF until the masterminds of the assassinations were found and convicted. This placed a serious condition on future U.S. collaboration with ESAF’s High Command. The Moakley Commission’s findings led to the trial of ten defendants in 1991, and the imprisonment of the two officers responsible for leading the attack.51 His findings were also endorsed by the UN Truth Commission.52 Finally, in 2011, Spanish prosecutors brought charges against senior Salvadoran officers for the conspiracy to murder Spanish citizens. Until his death from leukemia in 2001, Moakley remained committed to social justice in El Salvador. In July 1991 he spoke at UCA, calling upon the FMLN to continue with the peace talks. “If you want our understanding, negotiate in good faith: end your campaign of sabotage – no more assassinations.”53 Together with his visit that month to Santa Marta, a village held by the FMLN, Moakley demonstrated his commitment to the peace process. Subsequently, the FMLN noted, “That [visit to Santa Marta] was when we realized that the United States was getting serious about peace.”54 Conservative Politics and Roberto d’Aubuisson If the Jesuits demonstrated an ability to bridge the political divide, what expectations for a moderate strategy might be found within the conservative ARENA party? What was the relative strength of those party members who would reject the traditional alliance with ESAF to form a moderate conservative force that could withstand the extremist behavior of the right? Would a center-right faction be willing to act as bridge builders to the FMLN and FDR? Prior to examining these issues, it is necessary to review briefly the origins of ARENA and its founder, Roberto d’Aubuisson. Until his death in 1992, d’Aubuisson, a retired Major in the Guardia Nacional, remained a significant factor in Salvadoran politics. He could have been a “spoiler” of the peace agreement, but he refrained from undermining the political dialogue as his cancer spread and his energies diminished.

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ARENA was a hybrid organization that appealed to the interests of the private sector elite and was funded largely by wealthy Salvadoran families. It reflected the economic elite’s need to assert their interests because they could no longer depend upon ESAF.55 However, ARENA never represented one single interest.56 Instead, the party was a coalition of three distinct groups whose consensus was necessary to develop the party’s political platform.

I.

Major Bob’s People

The followers of d’Aubuisson, the “petit bourgeois” class with strong roots in El Salvador’s conservative tradition represented the largest group within ARENA. They were neither elitist, nor ideologues, but held an undefined socio-economic philosophy laced with populist tendencies. For the most part, they were agrarian, individualist, with an idyllic notion of a national past that existed mostly in their imaginations. They responded to notions of charismatic power, but were constrained by the historical knowledge of the terror that an autocratic and charismatic leader, like General Hernandez Martinez of the 1930s, might inflict. Burned into their psychological identity was the memory of the matanza of 1932, when the Salvadoran security forces murdered thousands in order to control disorder and terrorize local communities.57 The U.S. Embassy’s political section called these followers of ARENA, “Major Bob’s people.”58

II.

The Oligarchs

The second group that joined ARENA was the traditional oligarchy and their retainers, known as the oligarchs. As a result of the agrarian reform program, the nationalization of the banks and government regulation of the export of coffee, sugar, and cotton carried out under the Juntas of 1979 and 1980, as well as the economic reforms of the PDC government in 1984, the traditional landowning elite had suffered economic losses. Their goal in joining ARENA was to roll back the socio-economic reforms of the 1980s. In pursuit of this goal, they did not have the endorsement of Major Bob’s people, nor the newly emerging business class. Furthermore, despite the oligarch’s capacity to finance the party, their political influence had declined over the decade because coffee revenues no longer amounted to approximately half of the total government revenues.59 By the second half of the decade, coffee growers were no longer the single dominant economic force in El Salvador. Nevertheless, within ARENA, the oligarchy retained influence in party councils in exchange for their financial support.60

III.

Progressive Conservatives

The third group in ARENA was composed of traditionally apolitical members, many of whom were members of the Asociación Nacional de la Empresa Privada (ANEP),61 an organization of influential business interests with a reputation for conservative views, opposition to Duarte and the Christian Democrats, and rejection of the U.S. Embassy’s interference in curbing the abusive practices of the armed forces.

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Within ANEP were businessmen, professionals, and managers of the modern sector of Salvador’s economy who had been driven into politics by the intensity of the political violence in the 1980s. Known for their more progressive business policies, this group viewed ARENA as the political force that best articulated their newly found cohesion.62 Wealthy and educated with a network of international business relationships, they had the confidence to engage and mediate with ESAF’s High Command. They had opposed Duarte’s economic and social reforms as not being economically sound, and they opposed the communitarian philosophy of the Christian Democrats, which they claimed smacked of socialism.63 However, among their members were those who saw the need to redress the socio-economic imbalances that had caused the economic crisis of the late 1970s and early 1980s. The philosophy of this progressive business group was a commitment to “good government,” competence, and business management. Much to the chagrin of the oligarchy, they recognized the need for a positive public sector role in national development. They favored poverty eradication, which should be carried out by civil society in alliance with the government. These businessmen sought to modernize the economy and reduce the role, size, and scope of the government. Distrustful of the economic policies of the Christian Democrats, they sought to privatize the banks, deregulate the economy, simplify the tax system, and generate private investment.64 They sought to foster a spirit of individualism and private initiative that conflicted with the communitarian values of Salvadoran rural society. Their model was the Chilean economy, fostered by the University of Chicago’s Economics Department.65 Roberto Murray Meza, a leading member of this business group, argued for removing the government from management of the economy and freeing up Salvador’s exchange rate.66 Import tariffs should be lowered on a number of goods in order to expose domestic producers to greater international competition and thereby lower costs. This policy adversely affected different members of the business community and remained a source of friction within ARENA. With members involved in maquiladora (assembly plants), these progressive conservatives were more interested in freeing up exports than maintaining high tariffs on imports.67 However, intra-party contest was not limited to economic policy. Strenuous debate also continued over ARENA’s leadership. Roberto d’Aubuisson’s charisma still presented the single focal point for rallying the majority of ARENA followers. Passionate, if not violent, he could transfix his audiences with lengthy speeches on the wrongs of the country and the weakness of the reformist opposition. Loathed by his opponents, “d’Aubuisson remained an adored figure by his petit bourgeois followers.”68 This cultural acceptance of the autocratic figure was found principally in the departments bordering the Pacific Ocean, where the former landowners had both used and protected peasant families for generations. Due to the votes of rural peasants, ARENA won second place in the National Assembly elections of 1982 and gained the presidential elections of 1984.69 The following year, d’Aubuisson suffered a crushing defeat in the elections for the National Assembly.70 Accused of involvement in death squad activities and weakened by the internal bickering among the three party factions, ARENA’s share of the vote dropped to less than 30 percent. Many moderates left the ARENA in

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disgust with its performance and d’Aubuisson’s autocratic rule.71 Survival required that ARENA change its image as a party of the disaffected, conservative military, and the oligarchy. Recognizing this, d’Aubuisson lowered his profile and sponsored a member of the progressive business group, Alfredo Cristiani Burkard as the party’s presidential candidate.72 In 1988, the ARENA party was still associated closely with the founder, but the faction of progressives gained political influence as d’Aubuisson’s health declined. Alfredo Cristiani and the Moderate Conservatives Alfredo Cristiani was typical of this progressive business faction within ARENA. Educated at Georgetown University, he created his wealth in the distribution of pharmaceuticals and inherited land from his wife, Dona Margarita de Cristiani, the daughter of landowner and squire, Don Prudencio Llach. Cristiani may have married the daughter of an oligarch, but his policies often contradicted those of his father-in-law. Cristiani favored modernization of the Salvadoran economy, the liberalization of the currency and lowering of export and import tariffs, the privatization of the Bank, and the return of investment capital to Salvador. He refused to protect Salvadoran coffee and sugar exports through subsidies, and he was willing to expose the cafetaleras to international competition. At the same time, strongly influenced by his wife, he remained committed to poverty alleviation programs.73 Cristiani recognized that a necessary precondition for these economic adjustments was the cessation of the civil war.74 In turn, he and the progressive business community argued that improved economic prospects might facilitate reaching a peace agreement.75 In this commitment to peace, Cristiani was joined by Saul Suster, a Honduran-born immigrant whose Romanian parents had escaped the Holocaust. He owned the local Sony rights and remained Cristiani’s closest confidant. Suster had no historical loyalty to Salvador’s landed aristocracy; neither did he hold sympathy with the Christian Democrats nor the movements on the Left. His status depended upon the wealth that he himself had created. Were it not for his friend, Alfredo Cristiani, it is doubtful that Suster would have entered public life, but he accepted the presidency of the National Telephone Company and became the “man-to-go-to” when serious national problems arose. Suster remained a forceful advocate for dialogue with the FMLN and stood besides Cristiani when ESAF balked at the reforms imposed upon them by the various peace accords.76 The progressive business leaders analyzed the cause of Salvador’s war as the preponderant power of the military and the exclusion of the center and center Left from political discourse.77 The war had further polarized society and forced both sides into spiraling levels of violence. The military repressed the FMLN and those sympathetic to its cause, thus provoking violent retaliation from the FMLN. The military offered “security services” against guerilla attacks creating a lucrative commercial business, which fed off its own violence and the counteractions it provoked. For the younger generation of businessmen whose assets depended upon services, rather than agricultural land or industrial plants, there was less need for the military’s “security services.” Instead, the security services became a threat to them, due to the fear that they inspired and the tax they imposed through offering protection.78

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In the opinion of the progressive business leaders, the power of the military had to be curtailed and the FMLN given assurances of political participation in government in exchange for laying down their weapons. In developing an alternative path for Salvador’s future, the progressive business faction of ARENA rejected the traditional alliance of the oligarchs with ESAF and accepted the need to talk with the FMLN about their inclusion in the state.79 Fundación Salvadoreña Para El Desarrollo Económico y Social (FUSADES) The conservative business community had emerged as a political force, not just within the ARENA, but also at the national level during Duarte’s presidency. To support the business community’s model of economic and social stability, USAID in 1983 established a NGO called the Fundación Salvadoreña para el Desarrollo Económico y Social (FUSADES). It represented “some of the most influential business leaders in the country in many sectors.”80 As an initiation fee, each businessman contributed $1,600 apiece, an amount supplemented by USAID funds.81 In 1984, FUSADES received the first disbursement of what later became a $50.46-million project to facilitate “non-traditional exports and investments.”82 The explicit purpose in creating FUSADES was to promote a package of economic policies that Washington believed was necessary to foster political stability and economic growth. Implicit was the intent to create a political power base for the Salvadoran business class and prepare moderate leaders to assume direction of the nation.83 This class, which refused to work with the Duarte government, could be co-opted into developing and enacting Washington’s economic and social policies through an NGO that was legally independent from the Duarte administration. A second purpose existed, namely the creation of a civil organization, with a notfor-profit status that could as act as a counterweight to civil organizations affiliated with the FMLN–FDR.84 It is difficult to understand USAID’s logic on how a formal civil society institution might have balanced the popular organizations, cooperatives, trade unions, and other informal civil society organizations that existed and supported the FMLN. It lacked both the number of beneficiaries and the national network of members. A possible explanation is that FUSADES could receive funds for its social programs that might otherwise have gone to the civil and popular organizations on the Left. Between 1984 and 1992 USAID channeled approximately $100 million into FUSADES.85 Apart from U.S. support for the Salvadoran currency, the colon, FUSADES became the principal recipient of U.S. economic assistance.86 Instead of directing U.S.-appropriated funds to government departments charged with social services, USAID directed the funds through FUSADES to eight NGOs that might independently address the needs for education and housing.87 USAID delivered this support outside the Duarte government and stimulated the involvement of men who otherwise disliked, or were contemptuous of Duarte’s economic policies. In short, USAID created a service organization that could receive private funds and act as a private corporation.88 Washington constructed its own top-down NGO that was accountable only to USAID, and indirectly to the U.S. Congress.

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FUSADES had its own sphere of social interaction, comprising a range of subsidiary NGOs that were beyond the direct control of the Salvadoran state. They often allied with government policy, but they remained distinct from government programs.89 The subsidiary civil institutions created by FUSADES focused on economic and educational development, the promotion of small business enterprises, occupational safety, low income housing, and antinarcotics programs.90 Specialists in development theory characterized the manner in which these NGOs were created and their function as top-down “formal civil society organizations.”91 Elite based, they had minimum input from the recipients of the social programs. FUSADES and its subsidiaries became the principal recipients of U.S. economic aid, and the vehicles for the employment and training for future leaders, as well as relatives of the business community.92 FUSADES boasted a large staff, many of whom were the sons and daughters of the businessmen who initially had funded the organization. UNDP reports that FUSADES, as well as its subsidiaries FEPADE and CAM, employed a staff of one hundred or more people compared to an average staff size of thirty-two persons.93 They also boasted higher salaries and higher overheads amounting to 22 percent of income compared to the international norm of 17 percent for administrative costs. USAID intended to create a social class that was compatible with Washington’s political purposes for El Salvador. It would also serve as a training ground for future government leaders. Cristiani, together with seventeen members of his government was drawn from FUSADES, or one of its subsidiary NGOs.94 If USAID’s original intent had been the creation of a conservative civil organization with economic acumen and social conscience that might work outside the government, there was an unintended consequence. The businessmen in FUSADES through their efforts to stimulate economic growth became committed to finding a peaceful solution to Salvador’s civil war. In pursuit of this, the businessmen moved to the center-right of the political spectrum and confronted the power of ESAF. With close relationships and the support of the U.S. Embassy, these businessmen slowly acquired the courage and the backing to counter the armed forces. Within a society still wracked by violence, this confrontation required intelligence, a willingness to take risks, and U.S. Embassy support. FUSADES members found a common complaint in the autocratic and abusive manner of the armed forces. Roberto Kriete was the principal owner of TACA, the national airline. He and his family no longer owned land, but they considered themselves to be members of the oligarchy. Held hostage in his own house by the FMLN during the 1989 “final offensive,” Kriete and his wife remarked on how civil the guerillas were and how careful they were not to damage property. This was in marked contrast to ESAF’s soldiers that entered into his home upon the departure of the FMLN. In his description of the event to the U.S. Ambassador, Kriete expressed horror at the military’s performance, recognizing them as a bunch of thugs. “They [the soldiers] trashed furniture and stole property.”95 Kriete remained a self-confessed oligarch, but his support for the military diminished as he, his family, and circle of friends witnessed the brutality of the armed forces and its corruptive powers. No longer was ESAF the protector of the landed class or economic elite. It had achieved a degree of power within society that permitted its members to

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act with impunity.96 Among FUSADES members, there arose the recognition that ESAF contributed to El Salvador’s problems and that significant reforms to the military would have to be carried out.97 Nevertheless, FUSADES was not a cabal determined on the destruction of ESAF. Its members retained relations with the High Command and understood the traditional interlocking alliance between the economic elite and ESAF. Instead, over time, FUSADES members became increasingly independent of the armed forces and the traditional oligarchy. With the support of USAID, they developed into a more moderate conservative social group that sought to end the civil war. Their conservatism and strong ties to ESAF prevented them from becoming a credible bridge to the FMLN, but they succeeded in shifting the political spectrum toward the center-right and an acceptance of the need for political dialogue with those on the Left. Both the Jesuits and FUSADES acted with a degree of autonomy from the highest leaders in El Salvador. They formed new centers of influence within the country that could articulate a new vision for the nation, and they examined ways in which peace might be achieved. Alone, neither the Jesuits nor FUSADES could have made peace with the FMLN or with ESAF because they lacked sufficient political strength. However, they knew how to be effective through internal communication and relations with external actors. The Jesuits lobbied in Washington, and built up international pressure for the end of U.S. interference in El Salvador. The members of FUSADES developed close relations with both Washington and the International Monetary Fund for economic and commercial purposes that made cessation of the violence an indispensable condition for a new economic model. Neither group provided the panacea for ending the war, but their contribution signified that local actors could make a significant contribution toward initiation of a dialogue between the protagonists.

Chapter 5

The United States: Protagonist or Mediator? The election of President George H. W. Bush in November 1988 and his choice of James Baker as Secretary of State, introduced a reevaluation of U.S. policy toward Central America.1 The change was notable because it sought to end the bitter acrimony between the Republicans and Democrats in Congress, as well as the struggle between the executive and congressional branches over funding to sustain allies in Nicaragua and El Salvador’s civil wars. The strategic shift addressed the domestic problem of a deeply divisive foreign policy. It also sought congressional consensus where previously there had been innate suspicion, if not hostility. However, the impact of this change upon the protagonists of El Salvador’s decade-long civil war is debatable. To what extent did Washington lessen its support for the Salvadoran government? The basis for the change in U.S. policy was three-fold: i. Communist Party General Secretary, Mikhail Gorbachev’s speech in December 1988 to the UN General Assembly in which he announced the end of support for national liberation movements in the “Third World,” provided an opportunity to rethink U.S. strategy toward the Soviet Union, as well as Washington’s contest with Moscow in Central America; ii. Congress’ significant reduction in appropriated funds for both military and economic aid left the Bush administration with minimum capacity to pursue a military victory in El Salvador.2 Consequently, the pragmatic and politically astute Secretary of State assessed the political impact on the Bush presidency of pursuing an increasingly unpopular Central American policy of support for the Nicaraguan Contras and the Salvadoran armed forces—the perpetrators of human rights abuse. Both Congressional Appropriations and Rep. Moakley’s Investigative Commission into the deaths of the Jesuit priests forced the Bush administration to devise alternative strategies.

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The first two events were distinct, but used effectively to bolster each other, and iii. El Salvador’s armed forces’ (ESAF) failure to defeat the Frente Farabundo Marti de Liberación Nacional (FMLN) in its “final offensive,” together with the deployment of troops from the U.S.-trained Atlacatl Battalion to murder the Jesuit priests provided the catalysts for change in U.S. government policy toward El Salvador.3 Both events in November 1989 forced the White House to reconsider support for ESAF. In the face of a decade-long ally who had acted with dangerous impunity, Washington’s pursuit of a negotiated political solution became the only realistic option. This chapter analyzes the nature of U.S. policy toward El Salvador from 1989 to 1993. To what extent was there a fundamental change in the Bush administration’s Central American policy? Did the U.S. government remain a sponsor of the Salvadoran government, and as such, a protagonist or belligerent in its civil war? If the shift to negotiated political solution was a necessary option, did it represent continued support for the Salvadoran government by other means? Did the U.S. government effectively mutate from a protagonist in El Salvador’s war to a mediator of the peace agreement? U.S. Government’s Historical Support for El Salvador Washington’s sponsorship of the Salvadoran state and its armed forces was based on a commitment by President Reagan, his first Secretary of State Alexander Haig, and his UN Ambassador Jeanne Kirkpatrick to defend Central America against worldwide Soviet expansionism, channeled in Central America and the Caribbean through Cuba.4 President Reagan and his advisers determined not to lose another Central American country to communism and to reverse the Nicaraguan revolution. This implied an unwavering commitment to Salvador’s civilian government and its armed forces.5 The U.S. Department of Defense trained ESAF and supplied military equipment from aircraft to light arms.6 USAID financed economic and social reforms, several of which were not acceptable to Salvador’s landed oligarchy. The nature and extent of these programs created a mutual and reciprocal dependency: ESAF relied upon the U.S. government, and the U.S. government depended upon ESAF. Secretary Haig’s successor at the State Department, George Shultz increased funding for Salvador’s air force, the provision of small arms, and military training.7 Despite calls for improvements in the rule of law and restraint on military and paramilitary action, the impunity with which the Salvadoran armed and security forces abused its citizens continued.8 As a result, Washington’s support of the Salvadoran government, together with its support for the Nicaraguan Contras, became the most controversial foreign policy issues of the 1980s, creating deep and bitter divisions between the Reagan administration and the Democrats in Congress.9 During his presidential election campaign of 1987 and 1988, George H.W. Bush never mentioned Central America.10 He appeared to hold no deep conviction about U.S. policy toward Central America. Earlier in December 1983, Vice President Bush had visited El Salvador for the inauguration of President Duarte. On that occasion,

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he had called for restraint by ESAF, but the ability of Duarte to constrain the armed forces was negligible. The president’s minimal knowledge and interest in Central America allowed his pragmatic Secretary of State free rein to develop an alternative strategy that would diminish the bitter controversy within the U.S. and seek to end the violence in the region. Secretary Baker did not assume the leadership of the State Department with a clear idea of what the policy toward El Salvador should be. However, he was convinced of the need to end the bitter wrangling between the Republican administration and the Democratic majority in Congress over Central America.11 As Secretary of State, he continued to analyze Gorbachev’s changes in the Soviet Union and the implications for arms control, the future of Eastern Europe, and the independence of the Baltic States.12 Only as a secondary matter did he question whether the changes in Soviet policy would affect their actions in Central America. If Baker was to engage with the Soviets in a more collaborative and active manner, he knew that he had to relieve himself of the Central American debacle.13 He needed the support of Congress to engage constructively with the Soviets on a broad range of issues. However, in order to do so, Baker needed consensus with the Democratic majority in the Senate and in the House. In pursuit of this, Baker, the realist and political operative, took the initiative to create a broad bipartisan policy on Central America that would relieve the president of bitter domestic political battles. It should also give both the president and Baker space to develop a new policy toward the Soviet bloc. In order to pursue this goal, Baker first had to resolve differences with retired General Brent Scowcroft, the National Security Advisor on the validity and implications of Gorbachev’s wide-ranging reforms.

I. Mikhail Gorbachev addresses the United Nations–December 7, 1988

Gorbachev’s speech to the UN General Assembly in December 1988 resulted in a muted response that hid reservations among the incoming administration of recently elected George Bush. The president-elect considered that Gorbachev had delivered “an encouraging speech” on arms control and Eastern Europe, “There was a lot that he and I could do together.” Scowcroft was more reserved. In his recollections of the period, Scowcroft wrote that, The few positive regional changes which had occurred seemed to me to stem more from Soviet failures than from a general change of attitude about regional superpower competition. . . . Regional issues would remain a lingering irritant throughout the rest of the life of the Soviet Union, through three summits and many foreign minister meetings.14

Seven years later at the Princeton Conference on the end of the Cold War, Scowcroft laid bare his concerns, I plead guilt to the slow buildup of trust [with the Soviet side], and probably me more than anyone else. In my formative years in national government, I had gone through the détente period, which I thought had left an aftermath of enervation

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in the United States . . . I was not sure in 1988 and 1989 that we were seeing a sincere change on the part of President Gorbachev or whether this was a return to détente. The West was tired at this time, governments were looking for anyway to cut back on defense budgets.15

Gorbachev’s speech to the UN had received great applause, but Scowcroft was not sure it was for real, and so, what we wanted to do is to go slow enough to see whether or not the Soviet side would follow up on these pronouncements that show so much promise.16

In 2005, General Scowcroft reflected upon his approach to Gorbachev. It was not replete with admiration. In Scowcroft’s opinion, Gorbachev prevaricated, balancing his conservative opponents in the Politburo and defense establishment against the reformers in the Department of Economics and the Soviet Foreign Ministry. When Gorbachev was with his Foreign Minister, Edward Shevardnadze, the White House could depend upon Soviet policies. Alone, Gorbachev shifted. In Scowcroft’s opinion, he was an unreliable partner.17 While Scowcroft was skeptical, James A. Baker, the former Secretary of the Treasury and nominated Secretary of State was more willing to engage and test the parameters of cooperation.18 Both Baker and Scowcroft agreed that Soviet restraint in Central America “was the first test of Soviet new thinking in foreign policy.”19 Soviet annual expenditure for the Nicaraguan, Sandinista government was $500 million.20 It came in the form of heavy weapons, surface to air missiles, light arms, spare parts, and monetary support for training.21 A portion of that funding was forwarded to the FMLN in El Salvador.22 A diminution in the transfer of support funds had to be seen before US-Soviet trust could be strengthened. At President Bush’s first Cabinet meeting on January 23, 1989, Baker proposed and Scowcroft agreed that Soviet action in Central America would form the first test of Gorbachev’s “new thinking.”23 In a previous position as Secretary of Treasury, Baker had analyzed the economic stagnation in the Soviet Union. Based on his financial knowledge, he was more optimistic of the Soviet leader’s determination to change. “By the mid-1980s, indeed, it had become painfully obvious—not just to the Soviet leadership but to the average citizen as well—that the Soviet Union could no longer postpone the choice between guns and butter.” In Baker’s opinion, “there was little choice but to try to reform.”24 It was, therefore, important that the incoming Bush administration reassess its policy options. He initiated a four-month strategic review of foreign policy, which included the regional policy toward Central America. Skeptical of the State Department’s capacity to produce original ideas on Central America, Baker sought an independent review. He asked Bernard Aronson, a former speechwriter for Walter Mondale who had become interested in Central America in the mid-1980s and helped President Reagan lobby Congressional Democrats in favor of aid to the Nicaraguan Contras to draft his own policy recommendations. Aronson’s asset was his long experience in the Democratic Party, and his good relations with Congressmen on both sides of the aisle.25 Baker believed that “Bernie,”

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as he was known, could act as a bridge to centrist Democrats and support his goal of creating a bipartisan policy in Central America.26 He was known to think clearly and write well. In a “confidential and highly sensitive” memorandum, drafted in late January 1989, Aronson wrote that, The level of aid flows from the Soviet bloc to Nicaragua, the FMLN, and to Cuba, and the expectations of future levels of aid will significantly, and I believe, decisively, influence the leverage we can bring to bear in a regional diplomatic initiative and its prospects for success on terms acceptable to the United States.27

Based upon the sustained economic and military support to the Sandinistas over the last ten years, Aronson believed that the Soviets would not sufficiently reduce their aid levels to enable the U.S. to conduct effective diplomacy unless and until the Soviet Union concludes that it will pay a serous price in its bilateral relations with the United States and, perhaps, conclude, also, that it may gain something important to its interests by cooperating with the United States.28

Aronson went on, I believe the only way we can develop that degree of leverage is by making the Soviet bloc role in Central America the first and initially most important issue in our bi-lateral relations with the Soviet Union.29

The purpose was to persuade the FMLN and the Sandinistas to question seriously, “whether Soviet block—including Cuban—support will continue to diminish into the foreseeable future.”30 In Aronson’s analysis the solution to Central America’s conflicts lay in reaching an agreement with the Soviets to develop a hands-off policy in the hemisphere. He, therefore, sought and obtained an invitation to the Soviet Union. The search for a regional solution to the conflicts in Central America would begin in Moscow.31 There was nothing new in the call to the Soviets to cooperate in Central America. Since 1987, President Reagan and his Secretary of State, George Shultz had sought cooperation with Gorbachev in Nicaragua and El Salvador. Elliot Abrams, then Assistant Secretary of State for American Republics Affairs (ARA) and Aronson’s predecessor had met twice with his Soviet counterparts. The first head of the Latin American directorate was Vladimir Kazimirov. Upon his posting to Angola, he was succeeded by Yuri Pavlov. With both Soviet officials, Abrams sought the withdrawal of Soviet support for the Sandinistas, as well as pressure on Fidel Castro to cease support for the FMLN.32 In his meeting with Kazimirov, Abrams had called for Soviet unilateral withdrawal. U.S. withdrawal had begun in early 1989 when Congress strictly constrained military support for the Contras. The opportunity now existed for a mutual withdrawal of military aid to Nicaraguan forces. Moscow responded favorably to this opening. On May 6, Bush released a letter from Gorbachev in which he announced the suspension of arms shipments to Nicaragua, effective the previous

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December 1988. In June and again in September 1989, Foreign Minister Eduard A. Shevardnadze held constructive discussions with Baker on a number of issues, including Central America.33 On November 28, Soviet Ambassador to the United States, Yuriy V. Dubinin delivered a “non-paper” to Secretary Baker in which he expressed a willingness to cooperate with the U.S. in Central America. The text of the message read, We have taken these steps . . . and are prepared to continue to cooperate with you in creating favorable outside conditions for a peaceful settlement of the conflict in this country [Nicaragua] and in the region as a whole.34

Dubinin continued, Both you [U.S.] and we are supporting the [Esquipulas] agreements reached by the Central Americas themselves. Therefore, we do have a basis for a more effective cooperation. Of course, it will only be effective when neither the United States, nor the Soviet Union attempts to impose its will on the parties directly involved in the conflict.35

The Soviet Foreign Ministry accepted the concept of partnership in Central America, but not necessarily on the same terms as Baker and Aronson proposed. Washington’s idea of a partnership in Central America required the Soviet to instruct both the Cubans and Nicaraguans to terminate arms shipments to the FMLN. Aronson made clear that failure to abide by the U.S. terms of the partnership would have negative implications for the new U.S.-Soviet relationship. “I [Aronson] trust that your government will act on this information as your government has pledged it will do.”36 Aronson believed that the Soviets were willing to reduce, if not terminate their support for the Sandinista government in Nicaragua. However, the Soviets had made no equivalent commitment to reduce or end their support for Cuba. Cuba could replace the Soviet Union as the principal supplier to the Sandinistas and the FMLN. The Cuban problem remained, and Gorbachev appeared unwilling to compromise Soviet support for this key ally. In removing Soviet support for the Sandinistas, the Soviets had matched the U.S. government’s termination of military support to the Contras. The difference was that the U.S. Congress had ended that support with the Boland Amendment in 1982, forcing the administration to realign its policy. The Soviets did not need to ask for reciprocal action: it had already been provided.

II.

The U.S. Congress terminates funding for Central America

Commitment to a U.S. partnership with the Soviets comprised a key part of a dual strategy. The other part required a Bipartisan Accord with Congress and the development of a national consensus policy toward Central America that was sustainable over an extended period of time.37 In the early years of the 1980s, the issue of human rights abuse in El Salvador had dominated American political discourse and resulted in bitter feuds between conservatives and liberals.38 No issue had dominated

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and divided the electorate so acutely since the Vietnam War.39 With the election of President Duarte in 1984, it was assumed that a centrist president would moderate the actions of the armed and security forces. He would also be a credible leader for negotiation with the FMLN. Therefore, the focus of the American domestic political debate shifted to Nicaragua and Washington’s support for the Contras. By 1988, the Contras had become a seriously antagonistic issue in U.S. domestic politics. It had overwhelmed concern for El Salvador, but the Catholic Church and the human rights community retained their long-standing anxiety for the Salvadoran population, the ongoing abuse of human rights, and the negation of justice and democracy in that country.40 Baker sought to bridge the antagonism within the domestic body politic and achieve a working consensus with Congress. The emergence of a reevaluated policy toward El Salvador developed relatively rapidly in the first two months of the Bush administration. It was guided by the need for a new policy toward the Contras, but affected Salvador too. There was no clear consensus within the new administration on how this might be done. The strongest opposition to change came from the conservative Republicans, who had championed the defeat of communism in Latin America under the Reagan administration. Ideologically supportive of liberal democracy and free markets, the conservative Republicans sought to stall, if not defeat the pragmatic and moderate James Baker.41 On the Democratic side and influenced by the human rights community, labor unions, and the Catholic Church, Baker was under strong pressure to end U.S. engagement with the Salvadoran armed and security forces.42 Aronson drafted a new policy for Nicaragua and Salvador that was accepted more readily within Congress than in Central America. Secretary Baker moved swiftly to persuade conservatives Republicans and Democrats on the Hill. He moved more slowly to convince the leaders in Central America of the administration’s commitment to the new plan. Central American leaders responded with skepticism. Were the proposed changes in U.S. policy real or rhetorical? When opponents lowered their guard, would Washington resume its traditional role and seek to destroy its enemies, namely the Sandinista government of Nicaragua and the FMLN in El Salvador? From Costa Rican President Arias to Salvadoran President Alfredo Cristiani, a defensive wariness characterized the Central American attitude toward the new Bush administration.43 A key member of Secretary Baker’s team at the State Department was Margaret H. Tutwiler, soon to be his spokesperson. Relatively ignorant about Central America, she asked Cresencio Arcos, the Deputy Assistant Secretary of State and former Director of Humanitarian Support for the Contras to brief her on the key issues related to Nicaragua and El Salvador. Both Arcos and Aronson stressed that the dead-end nature of Reagan’s policy toward Central America: the “policy of insufficiency”—inadequate funds to allow ESAF and the Contra to win—should end.44 Baker faced a choice, either seek additional funding sufficient to defeat militarily the FMLN and the Sandinista government, or pursue a negotiated, political outcome. With a majority in both the House and the Senate, the Democrats were unlikely to agree to increase funding for military purposes in Central America. Chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee in the 103rd Congress, Lee Hamilton (D-Ind.) warned Baker that a request for additional funding “would

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provoke a helluva fight.”45 Baker swiftly learned that the pursuit of a military option was not realistic. He had to search for a new strategy, namely a diplomatic effort to achieve a political outcome. Pursuing that strategy proved to be contentious both within the Bush administration and deeply divisive with conservatives in Congress. On January 21, 1989, Secretary Baker relieved Elliott Abrams from his responsibilities as Assistant Secretary for ARA. His deputy for Central American Affairs, Cresencio Arcos was asked to stay on. In early March, Arcos accompanied Baker and Tutwiler to meet with the House Minority leadership. Their purpose was to persuade the Republican leadership of the need for a political solution to Central America’s civil wars through diplomacy and negotiation. The military option should be terminated. In the offices of the Minority Leader, Robert Michel (R-Ill.) they met with Congressmen Robert Lagomarsino (R-Calif.), Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.), Henry Hyde (R-Ill.), and Robert Dornham (R-Calif.). Baker laid out his strategy: primary focus was on “getting the Soviets out of Central America and containing Cuban influence.”46 In Nicaragua, the administration would not “abandon the freedom fighters [Contras],” but would seek a negotiated solution. Furthermore, a negotiated outcome should be pursued in El Salvador. The Republican congressional leadership was not comfortable: they were suspicious of Baker and reluctant to accept his policy. Arcos was brought along not just for his detailed knowledge, but to demonstrate that Baker had corralled one of the conservatives’ bureaucratic assets to pursue a negotiated, political solution. If Arcos, a former supporter of the Contras, could accept the reality of a new policy, conservatives on the Hill could do so too. Arcos recalls that “they [the Republican leadership] were not won over, but agreed not to stand in Baker’s way.”47 The hard reality was that House Democrats would not fund the present policy in either Nicaragua or El Salvador. In the face of this certainty, Baker had to demonstrate that he would negotiate firmly with the Soviets to ensure their withdrawal from Central America. If Baker acted tough with the Soviets, the U.S. shift of policy to a negotiated solution in El Salvador became tolerable. The following day, Arcos was again asked to travel with Secretary Baker to the Hill; this time to the Senate. The meeting was held in the office of the Senate Minority Leader, Bob Dole (R-Kan.). Here, Baker’s argument was that the administration would not get the authorization for additional funding and in its absence, peace talks had to be given a chance. As the meeting drew to an end, Senator Dole rose and said, “I think we all support Jim [Baker].” At that moment, Senator Jesse Helms (R-N.C.) who had been absent from the meeting entered the room with his aide Deborah DeMoss. Helms angrily asked Baker if he was turning his back “on our boys,” by which he meant the Contras. Under stiff questioning, Helms forced Baker to recoil.48 Baker, somewhat on the defensive, threw his arm around Arcos’s shoulder and asked a rhetorical question, “Cris, you’re with us, aren’t you?” Cresencio [Cris] nodded in agreement,49 knowing that his bureaucratic promotions would end immediately if he disagreed. Helms wandered off unsatisfied and critical of Baker. Irritated, Helms knew that he could not muster sufficient votes on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to continue funding either the Contra forces or ESAF.50 The central focus of the March 1989 Bipartisan Accord related to U.S. support for the Contras. This issue was distinct, but closely related to support for the Salvadoran

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government. Efforts to resolve both conflicts had to be undertaken together. The Central American “boil” had to be lanced and a bipartisan consensus developed in the White House’s relationship with Congress so as to permit massive changes in arms control with the Soviet Union.51 A consensus policy required the search for a political settlement, not military victory. Therefore, a regional diplomatic initiative “that enjoys broad hemispheric and international support” had to be created.52 Aronson was prepared to halt humanitarian aid to the Nicaraguan Contras and instead support a democratic election and accept the results. In exchange, Baker acknowledged that “Congress extended us a considerable measure of flexibility to pursue a diplomatic solution.”53 The agreement had its share of ambiguity, but it permitted the Bush administration to move toward ending its hourly involvement in Central America and pursue other important goals with the Soviets. A problem for George Bush was domestic pressures from Senator Helms and conservatives in the Republican Party. Republicans in Congress remained committed to the defense of the Salvadoran government against the FMLN, which they viewed as “Marxist Terrorists.”54 Helms had developed his own network of contacts in Salvador, which reported on U.S. Embassy actions and defended the policies of Roberto d’Aubuisson, the founder of the Alianza Republicana Nacional (ARENA) party and the instigator of several prominent assassinations. In his biography, Helms admits that “members of his personal staff, most notably Deborah DeMoss, established solid contacts throughout the region that enabled us to help prevent Communists from taking over Latin America.”55 Throughout the negotiations and implementation of a peace settlement, Helm’s staff and their contacts continued to act as a conservative force, defending their ideological interests against the State Department and those in Washington who sought a negotiated solution.56 On the Democratic side, Senator Chris Dodd’s (D-Conn.) staff maintained its respective contacts in the region. Janice O’Connell and Robert Dockery had developed a wide-ranging network that, likewise, they consulted on critical issues. In addition, numerous Congressional Hearings provided opportunities for human rights groups, labor leaders, and church figures to present their concerns on El Salvador.57 Both liberals and conservatives remained wary of an emerging new policy toward Central America. To assuage conservatives, Bush sent Vice President Dan Quayle on June 1, 1989 to El Salvador for the inauguration of President Alfredo Cristiani. On that occasion, Quayle intended to meet with Roberto d’Aubuisson, the founder of the ARENA party and the mastermind behind the assassination of Archbishop Romero.58 D’Aubuisson had been persona non grata at the U.S. Embassy since his attempt to murder Ambassador Thomas Pickering in 1984. Now that he was an elected member of the National Assembly, he was no longer ostracized. Instead, together with leaders of other political parties, he was invited to the ambassador’s residence to share a meal with the vice president. U.S. conservatives were satisfied by Quayle’s meeting, but wary that his criticism of human rights abuses could undermine U.S. influence among the Salvadoran right wing.59 In contrast, Aryeh Neier, Executive Director of Human Rights Watch condemned the meeting, stating that “Mr. d’Aubuisson should be treated as a pariah by the United States and for the Vice President to dignify somebody of that sort by dealing with him . . . is inappropriate.”60

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Baker had to negotiate warily with both conservatives and liberals. Both sides criticized him and Aronson. However, despite the carping, Baker obtained both Congressional consensus and Soviet support to pursue a negotiated outcome in El Salvador. In July 1989, the United States introduced a resolution before the UN Security Council that requested the UN Secretary General to use his best offices to move forward the Central American peace process agreed upon two years earlier at Esquipulas.61 Under the legal mandate of that agreement, both the U.S. and the Soviet Union would pressure their respective allies to move toward a negotiated settlement. However, the pursuit of this was complicated by the FMLN’s “final offensive” and ESAF’s murderous response against the Jesuits in November 1989. III.

El Salvador—November 1989

At eight o’clock on the evening of November 11, 1989, about 1,600 FMLN troops attacked San Salvador and major towns throughout the country.62 In the capital, they attacked the residential neighborhood of Escalon, where Cristiani and his family lived.63 Beginning that night and lasting for over one month, the FMLN coordinated a countrywide attack, demonstrating that they were a national force, which still sought military victory. For more than two weeks, the FMLN retained their presence in San Salvador. By day the ESAF controlled the city and the guerillas retreated into the ravines that run through the capital and housed the poorest families. When the curfew came into effect, the ESAF returned to the barracks and the insurgents assumed control of the streets.64 In so doing, the FMLN displayed that they could hold both the wealthiest areas and also the slums. ESAF was unable to defeat them. However, the hoped-for popular and national uprising in support of the FMLN never occurred. The November to December offensive affected the U.S Embassy in San Salvador in a profound way, “The FMLN failed to achieve its most ambitious objectives—a popular uprising, a significant military victory, and the decapitation of the Salvadoran government.”65 However, ESAF “did not exploit fully the opportunity to inflict a crushing blow on the insurgency.”66 Despite advance warning, the Salvadoran military showed that it was incapable of preventing or defeating a military uprising. The U.S. Military Training Group, attached to the U.S. Embassy, raised serious questions on how large amounts of weapons, equipment, and explosives were smuggled into and hidden within the city.67 Although, the Embassy publicly praised the leadership and solidarity of ESAF, the failure of the armed forces to evict large concentrations of FMLN troops from the capital city raised serious questions of military and intelligence competence. More serious than the FMLN offensive was the response of ESAF’s High Command and the fatal attack on the Jesuit leadership. On November 16, members of the Atlacatl Battalion entered the UCA campus, dragged the Jesuit fathers from their beds, forced them to lie face down in the garden, and shot them point blank. Together with the five Spanish-born priests and one Salvadoran Jesuit, soldiers killed their housekeeper and her fifteen-year-old daughter. There should be no witnesses.68 The murders were met with international outrage and disgust. The Spanish government condemned the killing, called for a cease-fire, negotiations, and demanded an investigation.69

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The U.S. Embassy assumed control of the investigation and Washington sent an FBI team to San Salvador. Cristiani retreated within his presidential office and avoided public questioning.70 Ambassador Walker set up a command post at the Embassy and, in the absence of any public communication from the presidency gave a daily press briefing over the next two to three weeks to the gathered Salvadoran and international press corps.71 Walker became, in effect, the Salvadoran government’s leading spokesman. To the press that searched for the culpable, Ambassador Walker “seemed to dismiss evidence that pointed at right-wing military involvement.”72 In this, he distanced himself from Assistant Secretary Aronson, who said that “his gut feeling was that right-wingers were responsible.”73 In the weeks that followed the offensive, Walker characterized the FMLN offensive as “a sign of weakness”—a desperation tactic. As religious activists fled the country in the face of governmentsanctioned threats, Walker said, “I do not think it is government policy to repress, intimidate or harass church groups.”74 Time and time again, Ambassador Walker defended Cristiani’s civilian government, all the time knowing that ESAF was a power beyond the president’s control. In December 1989, Walker stressed the ravages caused by the “violent left” in this country, that will do very nasty things to people. And I will do everything I can to make sure it never comes to power here. I would prefer a weak vacillating government that maybe isn’t all it should be [rather] than a FMLN government that will turn this place into another Cambodia.75

Walker was under instructions from Washington to stand by Cristiani. He knew that the problem lay in the impunity of the armed and security forces, as well as the weakness of the civilian authorities.76 Washington was placed in a critical dilemma over continued military aid to El Salvador. Although ESAF had eventually succeeded in forcing the FMLN to retreat from the capital city, fighting still continued in Usultan province in early December and casualties on both sides were high. The FMLN’s offensive had destroyed the assumption that ESAF would win eventually. The argument that time would bring success was negated by the strength and endurance of the guerilla forces. ESAF might claim that it was victorious, but the cost was high both in terms of men and in the economic damage to the country’s infrastructure.77 ESAF had failed both to detect the transfer of rocket launchers and heavy equipment into the capital city and had been unable to control that city at night. More significant was the loss of U.S. public support for the Salvadoran government. The credibility of the Cristiani government was at risk and the issue of human rights abuse in El Salvador returned to dominate headlines in the American press.78 In the opinion of the State Department, the investigation into the perpetrators of the Jesuit murders “remain[ed] a fundamental test for the effectiveness of U.S. policy toward El Salvador.”79 The murders revealed President Cristiani’s inability to control the extreme elements in the armed forces. His difficulty in pursuing the investigation and bringing to justice the members of the military High Command who had given the orders, demonstrated that ESAF’s leadership could still operate with impunity. The two officers who led the operation were quickly arrested and

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charged, but their superiors who planned and ordered the assassination remained unidentified until the UN Commission on the Truth published the evidence nearly four years later.80 Four days after the assassination, Deputy Secretary of State, Larry Eagleburger met with an ecumenical delegation, headed by the Jesuit President of Georgetown University, Father Leo O’Donovan. Eagleburger rejected the request of individual delegation members to end military aid to El Salvador, but he said that the Jesuit case “was a test for the Salvadoran government. If the Salvadorans failed the test, they would prove to be insupportable.”81 It became evident that the U.S. policy of unconditional support to the Salvadoran government was not as solid in Washington as Ambassador Walker’s public statements in San Salvador suggested. On November 17, the day after the murders, Assistant Secretary Bernie Aronson was due to testify before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on progress in the Salvadoran war. Instead, he found himself barraged by questions from Senators eager to know the latest development in the Jesuit case and the consequences of the FMLN offensive. The Hearing focused on the appropriate use of U.S. funds to change behavior in El Salvador. Senator John Kerry (D-Mass.) condemned the use of military aid for the training of and equipment for ESAF. He called for the suspension of all military aid that he believed “has opened up a sense of license.”82 This permissiveness had encouraged ESAF to continue their abuse of the Salvadoran population. Kerry called for the termination of military aid in order to warn the Salvadoran military that the U.S. would no longer tolerate brutal repression. Aronson, on the other hand, sought to use U.S. aid as leverage to support a civilian president who was committed publicly to seeking a cease-fire and had talked privately about a negotiated solution. In Aronson’s opinion, U.S. monies strengthened the hand of a moderate president against extremists within his own party, as well as ESAF’s High Command.83 This argument represented the continuation of an old policy by which U.S. funding had given President Duarte the support he needed in debates with both ESAF and the conservatives in El Salvador. Aronson now added an important nuance, namely the disbursement of aid to pressure Cristiani into pursuing a mediated, political solution.84 In November 1989, that variance appeared negligible; it would prove critical in the second year of the peace negotiations. Until then, change was barely perceptible. Both Kerry and Aronson recognized the influence that U.S. monies could exercise upon the government of a small country with a population in 1989 of 5.2 million, crammed within an area that was smaller than Kerry’s own state of Massachusetts. However, the Senate and the State Department sought to use appropriated funds for distinct purposes. Kerry sought to destroy the Salvadoran military. Aronson sought to bolster a civilian president who had committed both to pursue negotiations without preconditions for the FMLN,85 and to seek out the perpetrators of the Jesuit murders.86 Both these purposes brought the civilian president into collision with ESAF’s High Command. Whereas in the past, the U.S. Congress had agreed that ESAF should be supported to prevent a communist victory by the guerilla forces, the Jesuits’ murder coupled with ESAF’s relative weakness in the face of the FMLN November offensive forced both the Bush administration and Congress to question its support for the Salvadoran military.87 Furthermore, the decline in Soviet

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influence was dramatically demonstrated in the destruction of the Berlin Wall that began on November 9. The reduction in the communist threat and the brutality of the Salvadoran military continued the process of distancing Washington’s politics from the Central American debacle. Secretary Baker was prepared to negotiate a compromise with members of Congress in order to maintain his Bipartisan Accord. These negotiations would require months of bargaining and continue to be characterized by frustration.

Dual Approach: Pressure and Protect President Cristiani Within the U.S. government, tension was high. According to Ambassador Walker, he faced inexhaustible pressure from Aronson to find the culprits. Several times a day, Aronson called Walker demanding that he put further pressure on Cristiani.88 Peter Romero, then the State Department’s Desk Officer for El Salvador believed that Cristiani could not pursue the investigation into ESAF, because “he needed them [ESAF’s High Command] to control the right wing.”89 Cristiani had to play a dangerous balancing game between the extreme right-wing groups and U.S. demands to bring to justice the masterminds of the Jesuit murders. In Romero’s opinion, Cristiani was “essentially dependent upon the Salvadoran armed forces.”90 Geraldo Le Chevalier, a deputy from the Christian Democratic Party (PDC) and the former liaison between President Duarte and ESAF believed that Cristiani knew beforehand of the military’s attack on UCA because he had been present at a critical meeting of the High Command held on November 13. In Le Chevalier’s opinion, Cristiani was cognizant that the High Command had made the decision to eliminate the Jesuits.91 “They knew that the FMLN offensive was coming. They waited. They would eliminate Leftist sympathizers. They would be caught like rats in a trap.”92 In his opinion, the attack on the UCA campus had been planned well beforehand, but Cristiani had been helpless to stop it. Aronson firmly disagreed with Le Chevalier’s assumption.93 In his January 1990 testimony before Congress, Aronson defended Cristiani’s government against the brutality of the FMLN.94 However, he also condemned the action of the U.S.-trained Atlacatl Battalion, which “were responsible for the Mozote massacre in ’81, four massacres in ’83, the last major massacres of the war in ’84,”95 In the case of the Jesuit murders, Aronson noted that Again, it is the Atlacatl, the unit that was the pride of U.S. training effort established by the United States, trained and extensively armed that is in the business of killing priests —I cannot think of anything more serious.96

He stressed their atrocity, but in the immediate aftermath of the murders, Aronson continued the previous policy of supporting Salvador’s government. That support, demonstrated two months earlier in the passage of the $85 million aid for El Salvador, was conditioned, minimally.97 Over the next six months, intense negotiations ensued in the Senate over military aid for El Salvador. All funds marked for Salvador in fiscal year 1991 were

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jeopardized by the Jesuit case. Senator Kerry proposed a suspension of all military aid until Cristiani opened peace negotiations.98 Senator Dodd’s bill tied future aid to Salvadoran efforts to negotiate an end to the civil war.99 In this, he had worked on a compromise with Aronson. Under Dodd’s bill, all aid to Salvador would cease if Cristiani was overthrown. This sent a clear message to ESAF’s High Command not to plan a coup d’état against the civilian leadership. Furthermore, U.S. aid would be halved if the FMLN were forced to negotiate from a position that was severely restricted. In other words, Dodd’s bill required the Salvadoran government to accept the political status of the FMLN as a legitimate party to any negotiations. His bill strengthened Aronson’s insistence on finding a political settlement. Where they differed was in Aronson’s determination to support the civilian president and provide him with leverage over ESAF’s High Command. In the wake of Congressman Joe Moakley’s investigation into the Jesuit murders, Congress imposed stronger conditions for any future military aid to El Salvador.100 The restraints of the Cold War were ending and the context for U.S support to the Salvadoran government had changed with Gorbachev’s agreement to cooperate in Central America.101 Conditionality was used to influence both the Salvadoran government and the FMLN. In the debate over the 1991 Foreign Aid bill, Congress proposed that 50 percent of the requested $85 million would be withheld if the FMLN refused to negotiate, or took action to escalate the violence that resulted in human rights abuse. Furthermore, 100 percent would be withheld if the Salvadoran government refused to negotiate, failed to investigate the Jesuit case, or abused human rights.102 The administration accepted the reality that U.S. funding should now be used as leverage to change Salvadoran behavior. No longer did the State Department mount an all-out effort to save aid for El Salvador.103 However, one year later in November 1990 when the FMLN launched another, less ferocious offensive, Aronson released $48.1 million that had been withheld.104 The Bush administration might pressure Cristiani to participate seriously in the UN-mediated peace negotiations, but Aronson did not envisage the military defeat of the government. In Aronson’s opinion, if Cristiani made the decision to pursue negotiations with the FMLN, at great risk to his own survival, he needed the unswerving U.S. support.105 Baker and Aronson knew that military victory was impossible. Therefore, a political settlement had to be pursued, but in Aronson’s judgment, military aid was the only effective leverage that Washington held.106 Consequently, in order to provide Cristiani with muscle to bargain with ESAF, Washington resumed military support to the Salvadoran government. U.S. Government Attitude Toward UN mediation In December 1989, Alvaro de Soto, the Special Representative of the UN Secretary General assumed a quiet role as a go-between between the Salvadoran government and the FMLN. On December 11, he attended the summit meeting of Central American presidents at San Isidro de Coronado in Costa Rica. Cresencio Arcos, the U.S. observer to the presidential summit, conversed with de Soto at the December meeting, but the presence of a mid-level official was the extent of Washington’s support for a negotiated, political settlement with the FMLN-FDR. Direct negotiations

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with the FMLN necessarily implied recognition of the guerillas as a legitimate party to the talks. This recognition was not given explicitly, but granted implicitly through the acceptance of political negotiations between the guerilla forces and the Salvadoran government.107 Washington was not yet ready to pressure Cristiani into recognition of the FMLN as a legitimate party. Furthermore, in response to the UN Secretary General’s invitation extended to both the Salvadoran government and the FMLN-FDR to come to New York to begin peace talks, the State Department appeared ambivalent. Thomas Pickering, the U.S. Permanent Representative to the UN, and a key player in the future negotiations involving the UN, waited one month before responding to Perez de Cuellar’s letter inviting U.S. participation in the negotiations.108 The reason was not so much hesitancy over FMLN involvement in peace negotiations as Cristiani’s wariness over FMLN’s inclusion and the nature of UN mediation. Neither Pickering nor Aronson wished to get out in front of Cristiani, or to press him too hard. In early 1990, they were not yet ready to exert undue pressure on the Salvadoran president. The delicate balance with ESAF’s High Command required protection of Cristiani rather than strong insistence that he begin UN-mediated talks. Throughout 1990, the U.S. government closely observed the progress of the UN dialogue, but did not participate. In Salvador, Walker retained his close relationship with Cristiani. In Washington, Aronson pressed for the investigation into the Jesuit murders, but combined public pressure with quiet telephone calls of assurance and brief visits to Cristiani in San Salvador. In New York, Ambassador Pickering maintained consistent support for the Salvadoran president. Pressure upon the military High Command to identify the masterminds of the Jesuits murder was less important than the protective policy for Cristiani. El Diario de Hoy, the daily conservative newspaper with the highest circulation in El Salvador, painted the U.S. government as the enemy, and intense grumbling against Washington from within the High Command grew louder.109 Among Salvadoran conservatives, the U.S. government was viewed as interfering in domestic affairs. In Washington, there appeared little change: the State Department ignored the criticism and Cristiani continued to receive wholehearted support. Consequently, less than full energy was devoted to pursuing the investigation into the masterminds of the Jesuit murders. The Embassy appeared to be satisfied with the conviction of Colonel Guillermo Benavides, the officer who led the assault on UCA and its Jesuit leadership. To the members of Congressman Moakley’s staff, the Embassy made insufficient effort to find the decision makers within the High Command.110 Washington Steps Up Pressure for a Negotiated Solution More than a year passed before Washington made a significant shift in its policy toward El Salvador. The cause of that adjustment was not related to events in El Salvador, but to changes in Soviet foreign policy. On March 16, 1991, Secretary Baker and Soviet Foreign Minister, Aleksandr A. Bessmertnykh conferred in Washington and drafted a statement that strongly endorsed the Salvadoran negotiating process and urged the UN Secretary General to press forward in his role as

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mediator.111 Testing the parameters of their new cooperation in Central America, Bessmertnykh and Baker made a joint approach not only to Javier Perez de Cuellar, but also to their respective allies in El Salvador. They called upon both protagonists to reach an agreement on constitutional changes. They also called upon the FMLN to enter into a cease-fire by the agreed deadline of May 15, 1991. This joint declaration represented a significant departure from the traditional U.S. policy of excluding the Soviets from the hemisphere, and established a precedent for future joint action in the months ahead. The former sponsors of the respective warring parties in El Salvador sought to become the ringmasters of a peace process. In April that year, the Salvadoran Catholic Church noticed a change in the attitude of visiting U.S. officials. In a press conference, the Auxiliary Bishop of San Salvador, Monsignor Gregorio Rosa Chavez observed that “neither General Colin Powell, nor Assistant Secretary Aronson had visited El Salvador to sample typical Salvador cuisine. Rather, they had come to apply pressure in favor of the peace negotiation.”112 This statement reflected public appreciation for the new policy, as well as recognition that Cristiani’s government remained dependent upon Washington and “did not enjoy fully self determination, nor complete sovereignty.”113 At the April 1991 negotiations in Mexico City, Aronson pressed Cristiani to make concessions on the reform of ESAF. Aronson neither drafted language, nor attended the meetings, but he worked closely with his old friend Fidel Chavez Mena of the PDC, to develop language that was acceptable to both sides.114 U.S. policy was shifting as the State Department sought a new role with which to nudge the negotiations forward. It was no longer good enough to stand beside the Salvadoran president. From the spring of 1991, significant U.S. influence was directed at the presidency and ESAF’s High Command to accelerate the peace process. In so doing, the State Department was prepared to take into account some, but not all, of the FMLN positions. State Department Outreach to the FMLN Earlier that year, Baker authorized Aronson and his deputies to make direct contact with representatives of the FMLN. In January 1991, Peter Romero, then the Salvadoran Desk Officer at the Department of State, made the first direct contact with Roberto Cañas of the Resistencia Nacional (RN), in Mexico City.115 At the end of August, Ambassador Walker visited Santa Marta, the repatriation camp for guerilla forces that had sought refuge in Honduras during the early years of the war.116 Accompanied by Richard McCall, from the Senate Foreign Relations Committee staff and Leonel Gomez, an unofficial advisor to Congressman Moakley, Walker spent the night in Santa Marta and listened to the demands of the RN.117 This was a turning point in relations between the guerillas and the U.S. government.118 In the minds of the FMLN, the visit established a relationship with the Embassy, an institution with which the FMLN had held no previous contact.119 The visit was followed up by a luncheon at Ambassador Walker’s residence for leaders of the FMLNFDR, and Embassy vehicles were sent to Santa Marta to ferry their representatives into San Salvador.120 Under instruction from Washington, Walker established direct communication with the guerilla leaders.

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In August 1991, the U.S. and Soviet foreign ministers once again reiterated their commitment to seek a negotiated settlement to Salvador’s civil war. Both noted that no advance had occurred since the constitutional amendments in April that year. They feared that without progress, “the major gains made in the peace process were put at risk.”121 Baker and Bessmertnykh urged the UN, other international organizations, as well as countries outside the region, including Cuba, to intensify their efforts to resolve the remaining political problems, ensure a ceasefire and finally settle the conflict in El Salvador peacefully.122

As crises erupted in Kuwait and the Balkans, both Washington and Moscow sought to conclude a peace agreement in El Salvador and concentrate on more urgent problems. In pursuit of this, the State Department was willing to involve Cuba, a rotating member of the UN Security Council, to pressure the FMLN toward a cease-fire and conclusion of the negotiations. That summer, Alvaro de Soto acknowledged for the first time that U.S. diplomats, both at the UN and in Washington, had become firm supporters of a negotiated political settlement.123 In late August 1991, Aronson and Pickering pressured Cristiani and ESAF’s leadership to fly to New York where they might negotiate directly with the FMLN-FDR at the UN headquarters.124 The only way to reach a conclusion was to move the negotiations to a place where the Secretary General, rather than his Special Representative, could exercise more influence.125 With renewed intensity, Baker, Aronson, Pickering, and the Deputy Permanent Representative, Alexander Watson used the UN to compel both sides into agreement. Cristiani did not always concur. He resented the pressure from de Soto, but had to accept U.S. pressure to accelerate the talks and reach a final agreement.

Approach of a Real Deadline That pressure increased significantly from September 1991 onward as Washington anticipated the end of Perez de Cuellar’s term as UN Secretary General. According to UN custom, his successor should come from Africa and would not necessarily hold the same dedication to resolving Central American wars.126 A real deadline of December 31 approached and only Perez de Cuellar’s personal engagement in the process could ensure satisfactory conclusion of the negotiations. To achieve this, Baker’s team reached out to the Soviets and the Mexicans; both had leverage with the FMLN-FDR. Alexander Watson also reached out to the Cuban ambassador to the UN who, since January 1991, had a seat on the Security Council as a rotating member. In response to Watson’s call, Ambassador Ricardo Alarcon neither gave an explicit commitment of support, nor did the Cuban government impede the negotiations.127 From Washington’s perspective, the Cubans had shifted gear into neutral. Baker, Aronson, and Pickering pressured Cristiani to concede on the issue of a cease-fire. Talks should continue while the FMLN continued to fight. This represented a major change from the previous policy of insisting on a two-stage process

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by which no substantive concessions would be made before the FMLN stopped firing. Now, Aronson proposed that the two stages be compressed so that the negotiations continued without a cease-fire. The cease-fire should come into effect only when the negotiations were completed successfully.128 To reach an agreement before Perez de Cuellar’s departure from office, Washington was prepared to make significant concessions and obliged Cristiani to follow suit. Aronson, Walker, and Pickering became forceful mediators nudging the Salvadoran government into unpalatable negotiating positions. With the Mexican government pressuring the FMLN and Washington insisting on expedient new tactics, progress was achieved. Together, the external powers persuaded their respective allies to conclude the final agreement a little after midnight of December 31, 1991, allowing Perez de Cuellar to fly out of New York that night.129 U.S. pressure on Cristiani increased significantly during the implementation phase of the accords. Aronson continued his frequent visits to Salvador to demonstrate continued support for the civilian presidency, but he also stressed the need to move forward with the creation of the new police force and training academy. In this, Aronson was cognizant of the FMLN’s need to find jobs for its combatants in the new police force. The nature of implementing the peace accords resulted in Washington pressuring the Salvadoran president, and ESAF’s High Command to undertake measures that the latter would not have done on their own. After the Chapultepec Accords of January 1992, the U.S. government pressured both the FMLN and the Salvadoran government to comply with their agreements and their timetable. By 1992, Washington had moved from being an ally of Cristiani—if not an accessory in the war—to becoming a partial mediator. The U.S. government was never neutral. It sought to put the Salvadoran conflict behind it and, therefore, applied the pressure of a mediator to reach a peace agreement.

Chapter 6

External Influences on the Negotiations to End the War in El Salvador Despite protestations from the leadership of the Frente Farabundo Marti de Liberación Nacional (FMLN) that the decade-long civil war in El Salvador was an internal struggle with only external ramifications,1 both the Salvadoran government and the FMLN and its partner, the Frente Democrática Revolucionario (FDR) recognized that U.S. support for the former, as well as Cuban and Soviet support for the latter played significant roles in the generation and, later, the ending of that conflict. Salvador Samayoa, the leader of the FMLN’s comisión negociadora (diplomatic and political commission) emphasized the internal nature of Salvador’s conflict, but he was also cognizant of the Cold War’s impact on Latin America. In Samayoa’s opinion, El Salvador had become a pawn in the geopolitical contest between the superpowers. “Los Estados Unidos estaban viendo a América Latina como una pieza del ajedrez geopolítico en su confrontación global con la Unión Soviética . . .”2 (The United States was viewing Latin America as a geopolitical pawn in its global confrontation with the Soviet Union.) As the Cold War wound down, the shifting and uncertain dynamic between the Soviet Union and the U.S. affected the strategic decisions of both protagonists to El Salvador’s civil war. In December 1988, Mikhail Gorbachev announced the withdrawal of support for Third-World revolutionary movements, and the incoming Bush administration sought to resolve the Central American wars directly with Moscow. The agreements of the superpowers to the Cold War continued to affect assumptions that the Salvadoran government and the FMLN made regarding external support. The FMLN viewed Soviet withdrawal as providing positive assurance to Washington; assurances that enabled the State Department to lean on President Cristiani to seek a negotiated solution.3 At the same time, both the Kremlin and Washington pressed their respective allies to seek a negotiated outcome, to achieve a cease-fire and reduce the ideological tensions in Central America. Both the governments of El Salvador

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and Nicaragua were subjected to significant external pressure to resolve their internal conflict and to make peace. Indirectly, the Soviets exerted influence on the FMLN, but caused a contradictory response: mount a major military offensive in the hope that internal mobilization would make external support unnecessary. The Salvadoran government recognized that external forces played a critical role in their war. Without continued U.S. military, economic, and political support, the government could not sustain the daily destruction of infrastructure, agricultural and industrial production, and transportation. U.S. external support played a more critical role in the planning of Salvadoran government strategists than was the case for the FMLN’s reliance on Cuba and Nicaragua. Without Washington’s support, the centrist governments of Napoleon Duarte and its successor, the conservative government of Alfredo Cristiani would have collapsed. Beginning in 1989, Washington used its leverage to persuade Cristiani to seek a negotiated solution. One year earlier, the Soviets had begun to pressure the Sandinista government of Nicaragua to both seek a political solution with the Contras and to limit support to the FMLN. Under Mikhail Gorbachev, Moscow now sought cooperation, not continued confrontation, with Washington.4 Therefore, as Secretary General of the Soviet Communist Party, Gorbachev announced: ● ● ●

economic policy reforms through perestroika; opening of the political system through glasnost; and “new thinking” that both demilitarized and de-ideologized Soviet support for national liberation movements.

These changes, and particularly the third policy, affected the internal forces within Nicaragua and El Salvador. Moscow significantly curtailed its support for the Sandinista government in Nicaragua, thereby stalling the flow of arms and ammunition to the FMLN. Moscow also sought to restrain Cuba’s support for national liberation movements, including those in Central America, but Fidel Castro demonstrated public stubbornness in his determination to continue support for revolutionary movements. However, his capacity to supply armaments and to influence events declined gradually from 1988 onward. Cuba remained a player throughout the negotiation and implementation phase of the peace process, but one with diminished influence.5 Fidel Castro’s global stature as the leader of the nonaligned movement allowed him to withstand, if not rebut, reformist pressures from Moscow. As a result, the period from 1988 onward was marked by increased tension between Moscow and Havana. Schafik Handal, leader of the Partido Comunista de El Salvador (PCS) was fully aware of the split and sought to use that tension to his advantage.6 He had maintained relations with Moscow for several years and developed a certain skill in handling their advice. Handal now resisted direct pressure from Moscow, maintained communication with Castro, and maximized his relations with the Sandinistas in Nicaragua until the Soviets curtailed that source of support. The Soviets supported the Salvadoran communist party and its allies gathered in the FMLN through Cuba and Nicaragua. El Salvador’s war represented a classic

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struggle of national liberation against imperial forces and their surrogate, the Salvadoran state. For the members of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (PCSU), the war in El Salvador represented the defense of “proletarian internationalism” and justified the disbursement of funds to be channeled through two sources, Cuba and Nicaragua. Castro proposed the creation of the unified movement, the FMLN and remained its unflinching supporter and adviser. He desisted from providing frontline services or material aid to the FMLN, but his government continued to provide moral support and political advice.7 It also continued to supply Soviet arms to the Sandinistas and, through them, to the FMLN.8 Both during the war and throughout the struggle to negotiate a peace agreement, distinct international actors interacted with the Salvadoran government and with the FMLN-FDR. This chapter examines the evolving nature of Soviet pressure upon Cuba and Nicaragua with consequences for the FMLN-FDR, and the Mexican government’s direct influence on the insurgent forces. If the Cold War conflict had exacerbated El Salvador’s civil war, to what degree did the end of that war impact the winding down of the Salvadoran conflict? What role did the Soviet Union and Cuba play in the search for a negotiated settlement? If their strategies were distinct, how did the contradictions between Moscow and Havana affect the political process in San Salvador and Managua? Furthermore, with the withdrawal of Soviet interest and the reduction in U.S. commitment to El Salvador’s Armed Forces (ESAF), what role did the Mexican government play in the movement toward a negotiated peace? In Part I, we shall examine the role of the Soviet Union and Cuba. In Part II, we shall examine Mexico’s role.

Part I I.

FMLN Relations with Moscow

Historically, the Soviets had exercised minimal direct influence on the PCS. Schafik Handal had visited Moscow twice where he had been asked to proceed step-by-step in forming the vanguard for revolution and preparing to mobilize social classes.9 When the FMLN assumed a strategy of violence, including attacks on polling booths in the presidential elections of 1988, Moscow admonished the FMLN.10 However, the impact appears to have been insignificant. Handal was too independent to rely upon Moscow’s advice and preferred a cautious and continuous relationship with Fidel Castro. For Handal and FMLN’s political and diplomatic leaders, Gorbachev’s reforms were more important for their effect on the U.S. government. If U.S. policy toward the government of El Salvador changed as a result of assurances received from Moscow, then the FMLN might find a more pliant opponent.11 Within a Cold War paradigm, Gorbachev’s decision to de-ideologize support for wars of national liberation removed the need for Washington to brace Cristiani and ESAF. Were Cristiani to receive less support, he might be obliged to accommodate FMLN demands. However, Handal failed to appreciate the distinct approaches that Washington held toward ESAF and toward the civilian president. He was correct in hypothesizing that Washington no longer needed a strong Salvadoran military.

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He erred in assuming that the U.S. Embassy would dilute its backing for President Cristiani. II.

FMLN Relations with Cuba

The FMLN relied upon the Cubans “not very much in terms of arms but in terms of keeping people there, allowing a facility for the FMLN people to move around to meetings . . . ”12 Cuba provided logistical and moral support that had been critical throughout the civil war. As the FMLN moved toward a negotiated solution, the relationship with Havana weakened because Castro did not support a negotiated solution unless it was proposed from a position of military strength. The “final offensive” of November 1989 failed to give the FMLN that superiority. III.

FMLN Relations with the Sandinista Government of Nicaragua

The support of the Sandinista government in Nicaragua was critical to the FMLN comandantes. In the capital city of Managua, a command–and-control center played an important role in coordinating both military and political strategy.13 Approximately 800 Salvadorans resided in Nicaragua, many of whom worked with the FMLN.14 Also, military weapons from the Soviet bloc, such as surface-to-air missiles (SAMs) were funneled to the FMLN through Nicaragua and any curtailment of those arms would impact military capability.15 SAMs were sold to the Sandinista government, which then resold them to the FMLN.16 IV. Soviet Relations with Nicaragua

Nicaragua provided the logistical command and communication base for the FMLN throughout El Salvador’s civil war. From the early days of the Sandinista regime, ties between the Soviet bloc and Nicaragua progressed “into the realms of inter-party affairs, military assistance, and economic relations.”17 Military assistance was discretely directed toward the new Sandinista government through third parties, notably Cuba.18 The principal Soviet purpose was the defense of the Sandinista government against the U.S.-supported Nicaraguan Contras, but the weakening of the Salvadoran government and the strengthening of the FMLN were considered an integral part of the Sandinista security strategy.19 Economic aid was less forthcoming with Soviet concern that the Sandinistas had inadequate economic means to support their bold political aspirations.20 Therefore, although Moscow’s contribution was relatively small (totaling only $7.9 million from 1979 to 1982), economic support from Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, and East Germany increased significantly in the following two years. By 1985, U.S. sources estimated Nicaragua had received nearly $500 million from Cuba, North Korea, and Soviet allies in Eastern Europe.21 The Soviet Union supplied most of Nicaragua’s petroleum needs, making the Sandinista government dependent upon the Soviet Union for its oil.22 Through parliamentary and official visits to the nine-member Sandinista government, the Soviets exercised a “greater control than usually exists in the diplomatic relations between a great power

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like the USSR and a dependent nation.”23 Consequently, Nicaraguan President, Daniel Ortega was vulnerable to shifts in Soviet foreign and economic policy. V. Soviet Relations with Cuba

The Soviet Union’s relations with Cuba formed a more complex and enduring relationship. Since 1980, the island received an average annual support of $4.5 billion. This represented half of Moscow’s international aid program.24 The funds were distributed in the form of subsidized oil and the purchase of Cuban sugar and nickel at preferential prices. In the early 1980s, Cuba’s trade with Moscow moved into deficit, but the Kremlin continued to provide low-interest loans with Cuban payment in goods rather than cash to cover the difference.25 Trade agreements, made in the early 1980s lasted for ten years and represented Soviet reciprocity for Havana’s advocacy of Soviet interests. For Moscow, Castro’s Cuba represented a strategic and military asset. Cuba not only supplied troops for revolutionary movements in Congo, Angola, and Namibia, but advised and supplied armaments to social movements in Grenada and Central America, including El Salvador. Castro held great prestige in Moscow’s thinking, although he was also considered stubborn and difficult to persuade.26 In March 1985, that long-term commitment to Castro was tested when the newly elected Secretary General of the CPSU, Mikhail Gorbachev began a broad rethinking of Soviet policies toward the U.S. and the Third World. After the November 1985 Geneva Summit, Gorbachev announced that he was prepared to reorder the Leninist principle—that the core dynamic of international politics was created by the struggle between two social systems, capitalism and socialism.27 This principle had provided the philosophical basis for Soviet support to Third-World revolutions. National liberation struggles, once the excuse of Soviet commitments and intrusions, were now viewed as a vast drain on the pitiful resources of developing countries and a “catalyst to local and international tensions.”28 At the 27th Party Congress of the Supreme Soviet in February 1986, Secretary Gorbachev announced that the military dimension of national security was no longer central. Rather threats to national well-being were economic and political concerns, not military issues. Confrontation through regional conflicts in the Third World would no longer be given a central position.29 The new Soviet attitude toward Castro developed into a balancing act in which continued economic and military support was weighed against the strong urge to reform and adapt to the new perestroika (economic restructuring) and glasnost (political opening). The Soviets believed that Castro should be persuaded of the necessities of reform and not bullied into submission. The use of force or economic sanctions to force change in Cuba were considered counterproductive.30 Despite the growing concern at the economic support that the island required and Castro’s unwillingness to deregulate and diversify the Cuban economy out of sugar production, Castro continued to represent a strategic and military asset. In developing a policy toward the island, Gorbachev had to balance the need to reduce Soviet financial payments with the strong commitment by Moscow’s conservatives and the Soviet military toward Fidel Castro. They remained committed to the defense of the island. Castro’s own philosophy and leadership style, as well as the conservatives

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within the Soviet Union, limited Gorbachev’s capacity to persuade Castro to adopt perestroika, glasnost and its “new thinking.” Early in his tenure as Secretary General, Gorbachev had indicated that the Soviet Union would no longer subsidize the Cuban economy through the purchase of sugar and nickel at inflated prices.31 At Gorbachev’s insistence, the leaders of the Cuban economy should contract with the Soviet managers of formerly state-owned enterprises, and decisions should be made on economic criteria not political favoritism. In the opinion of Yuri Pavlov, the Foreign Ministry’s Undersecretary for Cuba and Latin American Affairs, perestroika would progressively undermine the Soviet Union’s capacity to meet its economic commitments to Cuba.32 In the Soviet Union, commercial decisions were progressively decentralized and government departments were no longer the key economic decision makers. According to Pavlov, Castro was informed that he should now negotiate with the heads of industrial enterprises and not with the Soviet bureaucracy.33 Consequently, Castro had to determine the effect on the Cuban economy and on his ability to continue supporting proletarian internationalism. He concluded that “perestroika was acting like the AIDS virus, destroying the immunological defense of the socialist political system.”34 According to Pavlov, who subsequently left the Soviet Foreign Ministry to become a lecturer at the University of Miami, Castro was particularly concerned by Gorbachev’s glasnost, specifically concerning freedom of the press.35 The prospect of uncensored news reporting violated the long-established tradition of reporting only positive accounts of events. Beginning in late 1987, East European socialist states reported on the situation in Cuba and Castro’s policies in highly critical terms, particularly on human rights. In October 1989, Castro sought to influence their writing by hosting the annual meeting of journalists from socialist countries. There, he tried unsuccessfully to influence their reporting by calling for “a new ethic which would consider unacceptable an exclusive or exaggerated use of Western sources when writing about events in a socialist country.”36 Two years later, Castro wrote in a Granma editorial that, “All those concepts and ideas . . . are shaping today’s tragedy in the Soviet Union.”37 Castro believed that strong and determined leadership to pursue an international proletarian revolution would be constrained by critical reporting. His capacity to influence events and advocate solutions would be undermined by alternative ideas that would confuse people, if not weaken their resolve. Also, Castro’s support for social and revolutionary movements might be questioned in the media, reducing his ability to quietly advise and indirectly resupply. In short, a freer press would constrain his freedom of action. It would also expose Castro to criticism about the high cost of Soviet support for Cuba and its foreign policy in Central America. Castro might be dependent on the Soviet bloc to service its economic needs, but he refused to succumb to pressure on the nature of Cuban relations with third parties.38 VI. Gorbachev Terminates Support for Third-World Revolutionary Movements

In his December 7, 1988 address before the U.N. General Assembly, Gorbachev called for noninterference in the socio-political development of each state, tolerance for diverse systems, and the impropriety of “attempts to look down on others and

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to teach them one’s own brand of democracy . . . ”39 In this, Gorbachev appeared to reiterate the call for noninterference in the internal affairs of each state: a call welcome to Washington in Eastern Europe, but critical of U.S. action in both El Salvador and Nicaragua. Gorbachev recognized that “there is no escaping the need to find a balance of interest within an international framework . . .”40 A new constellation of forces was emerging that required the de-ideologizing of relations among states and the pragmatic advancement of national interest. Support for third-world revolutionary movements could no longer be sustained, and individual states had to pursue their own economic interests through engagement with western, capitalist nations. Gorbachev went on to highlight the interaction of capitalist and socialist states and their need for mutual cooperation “in an interdependent world it is cooperation in defense of universal values, not conflict between capitalism and socialism that is at the heart of the international system.”41 In elaborating upon his “new thinking,” Gorbachev redefined the Soviet role in the world and based Soviet security upon the “settlement of regional conflicts and the removal of irritants in relations with other states.”42 These words represented more than a veiled warning to Fidel Castro, the Sandinista government in Nicaragua, and the Salvadoran FMLN.43 VII.

Evolving Soviet Policy toward Cuba

How could Castro be persuaded to change? How would Gorbachev’s reforms impact Cuba’s policy toward Central America in general and El Salvador in particular? Gorbachev believed that the preferred manner of persuading Castro of the need to change was to convince the Cuban leader by means of personal, in-depth discussions on Soviet reforms. In the process, it was assumed that their expedience would lead Castro to understand the need for changes in Cuba’s economic and social problems.44 According to Pavlov, the Foreign Ministry believed that “it was dangerous to drive Fidel into a corner because he could react unpredictably and unwanted surprises had to be avoided, given Moscow’s interests in Cuba.”45 Therefore, despite irritation with Castro’s economic policies, the growing trade deficit, and the ongoing dimensions of Soviet aid programs there was neither a cutback on the delivery of oil, nor a reduction in the subsidy on Cuban sugar.46 The shipment of military armaments also continued. Cuba held a special place in the Soviet system and Gorbachev believed that Castro could not be forced to adopt “new thinking” through sanctions. Moscow made no threats to Castro and a steady stream of senior Soviet officials maintained the special relationship with the Cuban government. Gorbachev’s visit to Havana in April 1989 to sign the first-ever Soviet Treaty of Friendship and Commerce with Cuba was notable for the restatement of Soviet/ Cuban friendship, as well as Gorbachev’s public praise for Fidel Castro.47 However, behind the public assurances, the talks between the two leaders “at times resembled a dialogue of the deaf.”48 Gorbachev failed to move Castro from his entrenched position to influence events in Central America or to affect the nature of Cuban relations with third parties.49 This was an obstacle to Gorbachev’s efforts to seek a new relationship of cooperation with the new Bush administration in Washington. In his April 1989 visit to Havana, Gorbachev delivered a crucial speech to the Cuban National Assembly. The message was intended for a wider audience that

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included the Sandinista government and the FMLN. In it, Gorbachev banned the export of revolution. We are resolutely opposed to any theories and doctrines justifying the export of revolution or counter-revolution, all forms of foreign interference in the affairs of sovereign states.50

Ten days later, Gennadi Gerasimov, the Soviet Foreign Ministry spokesman commented on the Soviet willingness to negotiate with the U.S. to “reduce or eliminate the supply of arms to Central America [with the intent to create] a zone free of foreign military presence and arms.”51 Both the Sandinista government and the FMLN were told that the previous reliance on Soviet support in their respective struggled had ended. These statements confirmed measures that had already been taken to reduce Soviet confrontation with the U.S. in Central America. VIII.

Changing Soviet Policy Toward Nicaragua

Although Soviet pressure on Fidel Castro was carried out with a degree of nuance through personal persuasion and warnings of the changes taking place throughout the Warsaw bloc, Moscow’s pressure on President Ortega and the Sandinista government was direct and blunt. Gorbachev considered that the Nicaraguan economy could not support the Sandinista’s political goals.52 Political ambitions far outweighed the state’s economic capacity, and the Soviet Union was unwilling to underwrite all the aims of the Sandinista revolution. Within the Soviet Foreign Ministry, there existed a concern that Nicaragua had become another “tropical Marxist” state that depended economically on the Soviet Union to pursue its “adventurism.”53 Since March 1985, Ortega had sought personal meetings with Gorbachev, including a meeting in New York, in conjunction with the gathering of heads of state for the UN General Assembly. On every occasion, Ortega’s request to meet with Gorbachev was turned down.54 Gorbachev appeared to have little interest in deepening the relationship with Nicaragua. Instead, relations were maintained at the level of the Politburo and Foreign Ministry. Beginning in 1987, the Soviet Foreign Ministry urged Daniel Ortega to cooperate with the other Central American presidents in seeking a negotiated solution to the conflict both in Nicaragua and in El Salvador. At Moscow’s urging, Ortega attended the Central American summit in August 1987 at Esquipulas in Guatemala and joined the other leaders in condemning outside intervention in the hemisphere’s problems and committing to the democratic process. Moscow radio praised Ortega, but Castro was less sanguine, condemning him for acquiescence to U.S. pressure. The reality was that Ortega depended upon the Soviets for oil supplies. 100,000 tons were promised in 1987, but even that did not meet Nicaragua’s needs.55 Gorbachev had economic leverage with which to change the Sandinista’s behavior. The following year, the Soviets reduced oil deliveries to 70,000 tons as it exercised a policy of forcing the Sandinistas to seek a political solution with the Contras, avoid confrontation with the United States, and seek to diversify external aid through the development of private enterprise and West European capital. Ortega had minimum options and accepted the Soviet policy of demilitarizing regional conflicts.56

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Consistent with public pronouncements, Soviet deliveries of oil to Nicaragua were further reduced in 1988 to 60,000 tons and on May 6, 1989, Gorbachev wrote to President Bush that Soviet shipments of arms to the Sandinista government ceased at the end of 1988. It appeared that Moscow would go to great lengths to pressure Ortega into a negotiated settlement with the Contras and avoid confrontation with the United States. However, behind the public pronouncements, lay the reality of ample armaments delivered to Nicaragua since 1984. By publicly ending the shipment of arms, Moscow had not denied Managua and the FMLN the capacity to access ammunition or small arms, including SAMs. International weapons were already inside Nicaragua, and future deliveries of SAMs continued through Cuba in 1989 and 1990.57 Did this reflect a double-faced policy, or Gorbachev’s inability to constrain the conservative leadership within the Soviet Ministry of Defense? Retired General Brent Scowcroft, President Bush’s National Security Advisor believes that two explanations should be considered: first, Gorbachev was not a resolute man but rather a prevaricator; and second, Gorbachev was unable to control the conservative members of the CPSU (which included military leaders in the Soviet Defense Ministry).58 Gorbachev’s letter of May 6 may have been written with the genuine intent to demonstrate cooperation with the Bush administration. However, Gorbachev’s ability to deliver on his pledge of no further arms shipments was restrained by the Defense Ministry’s desire to maintain the Sandinista defenses against a U.S. ally, the Contras. In August 1989, President Ortega once again joined the Central American presidents at a summit meeting in Telamar, Honduras, to monitor progress on the Esquipulas Accord of the previous year. Confronted with the proposed linkage between Nicaraguan support for the FMLN in El Salvador and U.S. support for the Contras, Ortega objected to the proposed text and publicly walked out of the meeting. Moscow Radio praised this action.59 This support from Moscow appeared to contradict both Gorbachev’s statements in Havana and the Soviet spokesman’s comments in April that year.60 Did it suggest that Moscow was prepared to constrain Sandinista behavior so long as it remained consistent with both sides withdrawing their support from “irregular” forces in the hemisphere? Or, were there limits beyond which Gorbachev could not go as he sought to radically reform Soviet foreign policy? The short-term impact was that in August 1989 Moscow remained a factor in the dynamic of Central American politics. Rhetorical interventions with no economic consequence could be made at no cost to the Soviet economy. By his support for Ortega’s repudiation of the Central American presidents at Telamar, Gorbachev had demonstrated that the Soviet Union had neither withdrawn quietly nor fully from the hemisphere. The policy of reducing Soviet economic support for its allies in Central America was accompanied by an increase in the number of exchange visits by government and party officials between Managua and Moscow. These culminated in early October 1989 with the two-day visit of Soviet Foreign Minister Edward Shevardnadze to Managua.61 The FMLN leadership was invited to attend. Shevardnadze warned Ortega that the existing Soviet economic aid, estimated at about $465 million a year, “would have to be reorganized to make it more efficient.”62 Also the transfer of

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heavy armaments was suspended indefinitely. Third, the resupply of ammunition and light arms would only be undertaken publicly.63 Ortega was encouraged to continue his outreach to Western Europe for capital investments and the diversification of the Nicaraguan economy. In this regard, Shevardnadze praised the Sandinista economic recovery program for its reliance on “traditional Western techniques for economic stabilization.”64 Taken together, the messages informed the Nicaraguan leadership of a significant withdrawal of Soviet support for its military engagements. Shevardnadze’s message to the FMLN leadership was also clear, La URSS apoya las iniciativas de negociación del FMLN y también esta dispuesta a mantener conversaciones con el gobierno salvadoreño para favorecer un acuerdo negociado en el país.65 (The Soviet Union supports the FMLN initiative to negotiate and is also ready to hold conversations with the Salvadoran government in order to support a negotiated agreement in the country.)

There was no reference to the necessity of U.S. military withdrawal of support for the Salvadoran government. Instead, the Soviets made a public and unilateral offer to pursue a diplomatic solution. With the ending of Soviet military support to the Sandinistas and the open declaration in favor of a political settlement, the FMLN was confronted with reduced military options, as well as Soviet public support for negotiations. Shevardnadze’s emphasis on the cost to the Soviet system of sustaining the Nicaraguan economy did not detract from Gorbachev’s earlier commitment with Secretary Baker to advance presidential elections in Nicaragua by one year.66 At a Moscow meeting in June 1989, Gorbachev reached an agreement with Washington on the following three points: ●

● ●

Improved U.S.-Nicaraguan relations would be based upon Sandinista compliance with the Esquipulas Accords negotiated under the leadership of Costa Rican President, Oscar Arias. Washington would accept a Sandinista victory if the contemplated election was free and fair by U.S. standards; and U.S. aid would flow to Central America, including Nicaragua, as a part of an overall regional settlement.67

Gorbachev accepted the proposal as a means of reducing, if not ending, Soviet Union economic support for Central America.68 Moscow and Washington had decided to de-ideologize and demilitarize the regional conflicts in the Americas. Moscow would not contest U.S. hegemony in the Americas, except in Cuba. IX.

Consequences of Gorbachev’s Reform Policies for the FMLN

How did these changes impact the FMLN? On the one hand, Schafik Handal interpreted Castro’s defiance in the face of Soviet pressure as a source of encouragement. He witnessed Castro’s public rejection of Soviet pressure to change Cuban policy toward wars of national liberation. On the other hand, Handal could read the tea

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leaves and anticipate the end of Soviet subsidies to the island. How long could the FMLN survive without Cuban support? Of equal interest was Handal’s interpretation of the fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989—an event with no direct consequence for Central America. Handal foresaw that the Salvadoran government would be emboldened by Gorbachev’s permission to Poland and East Germany to pursue their own models of governance.69 The victory of the anti-communist forces in East Germany strengthened the Salvadoran government’s commitment to wait out the inevitable weakening of the FMLN. In the face of this challenge, Handal persuaded the other comandantes that they should demonstrate their capacity to act and to mobilize new domestic supporters. Therefore, the “final offensive” planned for over two years had to be implemented.70 Should it fail, the FMLN would seek a political solution through negotiation.71 The fall of the Berlin Wall presented an all or nothing strategy for the FMLN: either mobilize popular support through a military offensive, or pursue a politically negotiated solution. Beginning on November 9, 1989 and lasting for several days, a broad range of German citizens attacked the Berlin Wall, which they saw as a symbol of repression. On November 11, the FMLN attacked San Salvador, including the U.S. Embassy. The comandantes had interpreted the withdrawal of Soviet support, not so much as a setback for their cause, but justification for Salvadoran government’s intransigence. Therefore, the FMLN had to demonstrate to ESAF that El Salvador’s popular movements would rise up in support. When this failed to occur after three weeks of sustained nightly occupation of the capital city, the comandantes fell back on their second option, diplomatic negotiations. In early December, the FMLN opened communication with the UN’s representative, Alvaro de Soto. The FMLN’s “final offensive” of November 1989 provoked international support for President Cristiani. The other Central American leaders, gathered at San Isidro de Coronado, Costa Rica, in December 1989, expressed their “most resolute condemnation of armed and terrorist activities in the region by irregular formations” and articulated their “resolute support” for the Salvadoran president. They continued “demonstrating their invariable policy of supporting the governments established as a result of democratic, pluralist, and popular processes.”72 Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega signed the final communiqué, thus declaring his abandonment of the FMLN. Under significant pressure from Moscow, he also agreed to end the use of Nicaraguan territory for the FMLN’s command, communication, and logistical activities.73 This was a radical move and both Fidel Castro and the FMLN leaders interpreted Ortega’s signature and actions as “an outright betrayal.”74 Castro sternly questioned Ortega, who made excuses and promised to furnish tangible proof of his continued solidarity with the FMLN.75 However, after the suspension of Soviet military supplies and the reduction in Soviet aid, Ortega had no room to maneuver. X.

Growing Soviet—U.S. Cooperation in Central America

Later in December 1989, the U.S. Southern Command attacked, captured, and flew out of the country in handcuffs, Panamanian President Manuel Noriega.

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The Nicaraguans, together with the Cubans, quickly condemned the attack. Aside from a rebuke out of Moscow, there was no negative consequence. The new Soviet-U.S. partnership on Central America now extended to Panama. The FMLN accused the Soviets of having made a deal that enabled Washington to flex its military might in Panama without serious consequences.76 Only the Mexican government expressed outrage, allowing Coca-Cola bottle attacks and street demonstrations in front of the U.S. Embassy. Also, the Mexican president briefly interrupted his discussions with Washington on a North American Free Trade Agreement.77 However, the consequence of U.S. militarism within the region was minimal. Cuba opposed, but Castro’s capacity to retaliate or irritate Washington was reduced by his conflict with Moscow. A further demonstration of the Soviet-U.S. cooperation was a February 9, 1990 meeting between Baker and Shevardnadze in Moscow. Regarding Central America, both Foreign Ministers signed a joint communiqué in which they gave “a mutual guarantee against the possibility of a breach in the democratic rules for the Nicaraguan elections by the loser.”78 In this message, the superpowers agreed to respect the outcome of those elections. The Cubans objected to the communiqué, suspecting that Washington would not keep its word if Ortega won, and would find some pretext to justify U.S. refusal to normalize relations with the Sandinistas. However, Gorbachev and Shevardnadze had ceased to consult with Castro regarding strategic decisions in the hemisphere. Cuban consent was no longer a “must” for any important Soviet move in Central America.79 XI.

Impact of Nicaraguan Elections on the FMLN leaders

The Sandinista loss of the Nicaraguan elections of February 25, 1990, was critical to Comandante Joaquin Villalobos.80 As head of the Ejército Revolucionario del Pueblo (ERP), Villalobos depended upon the Nicaraguan army and the Defense Chief, Humberto Ortega, for arms, “y en otra cantidad de cosas” (and a number of other things).81 According to Salvador Samayoa, a member of the comisión negociadora, the results of the Nicaraguan elections considerably weakened Villalobos “[el] se sintió demasiado debilitado” (he felt much weakened). In this state, Villalobos rejected moves toward negotiation with the Salvadoran government. Other FMLN comandantes also believed that the election results weakened them, creating the wrong time to enter into political dialogue with Cristiani.82 However, Schafik Handal believed that the loss of the Sandinistas and the victory for Violeta Chamorro, the opposition leader and widow of the slain publisher of La Prensa, gave further impetus to the Salvadoran government.83 If the Sandinistas could be defeated at the polls, external support for the FMLN would end and ESAF could overwhelm them. Therefore, a more resilient posture had to be adopted. In the early weeks of the UN-mediated dialogue, both the Salvadoran government and the FMLN argued their respective cases more forcefully and refused to compromise. Little progress was made and Handal remarked that “Las elecciones de Nicaragua retrasaron el proceso de negociación en El Salvador.”84 (The Nicaraguan elections delayed the negotiating process in El Salvador.) Samayoa reached a distinct conclusion from the Sandinista’s electoral defeat. He believed that the victory for Violeta Chamorro’s forces in Nicaragua would

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give greater assurances to the U.S. government.85 With the end of the Sandinista government, Washington could afford to pressure the Salvadoran government into a political settlement with the FMLN. In his opinion, Washington would no longer be concerned about the vulnerability of its clients in Central America. The conflicting positions among the FMLN comandantes contributed to serious disagreements among them in the early days of the negotiations with the UN Special Representative. In addition to the Salvadoran government’s entrenchment on policy matters, the FMLN internal disagreements contributed to the slow pace of negotiations in early 1990. Part II Role for the Mexican Government in Seeking a Negotiated Settlement

In the midst of the Soviet withdrawal from Central America, Gorbachev encouraged the Mexican and Venezuelan governments to actively resolve the Central American conflicts.86 Samayoa welcomed this move.87 Cristiani was less sanguine. The history of Mexican involvement in El Salvador’s civil war reflected a strong partiality by the governments of both Jose Lopez Portillo and Miguel de la Madrid toward the FMLN-FDR. Mexico had played an activist role in Central America throughout the 1980s. Both the governments of Presidents Jose Lopez Portillo (1976–1982) and Miguel de la Madrid (1982–1988) believed that the Mexican government had no option but to become involved in the struggles of the area, because the problems of immigration, refugees, and trade had strategic consequences. Jorge Montano, the Foreign Ministry’s Undersecretary for Global Affairs during the 1980s, emphasized the close nature of the socio-economic and political relations between Mexico and the countries of Central America. Seven years after El Salvador’s war had ended, Montano stated that, President Reagan also claimed that Central America was in the backyard of the United States. For us it was part of us. It was not a backyard. It’s part of us. We are so close, so integrated racially, culturally, politically, that for us it was unavoidable to work with them [Central American states].88

Mexico’s close involvement with Central America endured, but under President Salinas de Gortari (1988–1994), the government policy dramatically changed. Traditional Mexican Policy

In 1980, President Lopez Portillo offered office space in Mexico City to the Salvadoran guerillas and to Guillermo Ungo, the FDR’s social democratic leader.89 That same year, discussions were held under Castro’s auspices with five of the guerilla groups under the single umbrella of the FMLN.90 The Mexican government agreed to host both the FDR and the FMLN in Mexico and by 1983, Mexico had become “the most important center, a real venue for all these groups.”91 Earlier, and in keeping with his activist foreign policy Lopez Portillo joined with French President, Francois Mitterand, in the Joint French-Mexican Declaration of

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August 1981 that established a common position toward El Salvador. Together, they recognized the FMLN-FDR as a “representative political force” that should be directly involved in any political settlement.92 The Franco-Mexican statement also called for direct negotiations between the U.S.-backed government of Jose Napoleon Duarte and the FMLN, giving the Salvadoran rebels international legitimacy and a standing that they would never have achieved otherwise.93 That same month, Mexico joined with Venezuela to provide oil for the region at below market prices.94 In September 1981, both the Mexican and Venezuelan governments warned of the “grave situation” in both El Salvador and Nicaragua that had the potential to lead to a regional conflict. They called for “joint exploration” of ways to reduce tensions, but their call directed at Washington fell on deaf ears.95 In January 1983, representatives from Mexico and Venezuela joined diplomats from Panama and Colombia on the island of Contadora, off the Panamanian coast, to begin a four-year effort to achieve the withdrawal of external forces from the region. Mexico remained the leader of the Contadora Group. Throughout the process, the Mexican Foreign Minister, Bernardo de Sepulveda consulted closely with the FMLN-FDR prior to and during negotiation sessions thus giving a voice to the Salvadoran guerillas within the Contadora process. “It’s important to stress that particular point that we always had with us delegations [that] were integrated by members of the FMLN and the FDR. This joint diplomacy was always of the two groups.”96 The voice was informal because the Contadora Group insisted that negotiations be held only between governments and excluded the Salvadoran and Nicaraguan rebels thus justifying the FMLN-FDR public denunciation of the Contadora process. However, in reality they were present at the meetings through their presence on the Mexican delegation. Both in the course of the Contadora Group meetings, as well as through its votes at the UN, Sepulveda and the Mexican government acquired a reputation as left leaning and anti-U.S. This served nationalist fervor in Mexico and irritated Washington.97 In seeking first the withdrawal of U.S. support for the Contras and second a diminution of U.S. support for the Salvadoran government, Mexican diplomatic efforts confronted head-on Reagan’s foreign policy. The result was a deep suspicion between Mexico City and Washington. Central America became a central and discordant issue in the U.S.-Mexican relationship. In Mexican opinion, conflict over Central America lay behind the U.S. decision to introduce both the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 and the annual Certification on Drugs.98 The Salvadoran government was irritated with the Mexican government because of its sponsorship of the FMLN-FDR.99 Furthermore, the Mexican government chaired the UN’s 3rd Committee on Human Rights in which it forcefully criticized the Salvadoran government and ESAF for their flagrant abuses of human rights.100 Mexico’s condemnation of Salvadoran abuses was hypocritical given the Mexican government’s abuses against the indigenous populations of Chiapas in the 1980s. However, Montano recognized that calling attention to human rights abuses was a bargaining tool to achieve other objectives, “[h]uman rights was clearly a very important coin to use as exchange for other things.”101 These included the diminution, if not end to the U.S. interference in Central America.

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President Salinas redirects Mexican Policy

With the election of President Carlos Salinas de Gortari in December 1988, major changes occurred in the Mexican foreign policy. Salinas was determined to improve Mexican relations with Washington and to move Mexican policy northward toward greater commercial and financial integration with the industrialized states of North America. Therefore, he sought to remove the irritant of Central America in the relationship. On November 22, 1988, Salinas and incoming President George H.W. Bush met in Houston.102 At that meeting, both men committed to work together both on trade and Central America. Ambassador Montano, who had taken a leave of absence from the Mexican Foreign Ministry to become the International Adviser to the Salinas campaign, recalled, Salinas and Bush decided from the very beginning, from the outset, to create the mechanisms to stop having Central America as key issue between the two countries. And they accepted that the UN should play a bigger role.103

Montano concluded that after 1988, “Mexico and the United States were on the same track.” At the inauguration of President Salinas the following month, the dialogue continued on how to achieve a political solution to Central America’s wars. Salinas proposed that the UN Secretary General, Perez de Cuellar be asked to mediate.104 Bush had been the U.S. Permanent Representative to the UN and was amenable to considering a role for the UN in Central America. What remained uncertain was the response from Perez de Cuellar. What were the underlying reasons for the change in Mexican foreign policy toward Central America? Salinas was determined to draw Mexico closer to North America and he used the model of the European Economic Union as a goal toward which Mexico and its North American neighbors should work.105 In order to do so, Salinas had to radically shift Mexican policy toward Central America. Sepulveda was sent as Mexican Ambassador to London, a reward for his arduous efforts, but a politically marginal Embassy from which he could not interfere in American hemispheric issues. Salinas depoliticized his economic and trade responsibilities, choosing technocrats with doctorates from U.S. universities to manage the Finance and Trade Ministries. He chose Fernando Solana as Foreign Minister, a political figure with considerable intellectual skills to shift policy toward Washington without alienating the intellectual and left-leaning base of the governing party. The FMLN-FDR office in Mexico remained open. However, the historically good relationship changed so as to inform the Salvadorans that the time for armed revolution was over. Salinas knew that Cuba would no longer be able to support the guerillas with arms and advice. In a February 1990 meeting with the Mexican president in Cancun, Fidel Castro admitted his incapacity to continue support for his Salvadoran allies. Instead, he needed to concentrate on domestic economic affairs.106 Salinas, therefore, had less constraint to change Mexican policy toward the FMLN-FDR. The head of the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI), Luis Donaldo Colosio continued to meet with Schafik Handel in his office, but “the conversation

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was very intense.”107 Office facilities and transport to and from Havana were still available to the FMLN-FDR colleagues.108 However, Mexican intelligence services were less discrete in their observations of Salvadoran visitors and traditional Mexican hospitality was less ample. It was evident that the Mexican government sought to use its historical friendship as leverage over the FMLN.109 That leverage was used to persuade the FMLN-FDR to moderate its positions in negotiations and to accept constitutional changes that did not include the “disappearance” of ESAF. Later, during the implementation of the peace accords, Mexico pressured the FMLN to demobilize its forces and decommission its weapons. As a result, relations became tense between the Mexican hosts and their Salvadoran guests. Salinas’s administration was skeptical of Cristiani and the Alianza Republicana Nacional (ARENA) party. Approaching Salvadoran politics with a preference for the Christian Democrats and Jose Napolean Duarte, the Foreign Ministry was highly suspicious of the Salvadoran conservative party, that was home to retired Major Roberto d’Aubuisson. Montano admitted, “I personally had tremendous doubts about someone [Cristiani] coming out of ARENA suddenly trying to make peace in his own country, but we were convinced soon that he was acting in good faith.”110 Cristiani had to prove to the Mexicans that he was committed to finding a political solution, and that he had the will to stand up against ESAF’s High Command. The Mexican government had little influence with Cristiani, but the development of a close relationship between Ambassadors Montano and Pickering at the UN helped develop a common position that moved the FMLN toward a negotiated solution. Salinas still considered that events in Central America affected Mexico’s national security and he remained convinced of the need to find a peaceful resolution to Salvador’s civil war.111 The interruption of trade and investment relations as well as the flow of refugees from Salvador through Mexico presented a nuisance at best, and possibly a source of political unrest. The Presidency therefore instructed the Mexican business community to assist the peace negotiations by transporting and hosting the FMLN-FDR delegation to meetings at various resort hotels in Mexico.112 The costs were shared with the UN, but were borne in large part by Mexican business leaders. Montano complained that “it was very expensive to have the meetings here in Mexico. We paid for a number of these meetings in 1990 and 1991.”113 The Salvadoran guests did not always appreciate Mexican hospitality, which caused resentment among the Mexican hosts.114 Despite these complaints, the Foreign Ministry recognized the important role that it played. By hosting the meetings between the former protagonists, the Mexican government had asserted sponsorship of the peace process, and with it, a distinct influence over developments in Central America. On two critical occasions during the negotiations, Foreign Minister Solana successfully persuaded the FMLN-FDR to moderate its negotiating position in response to both the U.S. and UN demands.115 Furthermore, when the Salvadoran president refused to travel to New York to participate in the September 1991 negotiations, President Salina lent his plane to President Cristiani, thus permitting Cristiani to break through a negotiating logjam. Throughout the negotiations, Mexico was the principal venue for meetings between the Salvadoran government and the FMLN-FDR. Meetings also took place in Venezuela and Costa Rica. Due to the U.S. government’s refusal to issue visas to

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the members of the FMLN delegation, negotiations did not take place at the UN in New York until September 1991. When the final agreement was ready for signature a few months later, Salinas offered to host the ceremony at the Chapultepec Castle in Mexico City. Others involved considered it more appropriate to sign the final peace accord in New York.116 However, Cristiani responded that, “It was very important to have that [signature] in the region, first in Mexico and then we’ll go to El Salvador to have the big celebration there, but we want this to happen in Mexico.”117 Both sides accepted Mexican patronage and the international stage that Salinas offered. It clearly demonstrated Mexican influence, as well as the acceptance of a larger Mexican role in the implementation of the Chapultepec Accords. Conclusion From 1989 to New Year’s Eve 1991, the relative weight given to external forces in pushing Salvador’s protagonists toward peace was significant. Domestically, the Salvadoran people had become tired of the war, and by 1989 a “hurting stalemate” existed between the contending parties. Neither could win militarily. However, the military deadlock, combined with an internal longing for peace was insufficient to bring about a political agreement. Only security guarantees and trust building mechanisms offered by external third parties could persuade both sides that greater advantage could be gained through a political solution. While not abandoning the military option and continuing to carry out armed engagements, both the FMLNFDR and the Salvadoran government agreed to seek peace through dialogue, if not negotiations. They fought and talked simultaneously. Nevertheless, there existed diminishing external support for military action and constant international pressure to seek a political solution. By 1990, Secretary Baker and the Congress had lost patience with U.S. involvement in the Central American “quagmire” and shifted security interests toward events in Kuwait, the former Yugoslavia, and arms reduction talks with the Soviets. Earlier, Gorbachev had given priority to ending costly wars of national liberation and forming a new partnership with Washington. Cuba was squeezed by economic constraints from continuing to support revolutionary movements, and Nicaragua was gutted by the Soviet abandonment of the Sandinistas. Only Mexico remained to offer hospitality and exert political influence over the FMLN-FDR. However, Mexico’s pursuit of NAFTA left the FMLN-FDR without a supportive mediator. With the withdrawal of its traditional allies, the FMLN-FDR now looked for a credible third party, as mediator and guarantor of any peace agreement. The Peruvian diplomat and UN official, Alvaro de Soto was present and willing to intervene. His challenge was to persuade the UN Secretary General, Javier Perez de Cuellar to play an active role in resolving Salvador’s civil war.

Chapter 7

Introducing the United Nations Until December 1989, neither the Frente Farabundo Marti de Liberación Nacional (FMLN)–Frente Democrática Revolucionario (FDR) leadership nor the government of Alfredo Cristiani had sought UN mediation to resolve El Salvador’s civil war. The UN had not been involved in this conflict for three reasons: 1. Neither of the protagonists seriously considered political negotiations an option for ending their conflict: Cristiani was open to a dialogue with the FMLN, but not negotiations, and Comandante Villalobos proclaimed a willingness to pursue a political solution, but was meantime engaged in two significant military offensives. 2. Through the Equipulas II agreement, the Contadora Group and the presidents of the Central American nations had assumed the role of interested parties, but not mediators of the Nicaraguan and Salvadoran conflicts, The United Nations Observer Group in Central America (ONUCA) acted as a monitor and verifier of that agreement, but had no mandate to go further and assume the role of a facilitator or mediator between the protagonists in El Salvador. 3. U.S. foreign policy during the Cold War had excluded the UN from political intervention in the hemisphere despite “threats to peace and security” in Colombia (1948–1958), Bolivia (1952), Guatemala (1954), the Dominican Republic (1965), and Grenada (1983).1 Why should the UN become involved in peace making in El Salvador now, and how would UN intervention be justified? Drawing UN Secretary-General, Javier Perez de Cuellar into a mediation role to resolve El Salvador’s civil war was a tendentious and experimental process. No “standard of operations” existed for UN actions in the Americas. Furthermore, the UN was preoccupied with efforts to resolve the civil wars in Mozambique, Angola, and Cambodia. These peacekeeping efforts were taking place at the same time as ONUCA was starting its operations in El Salvador. Consequently, the UN’s

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political section, including its Department of Peacekeeping Operations (DPKO) was stretched thin. Would interference in El Salvador present the international organization with an opportunity or a dilemma? As a permanent member of the UN Security Council with veto power, would the U.S. give free rein to the UN’s political institutions to develop a peace agreement, or would Washington resist and stall progress? There were high risks to UN peacemaking in El Salvador. This chapter examines three issues: 1. The historical context in which the UN interjected itself in seeking to resolve El Salvador’s civil war with the encouragement of Costa Rican President, Oscar Arias, amidst the skepticism of his Central American colleagues; 2. The slow recognition by the Salvadoran protagonists of the benefits that UN involvement might contribute, including the debate between President Cristiani and his Chief of Staff, as well as the disagreement between the FMLN comandantes and their comisión negociadora toward UN involvement; and 3. The shift in U.S. government policy that evolved to support UN participation in resolving this civil war. Introducing the UN I.

Debate among UN Staff over Intervention in El Salvador

Intrinsic tension existed within the UN between the long-time staff of the Legal Division, the Secretariat staff, and the activist Special Representative of the Secretary-General for El Salvador. The Legal Division was bound by precedent and the formalism of international law, while the UN Secretariat sought to protect the Secretary-General, as well as to defend the institution. Both had serious concerns regarding UN intervention in Latin America. The Americas was a geographic theater traditionally left to the U.S. and the Organisation of American States (OAS). Any interference would represent a radical change in UN policy. Since the founding of the UN in 1945, there had been few Security Council Resolutions on any issue of peace and security in the Americas and the Caribbean, despite multiple military interventions by U.S. forces.2 The U.S. Mission to the UN had made it clear on frequent occasions that it would not welcome discussion within the Security Council on U.S. action in Guatemala, Cuba, and Grenada. The Cold War dynamic of Soviet and U.S. vetoes on matters deemed critical to their respective national security meant that the Americas was off-limit to Security Council discussions. Even the UN General Assembly had displayed reticence in condemning U.S. action in that area of the world. In the mind of the UN Secretariat, involvement risked pitting the UN against its principal financial supporter, the U.S. II.

Legal Authority for UN Intervention in Central America

The legal authority for intervention in Central America was thin. Apart from the tepid endorsement of Contadora’s peace initiative that came in response to the Sandinista

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government’s call for help in the face of U.S. mining of Nicaragua’s southern harbor, the Security Council had pronounced upon “threats to peace and security” in Central America only on two occasions, both concerning Nicaragua.3 The U.S. representative had vetoed both initiatives. Security Council authority to act, therefore, came from three sources: Security Council Resolution 637; a Security Council Presidential Letter; and a Presidential Statement. ●

● ●

Resolution 637 of July 1989. Article 5 endorsed the good offices of the SecretaryGeneral to support the Central American states in their efforts to settle both the Nicaraguan and Salvadoran conflicts.4 Article 4 endorsed the establishment of ONUCA and it called upon those states “which have links with the region and interests in it, to back the political will of the Central American countries.”5 Resolution 637 did not order the Secretary-General to take action, but rather endorsed the UN’s role as the monitor and verifier of the Esquipulas Accords. Only a broad and unconventional interpretation of Resolution 637 could authorize the Secretary-General to appoint a mediator and act independently of the Central American governments. A Letter of the Security Council President of November 1989 deplored the violence in El Salvador, but it failed to call for action.6 A Statement of the Security Council President of December 1989 expressed concern over the situation in Central America and reiterated the Council’s full support for the Secretary-General in carrying out his missions.7

Neither the letter, nor the statement had the force of international law, but only expressed a “sense of the Council.” The Security Council gave its moral support to the Central American efforts to find peace and endorsed the efforts of the UN Secretary-General, but international exhortation represented neither legal authority to intervene, nor the right to impose sanctions should the parties to the conflict ignore the UN’s prescription. Another limitation was the prohibition within the UN Charter from intervening in the internal affairs of a sovereign state. Until 1989, the UN had not intervened in any internal war despite the spillover effect into neighboring states, or external influence of the violence.8 To initiate peace efforts within a sovereign state might contravene Article 2 of the Charter, which prohibits the UN from intervening on matters “essentially within the domestic jurisdiction” of a member state.9 Until 1990 and the efforts to resolve the Cambodian civil war, UN jurists had expressed resistance to intervening in a state’s domestic affairs, even to protect the human rights of its citizens or to organize elections.10 The reason given was that such intervention would interfere with the legitimate responsibilities of the state’s government. A UN effort to mediate between the parties in El Salvador had no precedence in international law and risked unleashing multiple requests for UN intervention. Finally, a preference for referring disputes to regional bodies, such as the OAS had been used to deter the UN from extended interventions. Due to the concern that either the U.S. or the Soviet Union would veto a UN Security Council resolution that concerned their respective and immediate spheres of influence, disputes within

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the Americas and the Caribbean were referred to the OAS. However, national leaders saw the OAS as dominated by Washington and lacking independent power to solve political problems within the hemisphere.11 With the emergence of a new U.S./Soviet partnership in 1989, the reluctance to bring issues of peace and security to the Security Council changed. Central America became a test case of the Council’s willingness to become engaged. Two international agreements might justify UN involvement: Security Council Resolution 637 and the Declaration of San Isidro de Coronado, signed by the Central American presidents in December 1989.12 The FMLN rejected the latter because its representatives had neither been present, nor were represented at that meeting.13 That left Resolution 637 of July 1989 as a legal basis for the UN’s mandate to mediate in El Salvador. The UN’s authority was confirmed in May 1991, when the Security Council, in Resolution 693, established the United Nations Observer Mission in El Salvador (ONUSAL) to monitor all agreements between the parties, to verify compliance with the San Jose Agreement on human rights, and “calls upon both parties, as agreed by them, to pursue a continuous process of negotiations.”14 By July, 100 UN human rights officers, military, and police advisers had arrived in El Salvador with the mandate “to visit any place freely and without prior notice.”15 Their presence had a calming effect with a noticeable decline in the number of reported human rights abuses. However, the mandate to both verify a peace accord and to investigate human rights abuses presented a contradiction that could undermine the UN’s role as an honest broker. By January 1992, ONUSAL’s staff had strengthened to 51 civilian, many of whom were human rights observers, 373 military and 300 police advisors with the military divisions colocated with human rights officers.16 With these personnel, the UN acted as both law enforcer and referee of human rights abuses. The challenge was to be seen as objective. After the signing of the final peace accords, ONUSAL’s verification role assumed greater significance. UN presence would expand with four regional offices throughout the country.17 With such extensive presence in the country, the dilemma was how to maintain law and order, disarm the FMLN, and investigate human rights abuses. In carrying out these tasks, Salvadoran conservatives never saw the UN as neutral. III.

Role of the UN’s Special Representative in El Salvador

As early as January 1986, the UN Secretary-General, Perez de Cuellar had appointed fellow Peruvian and senior UN bureaucrat, Alvaro de Soto as his Personal Representative for El Salvador. His task was distinct from that of the director of ONUSAL and the director of its Human Rights Division. By his own admission, de Soto played “a proactive role.”18 He recognized that without such a role, the deep hatred between the protagonists, as well as the formalities of the Contadora and Esquipulas process would not produce a peace settlement. Alvaro de Soto had no patience with the efforts of either the Contadora Group or the Central American leaders. He considered both to be overly ambitious and to fail by omitting the insurgents within their peace mechanism.19 Furthermore, he deplored the

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patronizing attitude with which the Contadora Group of regional states treated their Central American colleagues.20 With the inability of both the Contadora Group and the Esquipulas process to resolve El Salvador’s civil war in the near future, de Soto was determined that the UN Secretary-General and he should play a vigorous role in seeking a political solution. In de Soto’s mind, “the United Nations was the only would-be mediator left standing.”21 His close friendship with Perez de Cuellar and his personal ambition would catapult the UN into an interventionist role that would set precedence for the post-Cold War era. Alvaro de Soto was a man of keen intelligence and energy who sought to examine ways in which the UN might intervene positively in the Central American debacle. As the previous Under-Secretary General, with special responsibility for Latin America, de Soto saw an opportunity for UN mediation and maybe peacekeeping within the Americas.22 The fact that the UN Secretary-General came from the hemisphere had given Latin American citizens cause to believe that their security and political issues would be heard on the 38th floor of the UN building in New York.23 However, it was the Contadora Group’s declining effectiveness that persuaded de Soto to find a new role for the UN. Back in January 1986, Alvaro de Soto had proposed to the Secretary-General that the UN assume a diplomatic role in Central America. In his mind, Latin American leadership of both the UN and OAS should remind the Contadora Group and the Central Americans of the services that the two organizations could provide.24 De Soto and colleagues drafted “a non-paper in the format of an à la carte menu,” which met with no enthusiasm from Perez de Cuellar.25 The Secretary-General did not pursue this option paper until late August when he was recovering from quadruple coronary bypass surgery. For Perez de Cuellar, UN intervention into Central America would only succeed if Washington supported the effort.26 Furthermore, the offer to place a peacekeeping force on the continent of the Americas would set a precedence that could fail in the face of combined U.S. and Soviet opposition. Third, the origin of the Central American conflicts was internal with ancient socio-political problems best solved by the parties themselves. External interference had exacerbated a prolonged domestic conflict. The probability of blockage from Washington, or worse still, UN intervention followed by a U.S. response that provoked fierce opposition from Latin American states were high. Perez de Cuellar had to balance these risks against an activist bureaucrat within his Secretariat, whose mind he respected, whose family connections in Peru were impeccable, and who remained insistent that the UN could play a role. While in convalescence, Perez de Cuellar gave de Soto the green light to discuss his option paper with the OAS Secretary-General, Joao Clemente Baena Soares.27 In Perez de Cuellar’s opinion, Baena Soares “was almost pathologically concerned that the OAS not be seen as playing a secondary role to the United Nations.”28 The OAS had been created before the UN and had enjoyed an exclusive multilateral role in the Western Hemisphere. Now, UN interest in resolving the conflicts in Central America could be viewed as an institutional threat and ways had to be found to mitigate traditional tensions. Baena Soares shared the same reservations as Perez de Cuellar and did not respond to de Soto’s option paper until November 1986, when his principal aide Harry Belevan, another Peruvian diplomat, came to New York to

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discuss further the option paper. Thanks to the persuasive powers of Belevan and with a few changes, Baena Soares agreed to the UN paper.29 De Soto seized upon the opportunity. He recommended that the UN Secretary-General call in the permanent representatives (ambassadors) of Central America, the Contadora Group, plus their “Support Group” from Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay, and Peru. At de Soto’s suggestion, Perez de Cuellar and Baena Soares presented the joint UN/OAS option paper first to the Central Americans and then to the Contadora Group, plus their Support Group.30 Alvaro de Soto recalls that the five Central Americans expressed “somewhat nonplussed thanks” and the four Contadora Ambassadors “were less enthusiastic.”31 The U.S. government, which had not been consulted prior to the meetings with both Latin American groups, expressed “an immediate and extremely negative” reaction.32 Ambassador Vernon A. Walters called on the Secretary-General and reiterated Washington’s policy opposing the Sandinistas and the Cuban-backed FMLN. He expressed strong reservations about the joint OAS/UN initiative on Central America, fearing that the Sandinistas would exploit these “inadequate piecemeal solutions.”33 Washington considered that Baena Soares should have understood this point. It was now time for the UN Secretary-General to understand U.S. interests. Should Perez de Cuellar have any doubts, Ambassador Walters deposited his talking points (State Department instructions) on de Cuellar’s desk before taking his leave.34 Washington justified its refusal to go to the UN Security Council on grounds that the Soviet veto in the Security Council would deny Latin American states the support of the UN. In reality, President Reagan and his administration vowed to prevent the spread of revolution in Central America by using military means to defeat insurgent movements with close ties to Cuba, the Sandinistas, and the Soviet Union.35 The Soviets for their part had supported the Nicaraguan-initiated Security Council Resolution in 1983 that condemned the U.S. for its support of the Nicaraguan Contra forces, but had shown little interest in direct involvement in the continent. With two of the permanent five members unwilling to discuss Latin American security issues in the UN, the Security Council appeared to be an inappropriate forum for ending the violence in Central America. The Secretary-General carried away a pessimistic assessment of the situation, which he expressed at a press conference in Mexico City following his tour of the region and meeting with the foreign ministers.36 The time was not yet ripe to overhaul the traditional and exclusive role of the U.S. within the hemisphere. Nor were the Latin American delegations willing to invite the UN to play an active role in the face of U.S. opposition. The UN/OAS options paper was shelved. IV. The Arias Peace Plan

Quietly, however, President Oscar Arias Sanchez of Costa Rica, was developing his own proposals for a Central American settlement.37 Elected to office in December 1986, Arias had national security interests in containing the border war with the Sandinistas and ending Central Americas’ civil wars in Guatemala, El Salvador, and Nicaragua. He was also prepared to resist Washington’s traditional policy in the region.38 His predecessor’s acquiescence to U.S. influence and participation in

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a southern front against the Sandinistas threatened to undermine traditional Costa Rican neutrality. Therefore, Arias discussed the OAS/UN options paper with Perez de Cuellar when he toured Central American capitals in January 1987, under the auspices of the Contadora Group.39 At that time, Arias hinted that he had his own plan in mind, but did not elaborate.40 One month later he announced his peace plan that proposed ending insurgencies within a framework of pluralistic governance. The Arias plan called for the establishment of a cease-fire; the creation of a National Commission for Reconciliation; extension of a general amnesty to military officers and insurgents; the commencement of a dialogue between the governments and the insurgents; the holding of free and fair elections that would include former insurgents; and the disarmament and demobilization of irregular forces.41 Three of these provisions were directed at external actors: ● ● ●

foreign powers were to cut off all aid to irregular forces; Central American states were to deny the use of their territory for attacks on neighboring countries; and, effective international verification procedures for all phases of the agreement were to be established.

The identity of the “verifier” was deliberately left vague, but Arias had already conceived the possibility that the UN and the OAS be invited to carry out this role.42 Five years later at Chapultepec Castle, all three provisions concerning external actors were incorporated into the Peace Agreement on El Salvador.43 The Arias Plan provided a blueprint for peace.44 It also won for Oscar Arias the Nobel Peace Prize. However, it could be implemented only after major changes had occurred in domestic and international policy. In 1987, President Duarte of El Salvador was unable to make concessions to the FMLN, nor was President Ortega of Nicaragua willing to concede to the U.S.-supported “Contra” forces. Instead, each president believed that military victory over their respective insurgents was possible. When the five Central American presidents gathered together at Esquipulas, Guatemala, in August 1987 to sign the Arias plan, both Perez de Cuellar and Baena Soares attended as international verifiers for the implementation of the peace agreement.45 President Oscar Arias had been concerned that the Central American countries had no leverage, beyond rhetorical exhortations, to pressure the protagonists. Furthermore, Arias himself would step down from the Costa Rican presidency in early 1991 leaving a vacuum among the small group of leaders determined to assist the peace process. He, therefore, held a personal interest in asking the UN to assume a greater role in the implementation of his peace plan, known as the Esquipulas II Accord. In this strategy, he found a soul mate in Alvaro de Soto, who maintained contact with both parties to El Salvador’s war and retained his desire to see the UN involved in resolving both regional conflicts.46 Pursuant to its role as the verifier of the Esquipulas II Accords, the UN sent a few hundred unarmed and uniformed men in blue helmets to monitor the borders of El Salvador and Nicaragua, as well as Nicaragua and Honduras. Under the auspices of ONUCA, these observers stretched along hundreds of kilometers of rugged terrain that formed the respective borders. It was an impossible task. However, ONUCA

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had both the sanction of the Security Council and the support of Washington to operate in a region previously considered exclusively within the U.S. sphere of influence. In this respect, ONUCA represented the first UN military presence in the Americas. Nevertheless, despite its presence, military engagements and the external resupply of all the protagonists continued. There was no lull in the level of violence, kidnapping, bombing, and strafing of civilian populations and military installations in El Salvador. The prospects for political settlement based on the Esquipulas Accords appeared faint. The year 1989 was critical in the transformation of UN policy toward Central America. Greater space for the UN to pursue its security mandate appeared possible. Soviet Secretary-General, Gorbachev spoke of his willingness to cooperate with the U.S. in regional affairs and the incoming Bush administration expressed a desire to test that cooperation in Central America. Following Secretary Baker’s visit to Moscow in March 1989, two strategic shifts emerged: the superpowers would moderate their rivalry in Central America; and the perceived dangers of a communist threat to the hemisphere would diminish. In the space offered by Soviet cooperation, Washington might accept the direct intervention of the UN. However, within the UN Secretariat, discussions ensued on whether the Secretary-General should intervene in El Salvador beyond his role as the verifier of the Esquipulas Accords. De Soto remained the strongest advocate and Iqbal Riza, a senior official in the Secretariat with close ties to the Perez de Cuellar, was skeptical, but willing to test a limited UN role by assuming the direction of ONUSAL.47 On the other side, the UN Legal Adviser argued that the legal basis was thin and no precedence existed for UN involvement in the Western Hemisphere. V. Deep-Seated Controversy within El Salvador Regarding UN Mediation

How willing was the Salvadoran government and the different factions within the FMLN-FDR to accept the UN mediation? What could the UN offer that would make its interference a credible, if not advantageous mediator to the FMLN? We first examine the government’s reaction, followed by the FMLN’s dilemma. I. Intra-governmental Debate over the Appropriate UN Role Neither the departing Christian Democrat government of Jose Napoleon Duarte, nor the incoming conservative government of Alfredo Cristiani placed much faith in the ONUCA. The roving presence of a few hundred UN observers was no match for weapons smugglers who knew the rugged and unmarked terrain that bordered El Salvador and Honduras. With only a small naval component, ONUCA could not observe all the bays and inlets of the Gulf of Fonseca that divided El Salvador from Nicaragua. ONUCA provided legitimacy for El Salvador’s disputed boundaries, but not security. Cristiani’s public pronouncements praised and welcomed additional UN presence in Central America, but in private he placed little faith on the organization’s capacity to moderate, or resolve El Salvador’s civil war. Throughout his campaign for the presidency, Alfredo Cristiani had talked about entering into a dialogue with the guerilla forces.48 In this call for dialogue, he had

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not mentioned negotiation. Indeed that term was unacceptable to many within the Alianza Republicana Nacional (ARENA) party as well as the military High Command. Cristiani’s Chief of Staff and principal interlocutor with the UN stated some years later, “la palabra negociación estaba muy mal vista, entonces no se habla de negociación sino que de dialogo, porque estratégicamente se tenía que llamar.” 49 (The term negotiation was viewed negatively; therefore, for strategic reasons it was necessary to talk about dialogue, not negotiation.) The prospect of entering into a negotiation with the FMLN–FDR implied both legitimizing the status of the “guerilla” forces and making concessions to the other side. This was unacceptable to the conservatives as well as the El Salvador armed forces (ESAF). Even President Duarte, a man despised by the conservative sectors of Salvadoran society, never talked about negotiating with the FMLN. In his discussions with de Soto, President Cristiani had little room to maneuver. Cristiani’s concept of dialogue did not necessarily mean concessions to an irregular army, which was carrying out an insurgency against the legitimately elected government. Rather, the dialogue had to focus on the ending of military engagements and the incorporation of the “guerilla” forces into El Salvador. Acceptance of any third-party intermediary—the Catholic Church or the UN—had to focus on ending the fighting, not making radical changes to the structure of ESAF or Salvador’s judiciary.50 Cristiani’s principal reason for entering into a dialogue with the FMLN was to demonstrate to both domestic and international audiences that the government was rational and moderate.51 This was critical to maintaining U.S. Congressional support and authorized funding. However, in 1990, the prospect of conceding principles enshrined within the Salvadoran constitution was unacceptable to the government. The prerogatives of the Salvadoran state were nonnegotiable. Shortly after he stepped down from office in 1994, Cristiani identified three reasons for accepting the UN as a mediator: 1. The government had to join the FMLN in presenting a “doble via” (double face) to the U.S. and the international community. In Cristiani’s view, the government had to copy the tactics of the FMLN and be prepared to negotiate and fight at the same time.52 2. The government needed a respected intermediary with the capacity to enforce its decisions. Only then, would the FMLN take their commitments seriously and respond to external pressure.53 The status and formality of the UN contrasted with the intermediary role of the Catholic Church in El Salvador. This had played an important role in 1984, but the Church held no leverage beyond moral suasion and the sympathy of the majority within the country.54 3. Cristiani saw the necessity of including the U.S., as well as Cuba and the Soviet Union in any peace agreement. Neither the Soviet Union, nor Cuba were members of the OAS. Therefore, the UN appeared to be the appropriate international body.55 Despite Cristiani’s rationale, delivered after the war, there is reason to believe that external pressure from the U.S., as well as from Venezuela and Mexico pushed him

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to accept UN mediation.56 In two postwar interviews Cristiani avoided discussion of U.S. pressure, but his chief advisor David Escobar was more open in his recognition of U.S. influence, Estados Unidos empujaba el proceso, no de una manera abusiva, la verdad. Bueno, hubo cosas que Estados Unidos si trato de imponer, quizás por la impaciencia de que el proceso se resolviera . . .57 (The U.S. pushed the [negotiating] process, not in an abusive manner, that is the truth. However, well, there were things that the U.S. did try to impose, perhaps out of impatience so that the process could be resolved.)

This external pressure from Washington was problematic for Cristiani, but it also worked in a positive manner to pressure ESAF into accepting negotiated outcomes that directly affected them. David Escobar, a poet, the Rector of the Central American University, and the key member of the president’s delegation to the peace talks admitted that Los Estados Unidos era el único que podía llegar, eso no lo podía hacer ninguno de los cuatro amigos, no lo podía hacer las Naciones Unidas, llegar donde los militares duros y decirles, señores, si ustedes hacen algo, ya saben con que se las tienen que ver.58 (The United States was the only one who could persuade the hard-line military with the threat that if you do not do this, gentlemen, you know the consequences. The UN could not achieve this, nor could the Four Friends [of the Secretary-General].)

External U.S. pressure was crucial to persuading Cristiani that he should both seek and sustain UN mediation. The Salvadoran military endorsed Cristiani’s rationale for accepting UN facilitation, but they emphasized the need for the UN to communicate with the Cuban government. According to General Mauricio Vargas, the military advisor on President Cristiani’s delegation to the peace talks, any peace agreement had to include the Cubans. The Cubans were supplying the FMLN through Nicaragua, and any third party intervener had to include Havana’s commitment to the settlement.59 The Cuban state was not a party to the OAS, but it was a member of the UN and from 1990 to 1992 an elected member of the UN Security Council. Second, Cuba maintained close and frequent connections with the FMLN. Therefore, “buscamos las Naciones Unidas porque ahí estaba Cuba y Cuba podría, en un momento determinado, ser una vía de comunicación independiente-amente.”60 (We chose the UN because Cuba was there and Cuba, in a given moment, could provide an independent means of communication [with the FMLN]). Furthermore, the military recognized that an intermediary was needed who could make decisions and enforce them.61 Unlike the OAS, the UN Security Council had the capacity to enact legally binding sanctions and commit international forces to carry out its decisions. Cristiani, in his postwar interviews, maintained the principle that the UN could not act as a mediator. The term “mediator” suggested a more active role and greater manipulation of the parties than was acceptable to the Salvadoran president. Instead, the UN should be an “intermediary,” who communicated the proposals of one party to another and shuttled between the parties without initiating its

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own text. Cristiani’s idea was that the UN role would be limited to a “negocación pendular” (shuttle diplomacy).62 In this manner, the Salvadoran parties, themselves, would find a solution to their own national problems. Pero [el role de la ONU] no era una mediación, sino que era una intermediación y así fue durante todo el proceso, todo fue producto de la negociación dentro del FMLN y el gobierno. Porque, la solución tenia que ser, no tenia que venir de ningún lado de afuera, tenia que salir [de nosotros], aunque fuera mal.63 (Throughout the whole process, the UN role was not that of a mediator, rather that of an intermediary. All was a product of the negotiation between the FMLN and the government. Because, the solution had to come from the parties themselves, not from any outside party, even if the solution was bad.)

Pursuing this belief in the national control of the political process, Cristiani insisted that his representatives drafted proposals.64 This contradicted de Soto who believed that he and his colleague Pedro Nikken, the Venezuelan lawyer, had drafted most of the text that was finally agreed upon.65 Indeed de Soto claimed that Cristiani would not make proposals, because to do so would be to accept the concept of negotiations with illegal insurgent forces.66 After the war, David Escobar provided a more nuanced explanation of the UN role in developing text. Initially, based on ideas gathered from each party, de Soto transmitted text from one side to the other. This “diplomacia pendular” was time consuming as the UN team shuttled between meeting with the FMLN in Mexico City and the government in San Salvador. Little progress could be made. However, as the UN team became more familiar with the respective positions of each side, Nikken and de Soto were able to capture on paper the thoughts and positions of each side. Therefore, over time de Soto and Nikken played a more active role in drafting the texts.67 The gathering together of mutually acceptable points of view enabled the UN team to draft a single working text that formed the basis for further discussions.68 From a conduit of messages between the parties, de Soto and his team became formulators of the text. They sought common understanding of the problems and devised solutions. For example, in the early weeks of 1990, the drafting of an agenda for talks had taken approximately two months due to the need for shuttle diplomacy. “Cada palabra había que hacer un viaje a México.”69 (for each word, he [de Soto] had to travel to Mexico.) However, on March 29, both the teams of representatives agreed to meet in Mexico to discuss the agenda, which was signed in Geneva one week later. Escobar recognized that from then onward, “el redactor de documentos de trabajo fue pasando a las Naciones Unidas . . . digamos que las Naciones Unidas fue tomando mas ese papel.” 70 (The role of drafting working documents slowly passed to the UN . . . let us say that the UN assumed more of that role.) Confidence in the UN process was built up gradually, but effectively leading Cristiani and his team to accept UN-mediated language. Slowly, de Soto’s work became acceptable to the presidential team. Nevertheless, Escobar insisted that the UN drafts were never original, but rather based upon the respective ideas of each opposing team. He remained adamant that the dialogue belonged to the parties of El Salvador. The UN might act as

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intermediary, but de Soto never imposed texts. Such nationalist pronouncements might be accurate in the drafting of actual language, but they concealed the reality that according to de Soto “only the FMLN presented a comprehensive and coherent position with the Salvadoran government reacting rather than setting out a position of their own.”71 This was not always the case, as David Escobar drafted language for the government when requested on specific issues. In the early stages of the talks, the UN negotiators prepared texts on a broad range of complex issues after discussions with each of the parties. Such was the case of discussions with the FMLN and their proposed text that called for the “depuración de la Fuerza Armada” (cleansing of the Armed Forces). When they met in June 1990 in Oaxtepec, Mexico, de Soto requested that each side present their position papers on the future of ESAF. Unexpectedly, on this occasion, the result of the separate papers revealed no great divergence.72 Instead of moving forward with a partial agreement, the revelation of a close identification of interests produced bitter division within the FMLN.73 To compensate for the appearance of weakness, the FMLN’s comisión negociadora subsequently produced a more rigid demand that called for the dissolution of the armed forces.74 The document created uproar among the Salvadoran High Command, which threatened to paralyze the talks. They resisted strongly any suggestion that the institution should be dissolved, or disappear.75 ESAF had provided the basis for state rule since the 1930s and its central role was enshrined as a “permanent institution” in the Salvadoran constitution of 1983.76 The dissolution of the Armed Forces was unthinkable for the government team. Alvaro de Soto learned the limits of the UN’s capacity to initiate issues for debate. He also became aware of the extreme sensitivity surrounding the role of ESAF: proposals made unofficially could be denied in public, and public proposals on this issue could cause breakdown of the talks. The incident over the future of ESAF also produced a dilemma for the FMLN. After the discovery in June 1990 that both the government and the FMLN were not far apart in their concepts of a “cleansed” or “reformed” ESAF, namely that it should be stripped of the extremist institutions and abusive senior officers, and held accountable to a civilian Minister of Defense, the FMLN withdrew angrily from the talks.77 The reason was that although the FMLN had quietly proposed the reforms, they could not accept that Cristiani might agree with them. Comandante Villalobos rejected the proposal outright. The FMLN gathered afterward in Managua, angry and divided.78 The comisión negociadora was intended to present the face of reason and moderation, but not necessarily to reach a political agreement. An agreement on the depuración (cleansing) of ESAF had significant implications for the FMLN’s fighting forces: it could not be accepted until lengthy discussion among the comandantes and their guerilla forces had been carried out. In David Escobar’s opinion, the FMLN was not ready at that time to reach an agreement on the Salvadoran armed forces.79 He proposed to the UN intermediary that the negotiating technique of presenting supposed common positions not be repeated.80 One of the sensitivities that irked the Salvadoran government and became an issue in the effectiveness of the UN negotiator was the status and respect due to Alfredo Cristiani as president of Salvador. Cristiani expected that the UN would treat him with the honors of a chief of state, and the FMLN comandantes not as counterparts,

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but as inferiors.81 The dignity of his office had to be preserved and whichever party interjected itself as intermediary between the government and the FMLN had to respect presidential prerogatives. For example, from the outset of the UN-sponsored dialogue, Cristiani refused to meet directly with the FMLN on grounds that a president does not meet with insurgents against the state. Later, and under pressure from Washington, Cristiani agreed in the final hours of the talks that his representatives could meet face to face with the FMLN comandantes. Since late March 1991, such encounters had taken place, but Cristiani chose to ignore this fact and live with the false impression that all encounters occurred through the good offices of the UN. This presented him with a false sense of security. Over time, Cristiani came to understand that the process of dialogue and the evolution of protracted negotiations made political concessions a necessity to achieve settlement. Meantime, relations with the UN mediator were marked often by rancor and resentment. President Cristiani became so infuriated with the manner in which Alvaro de Soto treated him that he complained to President George H.W. Bush and asked him to raise this issue with the UN Secretary-General. In the words of James Sutterlin, a close adviser of Perez de Cuellar in the writing of the Secretary-General’s autobiography, Bush said, “I don’t understand why these people, the FMLN should have equal standing, the elections in El Salvador were free and fair and Cristiani is doing his best. Why should the FMLN have the same standing at the table?”82 Perez de Cuellar rejected the idea, responding, “Well, we have to be impartial at the UN. We did not make a distinction between the FMLN and the government.”83 That determination to treat both protagonists as equals infuriated Cristiani and his team. Personally, Cristiani felt insulted by the manner in which de Soto treated him.84 Furthermore, at the institutional level, the government team resented deeply the UN’s acceptance of the FMLN as legitimate protagonists, and therefore entitled to equal consideration. II. Objections within the FMLN Earlier in the civil war, members of the FMLN and its democratic ally, the FDR, had established relationships with the UN independently, or through their association with international organizations. Through his leadership of the Socialist International, Dr. Guillermo Manuel Ungo had worked as a UN observer during the most violent years of Salvador’s civil war.85 In this, he was supported by the prominent politician and founder of the FDR, Dr. Hector Oqueli Colindres.86 To support their work as observers at the UN, the FMLN had established a Diplomatic–Political Commission to support their efforts at the UN, as well as with the national leaders who attended the annual UN General Assembly meeting.87 In 1985, Eduardo Sancho, a.k.a. Firmán Cienfuegos met with de Soto and another UN diplomat, the Spaniard Francesc Vendrell in Havana during the Secretary-General’s official visit to Cuba, but neither party appears to have pursued the relationship. Samayoa met with de Soto in 1988, beginning a relationship based on mutual respect for each other’s work.88 Salvador Samayoa was not a comandante. He had no military responsibility, but he was a senior member of the Frente Popular de Liberación (FPL), and his intellect and diplomatic skills supported his leadership of the FMLN’s comisión negociadora.

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Among the FMLN leadership, Samayoa stood with a small minority in favoring UN mediation of El Salvador’s civil war. He argued that UN mediation would introduce a new framework for political negotiations.89 Second, he argued that the UN presence would present a counterweight to the U.S. support for Cristiani, as well as a forum in which the FMLN would be accepted as an equal and legitimate party.90 However, Samayoa remained the intellectual author of the FMLN–FDR’s programs not the battle-hardened comandante, who led and lost men and women in battle with ESAF. Those military comandantes remained forever suspicious of what the diplomats might concede at the negotiating table. Prior to the “final offensive” of November 1989, the FMLN was not interested in serious international intervention to achieve a peace settlement.91 In the preceding thirteen months, the FMLN had focused on military planning and avoided any external pressure that might seek to abort the November offensive.92 In the opinion of the FMLN comandantes, UN mediation represented the less appealing of two options: either the pursuit of a political solution through an acceptable international mediator, or a military offensive that would result in a nationwide popular uprising.93 Not only was there reluctance to abandon the military option, but also there existed a deep suspicion of the UN, “en la Direccion del FMLN prevalecía una desconfianza politica hacia las Naciones Unidas.”94 (In the FMLN leadership, a political distrust toward the United Nations prevailed.) Two reasons underlay FMLN suspicions: first, U.S. dominance of the UN Security Council could not be balanced by Soviet support for the FMLN because the FMLN representatives did not perceive the Soviets as an unconditional ally.95 Second, recent UN concessions in Namibia suggested that the multilateral organization could not withstand pressure from Washington.96 The comandantes preferred external intervention from states and organizations more favorable to their cause, and with less capacity to exert pressure, such as the presidents of Costa Rica and Venezuela. Shortly before launching its “final offensive” on November 11, 1989, the FMLN had written to President Oscar Arias expressing their desire to see his intervention, “su mediación pueda contribuir a que se establezcan condiciones para una real negociación.”97 (Your mediation could contribute to the establishment of conditions for a real negotiation.) A similar letter was sent to President Carlos Andres Perez of Venezuela.98 The request was not intended to initiate a new and serious dialogue, but rather to impress upon Latin American leaders the FMLN’s moderate and rationale behavior. This reluctance to envisage more serious external mediation became evident in comandante Handal’s letter of December 8, 1989, to the Central American presidents gathered at San Isidro de Coronado, and followed up two days later in an official FMLN communiqué. In its communiqué, the FMLN demanded, Garantías inmediatas para el buen logro del proceso negociador... la verificacion en el terreno del respeto a los derechos humanos por la Comisión Interamericana de Derechos Humanos y el Grupo de Trabajo de la ONU sobre la Desapariciones Forzadas. (Immediate guarantees for the establishment of a negotiated process . . . [but limited to] verification of the respect for human rights by the Inter-American Human Rights Commission and the UN Working Group on Forced Disappearances.)99

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The FMLN sought to limit the role of any mediator to issues of human rights. Discussions on demilitarization, cease-fire, and electoral participation were not mentioned. In 1989, the FMLN obfuscated the purpose of international mediation and sought to avoid a role for the UN. According to Samayoa, there existed within the FMLN the fear of a political solution.100 The comandantes controlled military engagements, but the nuances and complexity of political negotiations presented the prospect of hidden traps and implied defeat. Within twenty-four hours of launching the November 1989 offensive, the FMLN had sent diplomatic notes to the governments of Spain, Mexico, Colombia, Peru, Ecuador, Brazil, and Argentina informing them that the FMLN sought the mediation of Costa Rica and Venezuela and asking them to help reestablish the dialogue with the Salvadoran government.101 Schafik Handal also wrote to Baena Soares, the OAS Secretary-General requesting that the meeting with the Salvadoran government take place under OAS auspices.102 In all these communications, no reference was made to mediation by the UN. The flurry of diplomatic notes indicated chaotic thinking among the comandantes on how best to seek international support while the military offensive took place. There appeared to be no clear strategy beyond gaining strong international support. Nor was there agreement on how best to achieve this.103 While the official position of the FMLN excluded a definite role for the UN in the resolution to Salvador’s civil war, the FMLN’s Political-Diplomatic Commission, led by Samayoa and Ana Guadalupe Martinez had initiated in late November discussions with Alvaro de Soto. Samayoa remembers that, “La situación era confusa en extremo.”104 (The situation was confused to an extreme degree.) Was the outreach to the UN one more search for international support, or was it intended to achieve a coordinated policy in search of a negotiated settlement? Between December 1989 and the end of March 1990, the approach to the UN appeared to be merely one option, among several. On December 6, 1989, Samayoa, Martinez and Padre Rafael Moreno, the Mexican Jesuit who had acted as a representative for the FMLN at the UN, met with Alvaro de Soto and Michel Pelletier in Montreal. Their meeting was meant to be secret.105 Handal did not attend. According to Martinez, the UN interest in the meeting was to determine what level of armaments and military strength remained with the FMLN.106 The UN needed to know if the FMLN continued to represent a military threat, or were they beaten after the “final offensive.” Was external mediation still required? Samayoa and Martinez’s interest in going to Montreal was to seek an alternative and preferable mediator. They had not been invited to the forthcoming meeting of the Central American presidents at San Isidro de Coronado. Therefore, they looked to the UN to create an alternate process, distinct from Esquipulas II. Samayoa and Martinez Plantearon a Álvaro de Soto la necesidad de hacer gestiones para que la resolución de los presidentes centroamericanos no arruinara . . . la posibilidad de un modelo viable de negociación y abriera . . . un espacio de intermediación a las Naciones Unidas. (Proposed to Alvaro de Soto the necessity of taking action in order to prevent the resolution of the Central American presidents ruining the possibility of an alternate model for negotiations and opening a space for UN mediation.)107

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In order to achieve this, the UN Secretary-General should write a letter to the Central American leaders suggesting that the UN, as verifier of the Esquipulas II Accord, intervene to seek a solution to El Salvador’s conflict. After listening to both Samayoa and Martinez, de Soto drafted a letter for the Secretary-General’s signature. In it Perez de Cuellar expressed alarm at the intensified conflict in the region.108 He called for “restoring conditions for a productive dialogue between the government and the FMLN in El Salvador.”109 He set out the main elements for presidential agreement, and offered to be of assistance in establishing a mechanism that was appropriate to the Central American context. The following day, the UN Security Council expressed concern over the situation in El Salvador and expressed “their firm support for the efforts being made by the Secretary-General of the United Nations.”110 At their summit on December 11, the Central American presidents agreed to request UN intervention “to ensure the resumption of dialogue between the Government of El Salvador and the FMLN,” but they insisted that the FMLN cease all military operations prior to the commencement of the talks.111 In Samayoa’s opinion, this represented only a partial opening for the FMLN.112 The FMLN would receive legitimacy as insurgents, but it would have to accept a unilateral cease-fire as a precondition. This condition was unacceptable to the FMLN. It was also no different from the previous five statements made earlier that year by the Central American presidents. Samayoa and Handal made it clear to de Soto that the Declaration of San Isidro de Coronado failed to provide an acceptable framework for peace talks.113 An alternate legal basis had to be found and Security Council Resolution 637 of July 1989 might be acceptable because it recognized the legitimacy of the FMLN, and called on the UN to use its good offices, “in conjunction with the Security Council,” not the Central American leaders.114 The Esquipulas process would be supplanted by a new, and as yet unknown, UN peace process. Samayoa and Handal believed that this was advantageous to them.115 However, in El Salvador, both the domestic and international context had shifted over the course of 1989. The improvement in U.S./Soviet relations, and the impact of November’s violence (including the brief detainment of the OAS SecretaryGeneral in San Salvador’s Sheraton Hotel) had made it clear that a new approach was needed. As they emerged from San Isidro de Coronado, the Central American presidents requested the Secretary-General “to do everything within his power to take the necessary steps to ensure the resumption of the dialogue between the Government of El Salvador and the FMLN,”116 This was a much broader invitation to the UN than any previous references to a UN role. The Central American presidents still insisted that the FMLN demobilize, but this time de Soto agreed to treat the issue of cease-fire as a critical element of the negotiations, not a precondition. On December 18, Handal wrote to Perez de Cuellar accepting his direct involvement in the resolution of El Salvador’s war.117 However, as a precondition for any talks, he demanded that the terms of reference be based on UN Security Council Resolution 637 and not on the recent Declaration of San Isidro.118 The FMLN insisted that they were not committed to the terms of San Isidro because they had not been present. Instead, a new framework was needed in which their status as a legitimate party would be accepted. In the eyes of Samayoa, the FMLN letter began

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a gradual break with the past and “el monopolio de los presidentes centroamericanos como árbitros del proceso salvadoreño.”119 (The Central American presidents’ monopoly as arbiters of the Salvadoran [peace] process.) The Central Americans would be excluded from the dialogue and the parties themselves would establish a distinct framework under the UN auspices. Schafik Handal, the leader of Salvador’s communist party did not attend the Montreal meeting with de Soto, but he remained a key figure in the development of the FMLN’s political strategy. Like President Cristiani, Handal refused to consider the UN as a mediator. Rather, de Soto was to be treated as an intermediary who should communicate texts between the parties.120 Like Cristiani, Handal sought to ensure that priority be given to El Salvador’s protagonists and a lesser role awarded to the UN as a third-party mediator. For Comandante Handal, the principal issue was the maintenance of a united FMLN front. To do so required that political initiatives derive from the Salvadoran themselves and preferably the FMLN. To accept that the UN could initiate ideas was to transfer a degree of political influence to a third party over which the FMLN had little control. The comandantes remained reluctant to engage with the UN and argued fiercely against its role as de Soto began, in late January 1990, to discuss the ground rules for the talks. What persuaded the comandantes to accept UN intervention? Handal provided three reasons: 1. The intervention by a third party of stature was critical, “era momento para que una institución del peso de las Naciones Unidas, interviniera . . .” (It was time for an institution of political weight, like the UN, to intervene.)121 Both the Contadora Group and the Esquipulas group had failed to support their texts with the means either to verify, or to finance their peace plans. Neither could bring sufficient pressure to force Salvador’s protagonists to abide by their agreements. Instead, the UN Security Council could formalize a political solution because their resolutions had the force of international law. 2. Seven years earlier in 1983, the UN General Assembly had recognized the legitimacy of the FMLN as legitimate combatants.122 Therefore, the UN assured the FMLN of a place at the table and the potential of equal treatment. 3. The UN had the expertise, human resources, and funding to support an intense and protracted political negotiation.123 It was expected that the Secretary-General would invest substantial resources and energy into solving Salvador’s civil war, a test case for UN involvement in the American hemisphere. The key issue for the FMLN in its discussions with the UN was the demilitarization of the Salvadoran state. The authoritarian state with its impunity in the use of force against the Salvadoran people had been one of the principal causes of the war. Therefore, peace would never be achieved without its disappearance at best, or, at least, its significant reform. Whenever the UN strayed from discussions on this central theme, the comandantes debated fiercely among themselves on the value of negotiations and the most appropriate means to pursue their overriding goal.

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Throughout the preparations of the agenda, the comandantes displayed truculence on all issues, other than the depuración (cleansing) of ESAF. Only when the framework and ground rules were finally agreed upon in April 1990, did the SecretaryGeneral raise the status of the agreement by flying everyone to Geneva for a public ceremony. Only then did the FMLN leaders finally lock themselves into a negotiated peace process. The early days of 1990 were busy as some members of the comisión negociadora met secretly with Cristiani’s representatives in Mexico, and Ana Guadalupe Martinez met with Senator Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) in Guatemala.124 Both meetings were exploratory in nature. In New York, Samayoa and Padre Rafael Moreno met with de Soto on January 10 and 11 and examined a carefully developed agenda for the talks.125 De Soto had worked hard since his December meeting in Montreal, and he was able to clarify that the terms of reference for any negotiation would be the Security Council Resolution 637 and not the Declaration of San Isidro de Coronado. De Soto subsequently communicated with U.S. Deputy Permanent Representative, Alexander Watson that the FMLN was serious about a negotiated settlement.126 At four o’clock in the afternoon of January 12, 1990, the U.S. Permanent Representative to the UN, Thomas Pickering informed Perez de Cuellar of his government’s positive, but conditional response. The same day President Cristiani called to express his personal support for the UN Secretary-General’s direct involvement in the Salvadoran problem.127 However, in the Perez de Cuellar’s opinion, Cristiani was “somewhat distrustful of direct UN involvement.”128 Cristiani had learned of the UN meeting in Montreal with the FMLN, and he considered that the UN, and “especially de Soto, was overly sympathetic to the FMLN position.”129 The activist UN representative had achieved the support of certain quarters within the FMLN, skeptical support from the Salvadoran president, and Washington’s endorsement on condition that the Cubans not be involved. With less than full endorsement from the principal protagonists, Alvaro de Soto prepared to move forward.

Chapter 8

Four Critical Moments in the Negotiations The negotiations to reach a final agreement between the protagonists before the anticipated departure of UN Secretary General, Perez de Cuellar lasted almost two years.1 Despite a promise to the UN and Archbishop Arturo Rivera y Damas to end attacks on civilian targets, both protagonists continued to carry out attacks on military targets. In order to maintain the appearance of strength, both sides continued military action while at the same time negotiating language because followers on both sides considered that diplomatic dialogue alone was a sign of weakness. However, none of the negotiating sessions took place in El Salvador with the result that the population had no contact with diplomats who struggled with concepts and language on their behalf. A disconnect existed between the negotiators abroad and the fighting men in the nation. For the men and women who bought and sold food in the market, raised children, and sought to survive amidst the insecurity of war, the peace talks were distant, not only in geographic terms. Radio broadcasts and daily newspapers news reported either progress or stalemate in the talks: Radio Venceremos continued to praise the Frente Farabundo Marti de Liberación Nacional (FMLN) comandantes and El Diario de Hoy persisted in damning the Left and those associated with it, but little had changed on the ground.2 While the talks went on, persistent insecurity continued for the people of El Salvador. From February 1990 through December 1991, the negotiations assumed a permanent and continual quality. For the most part, they took place in Mexico City3 and later in New York, but never in El Salvador. Those talks became isolated from the reality of Salvadoran working men and women, as well as the business community. The agenda contained issues that would affect the lives of ordinary people, particularly their security, as well as economic benefits for combatants. For the most part, Salvadorans remained ignorant of a process that would later affect their lives directly. Four key moments in the negotiations were critical to the conclusion of a peace accord. Their significance rose above the routine of demands, counter-demands, concessions, and agreements and produced important advances in the struggle to

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reach a final accord. These four crucial moments occurred during the following negotiations: 1. July 1990—San Jose, Costa Rica: the parties agreed to ask the UN to establish an international commission to investigate human rights abuses. 2. April 1991—Mexico City: both protagonists met for nearly a month to discuss amendments to the Constitution of 1983 that would demilitarize the Salvadoran state, reform the judiciary and electoral systems, and create an Ombudsman for human rights. 3. September 1991—New York City: the parties moved their negotiations to the UN headquarters in New York and negotiated the formation of a new civilian police force and the creation of an inter-parliamentary group to oversee the implementation of any future agreement. Also, and for the first time, the FMLN raised the issue of land for ex-combatants. 4. December 1991—New York City: the parties finalized details on the reform of the El Salvador armed forces (ESAF), the method of demobilizing the military forces of both sides, and the creation of a police force. The issue of land, credit, and training for ex-combatants was confirmed in the final accord, but left the details left until the implementation stage. Shortly after midnight on December 31, 1991, the protagonists signed their agreement at the UN headquarters in the presence of the departing UN Secretary General.4 Throughout the four critical moments, Washington strongly pressured the UN mediators to hasten the process, reach an agreement with the FMLN on a unilateral cease-fire, and seek more effective negotiating tactics. Washington also pressured Alvaro de Soto to become more effective and achieve a cease-fire. Throughout the process, the State Department insisted that de Soto should speed up the process. The U.S. government remained an impatient and interested observer. U.S. Impatience with UN Mediation The October 6, 1990 meeting, at the UN in New York between those State Department officials charged with managing the peace process and de Soto highlighted the intensity of U.S. pressure upon the UN and its Secretariat. In order to move the process forward, the senior officials pressed de Soto to produce negotiating guidelines that sought a more comprehensive framework and a time limit by which the agreement should be reached.5 They recommended that the UN issue a statement which hinted that its own backing for the talks was at stake and that those who blocked an agreement would be publicly exposed.6 Finally, they called for the active involvement of the Secretary-General.7 The level of “U.S. [government] frustration at the slow pace of the Salvadoran dialogue” was palpable.8 They were angry that the September 1990 deadline for the FMLN cease-fire had passed and implied that the UN was not pressuring the FMLN sufficiently. U.S. officials wanted “the Secretary-General to be the driving force which makes the negotiations go forward.”9 If his Special Representative failed to be more effective, they would use U.S. influence within the UN Security Council to persuade,

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if not shame the Secretary-General.10 U.S. pressure to force the UN Secretariat to comply was not new; it had been applied on various occasions since the early days of the Cold War. However, a limit existed beyond which pressure became bullying and failed to achieve the intended results. Therefore, U.S. Ambassador Thomas Pickering (formerly Ambassador to El Salvador) and his deputy Alexander Watson had to modulate the degree of pressure with the different parties and institutions at the UN. They might put pressure to speed up the negotiations, but they were reluctant to interfere in the substance of the peace talks. Another meeting with senior UN officials occurred nine months later, in July 1991; this time at the State Department in Washington. The report of the meeting indicates a greater willingness to listen to Alvaro de Soto and his assessment of progress in the talks. However, continued pressure to move the process forward, to achieve a FMLN cease-fire and conclude the negotiations was evident.11 To speed up the process, Assistant Secretary, Bernie Aronson sought UN-drafted language. In his opinion, de Soto should draft the text and not wait for the protagonists to propose. Impatience and tension with de Soto and the UN Secretariat was evident throughout the report of the meeting. In exerting this pressure, Aronson believed that the U.S. had Moscow’s support.12 However, execution of the new Soviet policy at the UN was more complex than might have been suggested from Gorbachev’s speech to the UN General Assembly two and a half years earlier.13 The Soviet delegates would not acquiesce to U.S. tactics. The underlying tension was based on Washington’s desire to use the UN to make peace in El Salvador. In the fall of 1990, U.S. pressure was not brought upon the Salvadoran president, but rather upon the UN personnel. The principal means to exert this pressure was the threat to take the issue to the Security Council, and by means of a Security Council resolution, force the protagonists to act, thus obliging de Soto to pursue the negotiations more forcefully. To advance this, Pickering sought the assistance of the Soviet delegation in drafting a Security Council resolution. However, Soviet officials quietly reported to the UN Secretariat that they were not enthusiastic about this U.S. proposal. Furthermore, the Cuban delegate, now serving as a rotating member on the Security Council, was not willing to discuss this resolution. Together, the Soviet and Cuban representatives protected the FMLN, which resisted both external pressures to speed up the peace talks and forced them into concessions over a cease-fire. A further point of contention existed between the U.S. and UN officials, namely the composition of the respective Salvadoran delegations. U.S. Pressure to Enlarge the Delegations In the early days of negotiating the agenda for the talks, the issue of expanding both the Salvadoran government and FMLN delegations to create a broader framework for negotiations was raised. The U.S. representatives to the UN were eager for Cristiani’s team to include “unions, campesinos (peasant organizations), opposition parties, and the business sector, as well as the armed forces.”14 This idea had originated with the FMLN, which demanded a broadening of the government delegation.15 In response, the U.S. had proposed that the FMLN expand its delegation

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to include the five comandantes.16 This urging to expand the framework for talks became the basis for the UN Special Representative’s statement that the parties had “specifically empowered me [Alvaro de Soto] to consult with Salvadoran political and social organizations.”17 De Soto consulted widely with civil society, but did not provide details or the substance of what was being negotiated. Apart from the meeting to amend the Constitution in April 1991, broader representation of the Salvadoran society at the peace talks was absent. After the war, Ruben Zamora commented that, “la fuerza de la nación para empujar en puntos criticos, a mi juicio fue poco utilizada” (the strength of the nation to press forward on critical issues, to my mind, was rarely used).18 Two possible reasons exist for this omission. First, the urgency and time pressures to complete the talks became more important than the quality of the agreement, and its acceptance by the respective constituencies within El Salvador. Second, de Soto sought to control the process with a tight rein: he found the presence of observers distracting from the principal issues at stake. When parliamentarians appeared at the April 1991 meeting to amend the Constitution, de Soto was visibly irritated by their presence, fearing that they would make any agreement more complicated.19 The consequence of excluding representatives of civil society from the talks was their inability to pressure Cristiani and the FMLN into implementing the agreements. Implementation was to prove more troublesome than the intense and relatively swift peace negotiations. Four defining moments are notable in the peace talks: July 1990, San Jose Agreement to Investigate Abuses of Human Rights Six months into the negotiations the parties agreed to ask the UN to investigate human rights abuses that had taken place since 1980. Human rights was a priority when the FMLN initiated the agenda for talks at Geneva in April 1990. However, faced with serious obstacles on the structure and composition of ESAF at the San Jose, Costa Rica meeting in July 1990, Alvaro de Soto suggested that the negotiators skip the first agenda item—dissolution of ESAF—temporarily, and move on to discuss human rights abuses and the reform of Salvador’s penal code.20 Both parties agreed, although not without bitter discussions among the FMLN over the abandonment of their principal goal. Handal never admitted that these internal debates had occurred among the FMLN comandantes. Instead, he took the initiative, emphasizing that the FMLN proposed discussing human rights and temporarily skipped over the issue of ESAF. “Entonces, nosotros propusimos dejar momentáneamente en suspenso el tema de fuerza armada y pasarnos al tema de derechos humanos.” (Therefore, we proposed to suspend, temporarily, the theme of the armed forces and we agreed to pass to the theme of human rights.)21 In Schafik Handal’s mind, discussions on human rights should be relatively easy because the government had signed international agreements and could not reject principles that were written into the Salvadoran constitution. Both he and David Escobar, the special advisor to President Cristiani, agreed that an accord on a substantive issue such as human rights would demonstrate to the Salvadoran people that the protagonists were committed to reaching a peace agreement.22 With

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the negotiators of both parties agreeing in principle, they reached consensus after lengthy discussions at five o’clock the following morning. Cristiani’s reasons for discussing human rights at this early stage of the talks are revealing. First, the President believed that discussion on this theme would affect neither the government nor ESAF. He believed that the abuse of human rights was an integral part of war. The exploitation could not be attributed to one protagonist or another, but to the context of a society consumed by violence.23 He also believed that the FMLN was the principal perpetrator of abuse through kidnapping and extrajudicial killings.24 In Cristiani’s opinion, a UN investigation would reveal the extent of FMLN abuse, not the culpability of the government or ESAF (“aqui [las Naciones Unidas] van a tener que venir a ver que el FMLN viola los derechos humanos”)25 (here [the United Nations] will have to come and see that it is the FMLN which violates human rights). The mindset of Cristiani and his colleagues was that the state did not abuse its citizens because it was prosecuting an anti-communist campaign. In its effort to defeat communism, the government’s actions were legitimate. According to Escobar, Cristiani’s Chief of Staff, Cristiani believed that the FMLN and its supporters were culpable and an international investigation would reveal the extent of their abuse of human rights.26 The second reason was significant on domestic social grounds. Cristiani claimed that it was the Salvadoran political parties that initiated and demanded an investigation into human rights abuses.27 In his opinion, there existed an internal consensus on the need to examine and publish the abuses and tragedy of the civil war. Social forces on the left of the political spectrum brought pressure to bear upon the FMLN and the government to raise the issue of human rights and to agree upon a third party investigation. According to Cristiani, NGOs with strong religious commitments and quasi-political strategies led the push for investigation into human rights violations.28 He believed that internal pressure from civil society in Salvador, Europe, and in the U.S. to investigate human rights was stronger than the demand of either protagonist participating in the UN-mediated talks.29 Congressman Joe Moakley’s investigation was a clear example of the pressure brought by the Jesuit community upon the U.S. Congress to investigate the priests’ murders the previous November. Cristiani responded affirmatively to that pressure, whether through conviction that he was doing the right thing or through pragmatic assessment that the NGOs had significant influence on international media, the Congress, and European governments.30 However, Cristiani did not anticipate that the UN investigation would take place immediately. Instead, he expected that this work would take place only after a peace agreement had been reached.31 De Soto agreed that it would be impossible to carry out such investigations during the war and before a cease-fire had gone into effect.32 The level of insecurity throughout the country would make the UN’s work extremely difficult. Meanwhile, Cristiani accepted the need to confirm the legal principles that had already been established in the UN Convention on Human Rights and subscribed to by previous Salvadoran governments.33 The San Jose Agreement of July 1990 represented the first substantive commitment of both parties to change Salvadoran society. Cristiani’s desire that the UN Mission not begin its work force immediately succeeded, but it could not wait until

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completion of the negotiations. Exactly one year after the parties met in San Jose to debate the protection of human rights, the UN’s Observer Mission to El Salvador (ONUSAL) office in San Salvador received the first human rights officers.34 In late July 1991,the Human Rights Division of ONUSAL began its work of protecting Salvadorans amid ongoing violence because no cease-fire had yet been signed. In September 1992 three prominent international jurists who headed the UN Commission on the Truth in El Salvador began their investigation of past abuses and delivered their report to the UN Secretary-General six months later on March 15, 1993.35 Less than three years elapsed from the time that the parties agreed upon inviting the UN to investigate human rights abuse to the publication of its report before the world community. Between July 1990 and March of the following year, the negotiations made little progress. A FMLN acquiescence to enter into a cease-fire by the target date of September 15 came and went by. The comandantes could not relinquish their only significant leverage in the peace talks. Furthermore, the FMLN waited until the elections for a National Assembly in March 1991 to determine the political composition of the new legislature and in the meantime refused to make concessions on the critical issue of depuración (cleansing) of ESAF.36 Following the elections in March 1991, significant external pressure was placed on both protagonists to move forward because an internal deadline approached. Article 248 of the Salvadoran constitution imposed strict procedures for amending the constitution. The internal dynamic of meeting those procedures created a deadline that the parties could not ignore. April 1991, Mexico City, Amending the Salvadoran Constitution Article 248 of the Constitution of 1983 required that constitutional amendments be approved by two consecutive National Assemblies. Parliamentary elections had taken place in March 1991 and on April 30 an outgoing legislative assembly would leave office. The following day, the newly elected members would replace them. If the parties failed to agree on precise changes to the constitution, they would have to wait three years, until 1994, when the next elections for the National Assembly would take place. This delay was considered unacceptable.37 April 30 presented a real deadline. Alvaro de Soto feared that the parties were incapable of reaching an agreement by the deadline. He, therefore, sought to change Article 248.38 The FMLN supported him in order to keep open the possibility of ongoing negotiations.39 President Cristiani refused, insisting upon the prerogative of a chief of state and upholder of the constitution. Cristiani was also under considerable pressure from the right wing of the ARENA party not to concede to the UN on issues of national sovereignty, such as the constitution.40 The result was all-night sessions, rowdy encounters, and considerable external pressure on both protagonists to reach an agreement. The political parties of El Salvador arrived at the Radisson Hotel in Mexico City to inform the UN mediator that they had agreed among themselves to constitutional reforms, which, de Soto claims had little to do with the actual negotiations between the protagonists. However, constitutional amendments had to be approved by the

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political representatives in two successive legislatures, and the observers believed that they had a role to play in drafting constitutional language.41 The parties confronted the need to reform ESAF, and to abolish the hated National Guard and the Treasury Police, as well as the paramilitary units. They should end the military’s role as keeper of internal security and create a new civilian police force that would be independent of the military High Command. The intelligence service should be removed from ESAF and placed under the direct authority of the civilian president. The judiciary and the electoral system should be reformed and an Ombudsman for human rights established.42 Finally, the Mexico Agreement should confirm the agreement of July 1990 to create a UN Commission with authority to intervene, investigate, and publish the truth about violations of human rights in El Salvador.43 The tasks were daunting and the time pressure was immense. Alvaro de Soto insisted on controlling the negotiations and being “the sole channel between untrusting parties.”44 However, he lacked complete control of the process. He had not invited the political parties, but they had arrived. The FMLN welcomed their presence. Assistant Secretary, Bernie Aronson, who followed the negotiations closely from Washington, did not object.45 At the Radisson Hotel, the political representatives exchanged opinions while waiting to see the texts. Ruben Zamora, the founder of the Convergencia Democrática, a coalition of centerleft politicians, found that he spent more time acting as an interlocutor with the president’s negotiating team than working with the FMLN, with whom he was ideologically more closely aligned.46 He discussed with David Escobar the themes that could be advanced and those that could not. As such, the political representatives became involved in the substance of the talks, by reviewing working texts and contributing both their opinions and draft articles.47 De Soto considered them to be a confounded nuisance, meddling in the negotiations and influencing the representatives of both the government and the FMLN.48 In the course of the meetings, de Soto accepted a proposal from Villalobos that the FMLN comandantes travel from their field commands to Mexico City to observe what was actually happening at the negotiating table. If all went well, they would be able to reassure their forces upon return to their respective military posts. In the opinion of Marrack Goulding, the Head of UN Peace-keeping, the comandantes “had been a lively addition to the sessions there [Mexico City] and their presence had seemed beneficial.”49 To those present, it became clear that the presence of the parliamentary delegations and the FMLN comandantes made de Soto’s task much more complicated.50 On April 27, the government negotiators and the FMLN’s comisión negociadora agreed on seven significant changes to the constitution. With sufficient political representation at the talks in Mexico City, the outgoing National Assembly approved the amendments that same day. It would take much longer, and with intense ongoing bargaining, for the incoming members of the legislature to add their approval and thus ratify the amendments. Throughout the process, the U.S. government played an active role to protect the civilian president from his right wing and to pressure Cristiani into making necessary concessions to reach an agreement by the constitutionally mandated deadline. The State Department observed the process through its Embassy in Mexico—a political

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officer provided daily reports on the negotiation process.51 Aronson also maintained frequent telephone contact with Cristiani in San Salvador. The State Department’s policy was to support Cristiani in whatever way necessary to help him reach a political solution with the FMLN.52 This included communication with and pressure upon the UN Secretary General through Ambassador Pickering in New York. He should persuade Perez de Cuellar to accede to President Cristiani’s needs.53 Throughout early 1991, the State Department sought both to protect the civilian president and to establish a relationship with ESAF’s High Command that went beyond criticism over their murder of the Jesuit priests. To this effect, Aronson asked General Joulwan and the head of the U.S. Southern Command in Panama to meet with Salvador’s High Command and assure the senior officers that Washington held “enthusiastic support for President Cristiani.”54 By implication, Aronson would not tolerate any move to depose or murder the civilian president. Although U.S. Ambassador William Walker asserted that there was never any talk of a coup d’état, David Escobar, Cristiani’s Chief of Staff thought otherwise.55 In his opinion, the U.S. government twisted arms to ensure that the military and right-wing groups did not harm the civilian government of President Cristiani. “A mí no me cabe duda de que Estados Unidos torció unos brazos ahí. Y asi tenia que ser.” (To my mind, the United States twisted arms here [within ESAF] and that is how it should be.)56 Cristiani had to be protected because, during the peace talks, there arose the danger that opponents from within ESAF, as well as members of the extreme right, would murder him, in the same way as they had murdered the Jesuits.57 In Escobar’s opinion, the role of the U.S. government as protector of the civilian president and advocate for the negotiations with the High Command was indispensable.58 At the same time, Washington pressed Cristiani to be flexible and make concessions in the Mexico City talks on the constitution.59 In pursuit of this, Aronson communicated frequently with Cristiani encouraging him to make the necessary compromises so that a final agreement could be reached by the April 30 deadline.60 Aronson also let it be known to the FMLN that Washington would respect and seek to enforce the agreements.61 The Mexico City Accord was the most important of all four agreements to be reached between the protagonists because it addressed the underlying political issue of ESAF’s future role within the Salvadoran state.62 Both Cristiani and the FMLN agreed that ESAF should be depoliticized. Furthermore, the security apparatus had to be destroyed. Two issues were at stake: the structure of the new civilian institution that would replace ESAF to establish internal security; and the FMLN’s participation within that new security organization. Considerable bargaining, many long nights, and endless patience were all required in order to reach a conclusion. In Mexico City, the parties agreed on broad principles that would form the basis for the final accord reached eight months later. However, they were unable in April 1991 to address the critical issues that would subsequently consume their time and effort. In Mexico City, neither the protagonists nor de Soto considered the underlying socioeconomic issues that had caused the violence. An explanation lies in a limit to the number and degree of controversial issues that could be absorbed and agreed upon in any one session. However, eighteen months later socio-economic issues nearly destroyed the ongoing peace process.

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Cristiani faced deep opposition from within the ARENA coalition; none of the three members of his negotiating team represented ESAF or the oligarchy. Oscar Santamaria, his Chief of Staff was an intelligent, but vapid figure who failed to inspire confidence. David Escobar Galindo was an intellectual, a poet, and a close personal adviser to the President; he was highly intelligent and at Alvaro de Soto’s own admission, underestimated.63 The third member of the team was General Mauricio Vargas. In theory, with strong experience as a battalion commander, he represented ESAF’s High Command. However, Vargas and his family were known as members of the Christian Democratic party. Consequently, members of the High Command treated him with suspicion. Also, Vargas was not a member of the tandona, the large and powerful graduating class of 1966.64 Cristiani’s small team was not strong, but it presumed to act as a foil for the true negotiator:, President Cristiani himself.65 The President’s failure to appoint any representative of the extreme right within ARENA to his negotiating team facilitated his ability to make concessions, but it created hostility toward the President and his negotiators. Following the negotiations in Mexico City, Cristiani was verbally assaulted by the right wing of his party, and was also criticized by the military High Command who believed that his negotiating team had conceded too much. They had agreed to amend the constitution, but had failed to extract a cease-fire from the guerillas. Therefore, ESAF’s purpose to end the fighting had slipped away, again. Either out of revenge or as a matter of self-defense, ESAF and the right wing of ARENA sought to delay ratification of the constitutional amendments by pressuring the new members of the National Assembly. Armando Calderon Sol, the Mayor of San Salvador and a leading ARENA politician, who would succeed Cristiani at the next presidential election, summed up the frustration among conservatives, We can’t ratify anything right now. The conditions aren’t right. Things are getting worse for the FMLN. We can’t cede the flag to them. We have an internal conflict; our bases are demanding a different attitude [than that which we are giving them.]66

Informal negotiations on how to end the war had now shifted from Mexico City to the clubs and meeting places of San Salvador. Cristiani assured the High Command that the amendments to ESAF would only occur after the FMLN agreed to a ceasefire, but he had agreed to significant reforms within the military. Conservatives no longer trusted him.67 Meanwhile, the FMLN faced the challenge of what to do if they agreed to peace. A paper circulated among the comandantes entitled, “Que Hacemos si logramos paz?” (What do we do if we achieve peace?)68 The paper reflected the challenge of entering the political process while ESAF retained its monopoly of military force. What should happen to the FMLN’s military capability? Faced with the prospect of winning politically, but loosing militarily, the FMLN seriously discussed a July military offensive. It turned out to be more smoke than fire. However, the future was uncertain and it produced a blockage, if not backsliding on progress in the negotiations. From May to September 1991, internal discord within the ARENA as well as within the FMLN created a stalemate. Neither side was able to move forward; their respective constituencies, particularly Salvador’s right-wing elements, were adamant

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that the proposed constitutional amendments should not proceed. Consequently, the external parties, which were committed to completing the peace talks, became anxious, if not fed up.69 The “Four Friends of the UN Secretary General” complained to their respective Salvadoran allies that progress had to be made; the government should press for ratification of the constitutional amendments, and the FMLN should agree to a cease-fire.70 Alvaro de Soto traveled to Havana to seek the help of Fidel Castro in pressuring the FMLN. Castro agreed not to make it difficult or to object to a political solution.71 In August, Secretary James Baker asked his Soviet colleague, Foreign Minister Bessmertnykh to make a joint démarche to the Secretary General that he personally assumes leadership of the UN’s mediation.72 It was a clear slap in the face to Alvaro de Soto, but Perez de Cuellar stood by his Personal Representative.73 External parties assumed a more active role than the protagonists and their supporters within El Salvador. Domestically, progress was frozen. The Christian Democrats complained to Cristiani that he ignored them, and at the same time they argued that the FMLN should no longer seek absolute positions on the purging of ESAF.74 Alliances were fickle. The head of the Christian Democrats, Fidel Chavez Mena also warned the FMLN that if the comandantes did not move toward a resolution of the outstanding issues, both the U.S. and Soviet governments would impose upon them a UN Resolution.75 Other critical international issues were consuming U.S. attention and Washington pressured both sides to reach an agreement. Impatience with the slow progress of Salvadoran negotiations was palpable among Secretary Baker’s staff, and only a handful of senior officials retained consistent commitment to the process. Aronson and his team, together with Ambassador Pickering, retained their dedication to help Cristiani achieve a sustainable peace. Despite the priority given to the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait and the Gulf War, Pickering intervened actively and often in support of Cristiani at the UN.76 September 1991 Meeting in New York In response to the U.S. pressure, Perez de Cuellar invited the protagonists to meet at the UN headquarters in the course of the September gathering of the UN General Assembly. Cristiani was reluctant, fearing that presidential prestige would be lost in yet another fruitless negotiating session. Nevertheless, at the urging of Aronson and Pickering (his friend from the days Pickering had served in El Salvador), Cristiani agreed to fly to New York on September 16. He intended to visit for two days, but remained for ten.77 Three principal issues remained to be discussed: 1. the cease-fire and the modalities for supervision; 2. the reintegration of FMLN combatants into civilian life; and 3. the purging of ESAF, or alternatively, the incorporation of FMLN combatants into ESAF. In Cristiani’s mind, the New York meeting was the toughest meeting to date because he was under such pressure from ESAF’s High Command. Regardless of the reforms to which he agreed, he knew that he would face both the military officers and the

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extreme right-wing members within his own ARENA party upon his return to San Salvador.78 i.

The Cease-fire

The original plan for a cease-fire, proposed by the FMLN in May 1990 at Caracas in Venezuela, was that a two-stage process would allow the negotiations over broad principles to finish before a cease-fire went into effect. The details regarding implementation would only be resolved after the cease-fire. One year later, with an agreement on the broad principles, the FMLN continued to postpone the time for a cease-fire. In the mind of Handal and other comandantes, ESAF’s war would end only when the FMLN stopped fighting, at which point ESAF would claim victory.79 Handal, therefore, sought to delay the cease-fire as long as possible. Cristiani remained adamant about a cease-fire and the U.S. government stood by him. Now in the summer doldrums of 1991, fresh ideas were put forward to give wind to the talks. Aronson agreed to compress the negotiations so that the ceasefire occurred at the same time as the parties reached an agreement and the FMLN became a political party.80 With Aronson’s conversion on the timing of the ceasefire, Cristiani had to agree. The next issue was to avoid discussion of the depuración (purging) of ESAF, but to focus on reduction in the size of its forces and the creation of a new Policía Nacional Civil (PNC) to provide security within the country. At the New York meetings in September 1991, Cristiani agreed that former FMLN combatants would be eligible for PNC membership on condition that they were eligible for, and graduated from, the new Police Academy that had yet to be created.81 Nowhere to be seen in these discussions were representatives of the social and political organizations that formed the constituent base for each of the protagonists. Therefore, when it came time to agree upon the composition of the PNC, the government and the FMLN–FDR drafted a secret memorandum that remained undisclosed for several years after the completion of the peace agreements. Under the terms of the secret memorandum signed on September 25, 1991, the government of El Salvador accepted the presence of ex-combatants into the police force (PNC) in exchange for which the FMLN agreed not to demand the incorporation of its combatants into the military (ESAF), nor demand its abolition. However, the FMLN retained the right to continue demanding the “disolución” (dissolution) of ESAF in its propaganda material, as well as the aspiration of its militant supporters to join the armed forces in the new, peaceful El Salvador. As a secret memorandum, this document was not included in the UN’s collection of key documents on the Salvadoran peace process. Until Salvador Samayoa’s narration of its contents in his book, El Salvador: la reforma pactada, the memorandum, known as the Entendidos del Acuerdo de Nueva York, dated September 25, remained a secret document.82 ii.

Socio-economic Issues

Only in September did the FMLN begin to focus on the socio-economic section of the accords. Cristiani had maintained from the outset of the negotiations that the basic socio-economic system was something for the elected government to decide

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and thus was not a subject for negotiations.83 The FMLN had voluntarily accepted this in principle, but when the comisión negociadora sought to raise these issues, de Soto quashed efforts to negotiate a redefinition of the country’s socio-economic system. De Soto was prepared to discuss reintegration programs, such as the distribution of land for the FMLN combatants, but the broader issues of economic development were not on his agenda. For Handal and the FMLN, the key issue was support for their forces. Beyond that, they expressed no interest in broader social issues. The ARENA government was determined not to resume a land reform program, such as that carried out under Jose Napoleon Duarte, and Cristiani was adamant that he would not expropriate landholdings below the maximum of 245 hectares as specified in the constitution.84 The complexity of the problem and the relatively scant attention devoted to the subject during the negotiations left little hope for the campesinos (peasant farmers), who had seen their family lands burned when they left to join the FMLN. At the September meeting in New York, the FMLN and the government agreed that land in excess of 245 hectares shall be used to meet the needs of peasants and small farmers who are without land, and to that end the government shall make arrangements to purchase lands offered for sale to the state.85

That language invited landless peasants to seize unused land in the expectation that the government would purchase it on their behalf at some future time. Not all the peasants who now occupied land had fought with the FMLN and the comandantes were unable to prevent these seizures. The confusing situation required a careful and methodical study of which land and what credit should be made available. This would take years to establish. We may assume that if the FMLN had sought representation of campesinos as observers to the talks, the issue of land would have been raised earlier in the negotiations. The failure to raise socio-economic issues until the final months of talks resulted in an incomplete agreement and deep controversy during implementation of the accords. The explanation is found in a pragmatic decision to limit the agenda to issues that could be resolved by the end of 1991. For the Salvadoran government, the reintegration of FMLN combatants was viable, but the re-distribution of land was not. Meanwhile, Washington was impatient to reach a resolution and the Secretary General’s term in office expired at the end of that year. iii.

Destruction of the Armed Forces

The shortest article in the New York Agreement of September 1991 caused the greatest controversy. It stated that, “a process of purification of the armed forces is agreed upon, on the basis of a vetting of all personnel serving in them by an ad hoc Commission.”86 Those few words established an authentic Salvadoran commission of three respected lawyers with a reputation for independent thinking. Together, they were asked to investigate the activities of all 223 military officers and to recommend the dismissal of those deemed to have committed acts, which made them unfit for service in the Armed Forces. The “ad hoc” commission had a small staff

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and was authorized to provide names in their report that was due one year later in September 1992. The consequence of that report was to destroy the military High Command. However, in September 1991, the implications of creating an “ad hoc” commission were ignored. More pressing for the FMLN was security guarantees for their own protection once a cease-fire went into effect and their troops were demobilized. Upon arriving in New York that September, Cristiani sat down with Pickering in his large office overlooking the UN building. Then he crossed 1st Avenue to meet with Perez de Cuellar. Cristiani understood the vulnerability of individual comandantes and offered a personal security package of bodyguards to the top twenty members of the FMLN.87 Pickering considered that the government’s proposal was reasonable and that Cristiani would do well to relate this offer to the Secretary General. No mention of this personal security arrangement was published. However, the Spanish Prime Minister Felipe Gonzalez, one of the Four Friends of the UN Secretary General, proposed a mechanism by which to include the FMLN during the transition period and before it was fully reintegrated into Salvadoran political life. Gonzalez proposed the creation of the Comisión Nacional para la Consolidación de la Paz (COPAZ) to oversee the implementation of the peace agreements. It was a multiparty committee of National Assembly members.88 The New York Agreement set out with specificity the powers of COPAZ, its composition, duration, and international guarantees.89 It was expected to play a significant role in supervising the several agreements. However, due to its lack of sanctions, COPAZ was rarely effective. Apart from the detailed requirements for the establishment of COPAZ, the remainder of the New York Agreement was notable for its failure to be specific. Instead, the parties agreed upon principles and left the details and implementation plans for future negotiations.90 Generalities and vagueness characterized the social and economic aspects of the agenda at the New York meetings in September 1991 and again in December of that year. Had the parties sought precision, Blanca Antonini, the Venezuelan lawyer on the UN mediating team, believed that no agreement would have been reached.91 As the likelihood of a final peace accord approached, there arose considerable nervousness as to the content. Negotiators for both sides remained under strong and occasionally violent pressure from their constituents. To mitigate that pressure, the negotiators resorted to a secret memorandum and vague language to obfuscate the reality of the agreements. The accords were imposed upon social groups that were rarely involved in the negotiations and whose opportunity to express opinion was through violent threats against both Cristiani and the FMLN. That violence continued.92 Only strong U.S. pressure prevented elements within ESAF from confronting Cristiani, ending the negotiations, and resuming the war with the FMLN. Progress on the remaining issues appeared impossible. There was much talk of another FMLN “final offensive” and according to the Peter Romero, the U.S. Chargé d’Affaires, right-wing elements circulated leaflets that threatened to kill labor and humanitarian group leaders.93 By December, the prospect of completing the negotiations before the departure of Perez de Cuellar appeared unlikely. The parties were still far apart on a number of critical issues, including the composition of the armed forces, future police presence

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in the areas controlled by the FMLN, and land for FMLN’s ex-combatants. Gloom set in among the mediators, with de Soto convinced that a final agreement was impossible before the December 31 deadline. Marrack Goulding, the UN’s Under Secretary for Peacekeeping Operations and responsible for the cease-fire negotiations, was more optimistic. He had negotiated the withdrawal of troops into respective zones in Angola and envisaged fewer problems with carrying out this task in El Salvador. Nevertheless, the parties were far apart and the clock was ticking. The task for both Goulding and de Soto was to force the parties to accept texts that had not necessarily been negotiated between them, but which the UN had drafted as acceptable consensus documents. The earlier practice of individually discussing issues with each of the parties and then drafting language that Alvaro de Soto hoped would bridge the gap between them consumed much time. De Soto had become a master at shuttling between the parties, even if they occupied two floors in the same building. Now in the final days, he abandoned this itinerant process and imposed texts upon both the parties. The technique earned him the name “la cimitarra de Alvaro” (Alvaro’s scimitar). Goulding earned the same name.94 Midnight December 1991 Finally, in December that year as Perez de Cuellar prepared to leave office at the end of his four year mandate, the parties addressed the remaining outstanding issues: land for credit, demobilization of FMLN combatants, reduction in ESAF forces, as well as the process for judicial reform and electoral reform. When they reached an agreement shortly after midnight on December 31, only a handful of people signed the agreement for each side.95 When the UN photographer arrived to commemorate the event, a few more joined to commemorate the peace agreement.96 The photograph shows an exhausted Javier Perez de Cuellar and an ebullient Alvaro de Soto seated in the middle of the negotiators.97 The negotiators had become a small, exclusive group that knew each other intimately, but they had become estranged from the men and women who sent them to New York. With more time, they could have consulted their respective bases, but time was short for the international community. The U.S. was tired of El Salvador’s war and sought to move on to other issues. Therefore, the negotiations were compressed and deadlines were imposed. The alternate argument is that the protagonists would never have conceded without international pressure and the deadlines. Such was the opposition from their respective constituencies, that they needed that external threat to force an agreement. When faced with vital issues such as the future of the armed forces and the lawful presence of former guerillas within the National Assembly, the participants fought to the end until no gasp of energy was left. On January 16, 1992, President Cristiani, members of his cabinet, and the Chief of the armed forces met the FMLN comandantes and signed a comprehensive peace accord. With pomp and circumstance in the Mexican castle of Chapultepec, President Carlos Salinas de Gortari of Mexico, the Presidents of the four Central American States, the new UN Secretary General, Boutros Boutros-Ghali, and U.S.

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Secretary of State, James Baker, witnessed the signing. In the presence of international observers, both sides agreed to End the armed conflict by political means as speedily as possible, promote the democratization of the country, guarantee unrestricted respect for human rights and reunify Salvadoran society.98

In pursuit of these principles, the parties agreed in Chapter 1 that ESAF would be reduced in size and reformed substantially. The number of officers, military units, and troops would be reduced commensurate with a new purpose of national defense, not internal security. The armed forces would no longer be permitted to play a role in the political life of El Salvador and would be led by a civilian minister of Defense, appointed by the elected President and supervised by the National Assembly. The BIRIs (rapid deployment infantry battalions), which had been the principal force for “cleansing” areas controlled by the FMLN, were disbanded. Also, paramilitary bodies and civil defense units were abolished. The Intelligence Service—long a feared instrument of military power—was removed from ESAF control and placed under the direct authority of the president, with the National Assembly exercising oversight. In short, the institution that had dominated Salvadoran politics since 1932 and had instilled a regime of fear among the population was neutralized. The final accord ruptured ESAF’s control over the state and its unwritten alliance with landowners. Civilian control over the armed forces was confirmed by a treaty, in the presence of the UN Secretary General, the “Four Friends” of the Secretary General, the U.S. government, and the presidents of the four Central American states, plus Panama. The Chapultepec Peace Accord omitted details concerning the process by which the FMLN combatants would be reintegrated into Salvadoran society, the transfer of land, and the availability of credit and training in new skills to men who had spent the previous years living by the gun. Alvaro de Soto considers this omission to be a “significant casualty” of the accords and blames himself (as mediator) and the FMLN for not pursuing this issue.99 After the ceremonies and before international witnesses, the protagonists had to demonstrate that they possessed the necessary political will to implement their agreements. Could the Cristiani government and the FMLN leaders affect the peace, and would civic institutions within El Salvador assist in that process? What external economic support and political pressure might be exercised to nudge the parties forward? And finally, who would assume leadership for implementing El Salvador’s peace process?

Chapter 9

Implementation of the Chapultepec Peace Accords: The Achievements The implementation of the several peace accords was as contentious as the negotiations themselves. Three agreements comprised the 1992 peace accords between the government of El Salvador and the FMLN: 1. The Mexico City agreement of April 1991 to amend the Salvadoran constitution.1 Confirmation of the creation of the UN Truth Commission previously agreed at San Jose, Costa Rica. 2. The New York City agreement of September 1991 in which the parties agreed to address security and socio-economic questions, as well as to create a parliamentary commission, Comisión Nacional para la Consolidación de la Paz (COPAZ) that would draft enabling legislation, verify the accords, and oversee the implementation of the Accords.2 3. The New Year’s Eve agreement at the UN headquarters in New York. The parties signed two accords that completed their commitment to demobilize, enter into a cease-fire, decommission weapons, reform the security institutions of the Salvadoran state, and pursue socio-economic goals for the reintegration of their respective forces into civilian life.3 The parties signed all three accords at Chapultepec Castle in Mexico City on January 16, 1992. Hereafter, these are referred to as the Chapultepec Accords. 4. Subsequently another international document, written under the auspices of the UN, recommended changes to the Salvadoran judicial system. The departing members of the National Assembly enacted these changes into law in April 1994.4

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The years following the peace signing at Chapultepec Castle were fraught with dangers of relapse into violent conflict. Foreign journalists wrote of the reemergence of death-squads and victims were found in the street with a single bullet between their eyes.5 Nevertheless, the parties ceased fighting each other the day after signing the Chapultepec Accords and the cease-fire became official on February 1, 1992. Relative peace existed as the former protagonists sought to integrate their followers into a new Salvadoran society. Nobody wanted a return to the violence that had destroyed the country for twelve years.6 The constant threat of death, the displacement of communities, and the economic destruction had left the population exhausted and longing to resume their normal lives. In the opinion of Ruben Zamora, leader of the newly created Convergencia Democrática, an authentic Salvadoran decision existed to resolve their differences through dialogue and negotiation, rather than violence.7 That proposition was tested throughout the implementation phase. The intent of the parties and international witnesses gathered together in January 1992 was that the Salvadoran government, its military High Command, and the leadership of the FMLN–FDR should assume ownership of the implementation stage. To be sustainable, the Chapultepec Accords should become part of the fabric of Salvador’s political practice; the parties should negotiate and own the process.8 The issue was whether Salvadorans could implement their peace on their own. Did sufficient political will exist among the parties to put their agreements into practice, and would the international community be ready to assist only when needed? How might Salvadoran society, which had not participated in the negotiations for peace, now embrace the terms of the Chapultepec Accords? This chapter examines the relatively successful parts of those accords: ● ● ● ● ● ● ●

the dismantling of the security, paramilitary, and intelligence forces; formation of a new police academy; creation of a new civilian police force; initiation of a legislative oversight body, COPAZ; legalization of the FMLN and the legitimacy of its new political leaders, report of the “ad hoc” commission and collection of evidence for the UN Truth Commission.

All seven elements sought to achieve disengagement from warfare and the pursuit of democracy. However, the two goals are not necessarily compatible. The experience of El Salvador demonstrates the acute tension between ensuring an end to the violent war and consolidating democratic processes. Amidst the tension to pursue both security and democracy, the UN and the U.S. government occasionally intervened to ensure that violence was contained and at other times to advance democratic procedures. Cease-fire The principal achievement was that the civil war between El Salvador’s armed forces (ESAF) and the FMLN ceased on the day after the signing of the Chapultepec

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Accords. On January 17, 1992, the protagonists stopped fighting each other. Within a year of the Accord, the size of ESAF was halved and a new police force, under civilian leadership, was created. It would become the principal institution for maintaining law and order. ESAF’s mandate was limited to the defense of the country from external attack, with only a minimal role in domestic security functions. This radical change provoked vicious criticism from the oligarchy and others on the extreme right, who had depended upon ESAF to protect their properties and interests. They now threatened to kill General Renee Emilio Ponce, the Defense Minister, for signing the Chapultepec Accords.9 However, their capacity to thwart, or “spoil,” the peace accords diminished significantly until the 1994 presidential election campaign.10 Demobilization of the Security Forces and Intelligence Department With the war over, the first item on Cristiani’s agenda was the demobilization of the hated security forces, namely the Guardia Nacional (National Guard) and the Policía de Hacienda (Treasury Police). Also, the rapid deployment infantry battalions, known by their Spanish acronym BIRI, including the U.S. trained Atlacatl Battalion, were disbanded. The National Intelligence Department was abolished and a new civilian agency created. On March 2, 1992, an Executive Order formally abolished the National Guard and the Treasury Police.11 Over the next several months, the BIRIs were closed down.12 However, the dismantling of these institutions did not indicate the dismissal of the men who had trained and fought with them. Defense Minister Rene Emilio Ponce was willing to retain them in barracks temporarily, but he sought to transfer these men into the new Policía Nacional Civil (National Civilian Police).13 Ponce knew that if he transferred them into ESAF, they would be subject to the fifty percent reduction in force. Therefore he sought to keep them intact, independent and ready to transfer into the new police when that civilian force was created. The UN objected on the grounds that men who had been trained to be ruthless warriors would make unsuitable policeman.14 The problem of where to place the personnel of the dismantled security organizations continued to trouble Cristiani in his relations with General Ponce. It became an issue of acute tension between them. In time honored custom, General Ponce exerted considerable pressure upon the civilian President. Cristiani stalled. In conversations with senior UN observers in the UN Observer Mission in El Salvador (ONUSAL), the President claimed that the demobilization of the Treasury Police and National Guard would result in a public security hazard, namely the existence of unemployed former security men with no constructive income.15 Ponce moved these men into their respective barracks and declared that each site was a “designated area” under the terms of the Chapultepec Accords, which meant that the military forces were contained and separated from the FMLN.16 Ponce retained each as integral security units and hoped to outlive the external pressures to demobilize these forces. For his part, President Cristiani sought to move 5,000 men from the Treasury Police and National Guard into ESAF, but Ponce objected. Cristiani then tried to move them into the new police force, but ONUSAL objected.17 Aside from discharging the men, there

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appeared to be only one solution, namely their transfer to the existing and corrupt national police; a transfer that contradicted the terms of the Chapultepec Accords.18 Faced with the dilemma of what to do with the men in both the security forces, General Ponce transferred just under 1,500 men from the disbanded units into the old Policía Nacional.19 Cristiani failed to transfer them into ESAF and there was little that the UN could do to prevent it. More important to the U.S. Embassy was the de facto dissolution of both the Treasury Police and the National Guard. Together with the dissolution of the BIRIs in July 1992, the U.S. Embassy claimed that “the most profound of all the changes in Salvadoran Society” had occurred.20 Military institutions had been destroyed, but the change from a culture of military dominance to a respect for civilian life required much more. That normative change would require years. Demobilization of the FMLN Also under the terms of the Chapultepec Accords, the FMLN forces were required to concentrate in “designated areas” and thence to demobilize forces and decommission weapons. FMLN forces should move into fifteen designated “concentration zones” where they would be under the supervision of the United Nations Development Program (UNDP).21 In the early months of 1992, the FMLN resisted the movement into the “concentration zones” as well as the transfer of their weapons to ONUSAL. This reflected their wariness with the peace accords, a growing distrust toward their comandantes, and a lack of guarantees that demilitarized FMLN forces would not be attacked.22 Between February and June 1992, the FMLN refused to demobilize. Their leaders remained unyielding, all the while observing President Cristiani’s difficulties in dismantling both the security forces and the BIRIs. In the absence of funds with which to purchase land and provide credit for tools and seed, the leadership of the FMLN slowed down the demobilization of 30,000 men and women. Faced with the similar problem of what to do with demobilized, unpaid, and unfed troops, both ESAF and the FMLN used the other’s intransigence as an excuse not to move forward in implementing the peace accords. Creation of the National Police Academy The Chapultepec Accords provided a partial resolution to this conundrum, namely the formation of the new police academy, which would train all middle-ranking and senior police officers from both ESAF and the FMLN.23 The creation of this new institution required a building, funding for refurbishment, a director and staff, knowledgeable faculty, equipment, and a curriculum. Progress in gathering all these elements was slow. The Spanish government sent the head of its police forces in Catalan to advise on the establishment of the academy.24 The Mexican government assigned the Deputy Head of its police force in Mexico City to train Salvador’s new police force; an offer that ensured neither transparency nor accountability to the new institution.25 After the U.S. presidential elections in November 1992 and the change to a democratic President, the U.S. administration sought time to consider the size of its financial commitment to both the new police force and the police academy.26

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In June 1992, ONUSAL drafted a three-part legislative program and presented it to Defense Minister Ponce. The program balanced concessions on force retention by both the military and the FMLN.27 It also recognized that ultimate power still lay with the military High Command, but sought to increase the influence of the legislature. In essence, ONUSAL proposed that the Legislative Assembly enact a major restructuring of ESAF.28 The FMLN approved the proposal thus permitting the transfer of 1,200 members of its military forces to the Border patrol and Military police. At the same time, the FMLN agreed to the government’s proposal that 5,000 ex-Treasury Police and National Guardsmen be transferred to the new civilian police force on condition that they were screened by ONUSAL. In exchange, Cristiani agreed that 20 percent of the new police force would come from former FMLN supporters.29 Also, he accepted that the FMLN could propose candidates to the new police academy. As a result, former guerilla forces would be integrated into the middle and upper levels of the new police force, as well as the community police. Issues that had been so conflictive appeared to be resolved. President Cristiani increased his police force to combat common criminality, General Ponce maintained the former security men intact as a unit, and the FMLN negotiated political advantages and preferred candidates for the new police academy. With ONUSAL’s assistance, both sides achieved an important breakthrough. FMLN Participation in the New Civilian Police Force For Schafik Handal, the prospect of leadership and influence within the new police force presented an opportunity not only for employing former FMLN supporters, but also for protecting former combatants. The Chapultepec Accords had granted the FMLN 20 percent of the 3,000 positions that would become available within the police force. The prospect that former guerillas might become legitimate policemen and women presented another important change to Salvadoran society. In pursuit of these goals, in September 1992, the FMLN began a propaganda campaign to persuade sympathizers to join the PNC. Not only did the FMLN hold incentives to persuade their members to join the new force, but it also sought to persuade independent persons who might have sympathized with them to compete for the 60 percent quota allotted to independent citizens, unaffiliated with ESAF or the FMLN.30 The profile of the FMLN candidates for the Police Academy reflected middleclass men and women with one or two years of university study who applied to the Academy for training in middle and high level police functions.31 For the most part, the FMLN candidates had formerly held intelligence and logistical positions, not military combat roles. One married woman told of her involvement in the guerilla forces without her husband’s knowledge of her activities. She concealed her activities in the FMLN, which she “considered essential for social change.”32 Others reasoned that they wanted to enter the Police Academy because they “now felt fully integrated into society with an active say in government.” They wanted to take advantage of positions in the government that previously had been denied to them.33 The FMLN sought out well-educated and motivated individuals, who would be successful in

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the Academy and later the police force.34 These would act as a vanguard for other supporters who should follow. The first candidates were trained by U.S. law enforcement in Puerto Rico. By December 1993 and after six months’ training, 2,625 candidates had graduated from the Police Academy and were ready for admission to the police force. A further 5,700 basic level agents and 240 officers were due to graduate the following August.35 Steadily, an increasing number of educated FMLN members were incorporated into the Police Academy and thence into the new civilian police. In the search for new policemen and women, greater focus was given to quantity. Less attention was devoted to the quality of the graduates for the community and the investigative police work that lay ahead of them. Comisión nacional para la consolidación de la paz (COPAZ) Pursuant to the New York Agreement, the parties created COPAZ which “shall be responsible for overseeing the implementation of all the political agreements reached by the Parties.”36 It was composed of representatives from all the political parties, as well as ESAF and the archbishop of San Salvador.37 It was the only institution that sought to broaden political and social participation in the peace process, and for that reason, its very existence must be considered a successful component of the accords. COPAZ had the authority to draft implementing legislation, oversee the implementation of the accords, verify any activity or investigate a site connected to the implementation of the agreement, and to issue recommendations and reach consensus.38 A subcommittee of COPAZ was given the task of implementing the distribution of land and credit to ex-combatants. Unused to working independently and without the dominant pressure of a president backed by the military High Command, the members had little experience in achieving consensus and making decisions within the timetable set by the New York Agreement.39 For that reason, the U.S. Embassy considered COPAZ to be ineffective.40 Handal was more sanguine, recognizing that COPAZ never acquired the political strength to oblige the parties to enact the terms of the peace accords.41 Nevertheless, COPAZ remained an authentic Salvadoran institution even though it lacked the capability to take effective action. In its creation, the UN mediators had sought to give greater influence to the Legislative Assembly so as to balance the traditional power of the Salvadoran military. They also sought to provide political space within which the FMLN could interact with politicians from distinct parties. Legalization of the FMLN and Legitimacy of its Political Leaders The Mexico City agreement of April 1991 had recognized the right of both the FMLN and FDR to become political parties with the right of their members to run for elective office.42 Without waiting for the Legislative Assembly to legalize the party, the FMLN returned to San Salvador in early March 1992 to crowds of supporters and a rock concert. On May 23, the FMLN proclaimed itself a political party at a rally attended by thousands of their supporters.43 Francisco Jovel, the former comandante of

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the Resistencia Nacional (RN) announced the creation of “a new kind of party ready to incorporate different tendencies and ally itself with all parties which defend the peace agreement.”44 Handal called the establishment of the FMLN as a political party, “the culmination of 60 years of struggle.”45 His rhetoric was overblown because the Legislative Assembly refused to recognize and legitimize the FMLN as a political party until it had drafted bylaws, created a structure, and pronounced its ideology.46 However, in the euphoria of a peace process these conditions might be temporarily waived, as former guerilla fighters paraded peacefully down streets and into plazas formerly barricaded against them. Under pressure from Ambassador Walker, the government sought to finalize the legitimization of the FMLN before July 1, 1992, and made temporary arrangement to enable the FMLN to carry out its political activities.47 For a while, the Assembly was prepared to forgive the existence of an “armed political party” even though the Salvadoran constitution outlawed such a body. The requirement that the FMLN demobilize its forces and turn in its weapons was a condition for legitimating its status as a political party. The FMLN refused to decommission its weapons and repeatedly postponed a monthly reduction of its forces. However, disagreement existed among the FMLN comandantes over demobilization prior to becoming a political party.48 In reality, as a “party of tendencies,” the FMLN contained increasingly divergent opinions among its factions. Within months of signing the Chapultepec Accord, the FMLN splintered. Ruben Zamora founded the Convergencia Democratica for the moderates within the movement, and Schafik Handal retained the leadership of the Partido Comunista Salvadoreña, only the second time in Salvador’s history that the communist party was legalized.49 Meanwhile, under the banner of the FMLN–FDR, both men continued to negotiate with the government over the implementation of the Chapultepec Accords. Despite the splintering of the FMLN into distinct factions, Handal displayed considerable talent as a legitimate politician. The Chapultepec Accords had granted the FMLN legal status, so long denied. However, it did not remove the demands from their constituents; the men and women who had fought the war. In the Departments of Chalatenango and Morazan, the Ejército Revolucionario Popular (ERP) exerted considerable pressure to retain forces and weapons on grounds that the retention of weapons was the only leverage that the FMLN could exercise effectively. Without them, former fighting men were vulnerable to ESAF’s military maneuvers. Also, as the FMLN broke up into distinct factions in the early part of 1992, it lost its control over the moderates and centrists in Salvadoran politics. Members of the Convergencia Democrática, the Partido Demócrata Cristiana (PDC), the Jesuit community, and the labor unions became more vocal in their demands for demobilization and decommissioning in keeping with the Chapultepec Accords. Facing distinct pressure from ESAF and from the ERP, President Cristiani and Schafik Handal met directly and often to discuss and to resolve the following immediate issues: ● ●

dissolution of the old public security forces and creation of a new civilian police force; legalization of the FMLN as a political party, despite its unwillingness to demobilize and disarm;

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admission of ex-combatants into the police force; and programs to reintegrate military forces on both sides into the new civilian society.50

A second-level working group carried out the day-to-day deliberations, but when they stalled, the preferred recourse was to refer the critical issues up to the President and Handal. The two men established a reputation as problem solvers. However, this working relationship created deep suspicion that the new rapport marginalized their respective constituents. For example, in late September 1992, Schafik Handal did not sufficiently protest the failure to discharge 102 military officers for their complicity in the murder of the Jesuit priests, as well as corruption and abuse of human rights, as required by the “ad hoc” commission. Handal accepted Cristiani’s decision to move slowly and cautiously on purging military officers.51 Angry at his apparent complicity, the PDC and the Jesuit community protested strongly, but Handal advised against pushing Cristiani too hard.52 In a communiqué issued by the FMLN on January 13, 1993, Handal warned that insistence on total depuración (cleansing) could result in a political crisis with disastrous consequences, as well as a cut-off of foreign assistance.53 He understood the dangers of provoking a military coup d’état and the consequences for continued U.S. funding of the peace process. However, Handal’s sympathy for the President’s predicament provoked increased suspicion among civic groups and politicians that had previously supported the FMLN. Considerable political ferment existed among politicians of all persuasions. Formation of Two Commissions: the UN Truth Commission and the Salvadoran “ad hoc” Commission Two commissions created by the Accords contributed to a phenomenological change in Salvadoran attitudes toward the peace process. They proved to be decisive. First, in July 1990, Alvaro de Soto had drafted the outline for the creation of a UN Truth Commission. The parties confirmed its creation in the Mexico City Agreement of April 1991.54 Second, in September that year, the New York Agreement, in two brief sentences, created the “ad hoc” commission.55 In furtherance of the Truth Commission, the UN selected three international jurists56 and began a process that was intended to: (1) gather information that would lead to the truth about criminal acts; (2) hold accountable those who had perpetrated such crimes: and (3) permit Salvadoran society to move toward reconciliation.57 The formation of both institutions was central to the change in attitudes toward the military. The work of both the commissions demonized the actions of over one hundred members of ESAF’s officer corps. It also gave voice to thousands of ordinary Salvadorans who now came forward to tell their tale of savagery and victimization carried out by fellow countrymen. The “ad hoc” Commission The “ad hoc” commission was the first report to be shared with President Cristiani. It was a uniquely Salvadoran process. No international jurists or investigators were

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involved. Its mandate was to vet “all personnel serving in them [the armed forces]”58 for their respect for human rights, professional competence, personal conduct and the “rigor with which he [each officer] has ordered the redress and punishment of unlawful acts, excesses, or human rights violations committed under his command.”59 The assumption that an internal Salvadoran commission could be truly independent was fraught with risk. Based on the historical record, no domestic investigation into the workings of ESAF could be considered truly independent. However, the Chapultepec Accord had urged the parties to create “a rigorously impartial ‘ad hoc’ commission composed of three Salvadorians of recognized independent judgment and unimpeachable democratic credentials.”60 Dr. Abraham Rodriguez, a respected jurist and member of the PDC led the investigation, which lasted three months. The commission interviewed two to three officers every day and completed their confidential report in September 1992. The report was never published. The names of the culpable military officers were not leaked. Confidentiality was critical to President Cristiani’s ability to carry out the recommendations of the three Salvadoran commissioners. Only the final fifteen officers, whose departure proved later to be so troublesome, became public names. The High Command’s resistance to the findings of the “ad hoc” commission was serious and presented a crisis between the presidency and ESAF. The commissioners submitted their report to President Cristiani on September 23, 1992. The President forwarded it to General Ponce and the leadership of ESAF. The report recommended the removal of 102 officers, their names to remain secret.61 Dr. Rodriguez, the commission’s chairman also presented his findings to U.S. Chargé d’Affaires, Peter Romero one Sunday at his lakeside home at Coatepeque. After lunch, Rodriguez took Romero aside and narrated the commission’s recommendation that the whole tandona — the Military Academy’s graduating class of 1966–1967, including Defense Minister Ponce and fifty two other colonels and majors — be removed. Rodriguez did not share names, but stated that the depuración was extensive. Rodriguez warned Romero that in its response to this report, the High Command would seek to intimidate both the members of the “ad hoc” commission and President Cristiani. He added that the Embassy would have to ensure that the depuración was carried out.62 Cristiani could not do this alone.63 The only body that could withstand the power of ESAF was the U.S. government and its embassy in San Salvador. Only if the U.S. Mission stood behind the civilian president would Cristiani continue his mandate and the Commission’s recommendations be enacted.64 Shortly after his Sunday lunch with Dr. Rodriguez, Peter Romero requested a meeting with the High Command at their headquarters. In his opinion, it was better that the High Command hear the news directly from the U.S. Chargé d’Affaires than from their president.65 U.S. assistance would be cut off to ESAF if the High Command failed to comply with the “ad hoc” commission’s recommendations and resign.66 According to Romero, prior to his meeting with the High Command, he consulted neither with Cristiani nor Assistant Secretary Aronson. On his own initiative, Romero drove to the headquarters of the High Command and entered a silent hall, filled with the military officers and corps commanders. He addressed the audience briefly, “Ustedes tienen que jubilars—ustedes firmaron el acuerdo de paz y hay que cumplir.” (You must retire—you signed the peace agreement and you must carry

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it out).67 His brief statement was met with stunned silence. Romero then got up and left. The meeting had lasted three minutes.68 Romero returned to the Embassy and telephoned Aronson in Washington. Aronson was shocked, “You what? You what?”69 Cristiani learned of the meeting from Defense Minister Ponce.70 To have taken this radical step without Washington’s authorization suggests that Romero had read the report, understood the implications for the civilian president, and then decided to act on his own. The consequence for Romero’s career was that Senator Jesse Helms (R–N. C.), then Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, who maintained excellent relationships with ESAF and the right wing of the ARENA party, refused to confirm Romero for Ambassador to El Salvador, or for the position of Assistant Secretary of State. Romero was praised fully by his colleagues within the State Department.71 He had fulfilled both responsibilities as Chargé d’Affaires in El Salvador and as “acting” Assistant Secretary, but the U.S. Senate never confirmed him for these positions. Senator Helms extracted his revenge. The release of the “ad hoc” commission report to the High Command caused deep anger and concern among the tandona, but elation among younger officers who might be expected to move up in rank.72 Names had been given quietly to those affected, but no evidence was provided to substantiate the recommendation for removal.73 Officers were not told details of the allegations and sources remained anonymous. There was no due process and no right of appeal. Criticism and serious tensions were directed against President Cristiani for his weakness. In General Ponce’s opinion, the President “could and should do more to protect the military.”74 On September 30, Cristiani went to the High Command and explained the context in which the Commission’s report had been prepared.75 On September 31, Assistant Secretary Aronson flew into San Salvador and met with the leadership of ESAF at their headquarters.76 Aronson made it clear that the recommendations had to be carried out, but that the process would remain confidential.77 The U.S. government would not reveal names. At that meeting, General Ponce angrily denounced the “subjective manner” in which the “ad hoc” commission had reached its conclusions. He complained that ESAF was being treated “like a defeated army.”78 In this, he was correct. The Commission’s report caused a severe crisis in the military relations with the civilian leadership. To his U.S. audience, General Ponce expressed concern about the impact of the report on the private lives and families of those named.79 In private, Ponce faced humiliation and disgrace. He warned that if the commission’s report became public, “the consequences would be disastrous.”80 He believed that one of the commissioners, Eduardo Molina had already passed the list to a U.S. news correspondent. Whether it was true or not, Aronson assumed responsibility for persuading the newspaper not to publish the story. The implications for President Cristiani were clear: the High Command was prepared to remove him from power. In this political crisis, there emerged a compromise by which the High Command would maintain internal discipline and work with Cristiani to manage the situation, on condition that both the “ad hoc” commission’s report remained secret, and that time was given to implement the recommendations.81 Cristiani took time. Of the 102 officers named in the commission’s report, eightyseven were forced to resign or placed on leave with full pay.82 All were members of

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the powerful tandona.83 In the short term, only fifteen officers, plus General Ponce and the Deputy Minister of Defense, General Zelaya remained unaffected. The depuración of the remaining fifteen became a demand of the UN and the U.S. government. A U.S. Congressional delegation went to visit President Cristiani on January 15, 1993, to express the continuing concern over the failure to fully implement the “ad hoc” commission’s report.84 Cristiani justified his decision to postpone the departure of the fifteen officers and the clemency granted to other officers by transferring them as military attachés to Salvadoran Embassies abroad. He noted that he had to ensure that each officer received his full retirement benefits in order to minimize the personal impact of the Commission’s report.85 In his meeting with the Congressional delegation, the President stated that the institutional stability of ESAF depended upon a smooth transition to a new generation of officers and the minimum dislocation for those removed. He could not afford a major rupture with the armed forces and the refusal of officers to leave their posts.86 In short, the defeat of the officer corps had to be handled skillfully to avoid violent reaction by ESAF and the extreme right wing of the ARENA party. The potential for rupture between the civilian authorities and the military was clearly evident. Recognizing Cristiani’s vulnerability, Chargé d’Affaires Romero and ONUSAL’s director, Iqbal Riza, cautioned against pushing the president too hard in discharging the remaining fifteen officers.87 A most delicate situation existed.88 Back in New York, Alvaro de Soto had been transferred to the Director for Latin America within the UN Political Department. He now advised the new Secretary General, Boutros Boutros-Ghali, that if he failed to press for complete depuración, “the UN itself could become responsible for unraveling the whole [peace] process.”89 De Soto had no compunction about pressing Cristiani to implement the “ad hoc” commission’s recommendations. On October 30, de Soto and Marrack Goulding recommended that the Secretary General take a tough line with Cristiani, “even threatening to publish the “ad hoc” commission’s list.”90 This did not occur. Nevertheless, de Soto succeeded in establishing that the discharge of all officers should occur “within a specified timeframe.”91 To ensure compliance, Boutros-Ghali offered in December to send Marrack Goulding, the UN Undersecretary for Peace Keeping Operations to seek a compromise over the disputed fifteen officers. However, on January 7, in an abrupt about-face, Boutros-Ghali withdrew his offer to send Goulding and instead insisted that Cristiani announce a timetable for the officer’s removal.92 For Cristiani, the Secretary General’s refusal to send Goulding was further evidence of the UN’s partiality toward the FMLN and its dislike of the Salvadoran government.93 The change of U.S. administration to the Democrats and President Clinton resulted in a hardening of U.S. pressure on the Salvadoran military. Furthermore, Congressional pressure to comply with the “ad hoc” commission’s report resulted in a letter from the incoming Secretary of State, Warren Christopher, to President Cristiani. It concerned the withholding of U.S. military assistance and Department of Justice, Internal Military Education and Training (IMET) funds unless the commission’s report was not resolved to the UN Secretary General’s satisfaction.94 The response from the new Salvadoran Chief of Staff, General Rubio, reflected the sense of U.S. betrayal. With scorn, he asked whether funds already in the pipeline

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would be affected. Chargé d’Affaires Romero indicated that this was not the case at the present, but could be affected if there was no progress on the dismissal of the outstanding fifteen officers.95 Cristiani could not move. His hands were tied by his Minister of Defense, the Chief of Staff of the Army, and the fifteen colonels who believed they were innocent.96 In early March 1993, the UN Commission on the Truth in El Salvador was published, but no resolution had been reached on the remaining officers. However, in the weeks that followed, eight officers were transferred to Salvadoran Embassies abroad and the remaining soon retired with honorable discharges. General Ponce was given the executive directorship of Salvador’s telephone company, ANTEL, the state-run telecommunications enterprise with a significant salary.97 In a manner that was satisfactory to neither the UN nor international observers, ESAF’s High Command had been purged and space created for a new generation of younger military officers to assume authority in a reformed military. The U.S. government had participated in pressuring the Salvadoran president by its willingness “to provide Cristiani with what he needs to implement the recommendations in a fair and rational way.”98 Furthermore, the U.S. government offered to support the military retirement fund, as well as the fund for training and equipment.99 The U.S. Congress would never have accepted a direct transfer to the officer corps’ retirement fund, but it was in the U.S. interest that the officers leave quietly with sufficient income to live in the United States.100 Several came to live in Miami and Houston. The combined efforts of the UN and the U.S. government brought down the tandona and the military power in El Salvador. ESAF had been defeated. Both Cristiani and the ARENA party survived to win the next presidential and legislative elections. Collection of Evidence for the UN Report on the Truth in El Salvador The political crisis caused by the “ad hoc” commission’s report embroiled the Salvadoran government. At the same time, the UN Truth Commission was completing its work. The mandate of the Truth Commission was to investigate “serious acts of violence that have occurred since 1980 and whose impact on society urgently demands that the public should know the truth.”101 The commission was required to clarify and “put an end to any indication of impunity on the part of officers of the armed forces.”102 With only six months to carry out this task, the Truth Commission selectively investigated some of the tens of thousands of cases that occurred during the war.103 Three prominent, international commissioners and their staff interviewed victims and survivors. They also interviewed military men of all ranks, FMLN members, lawyers and court personnel, government officials, and employees. They collected information from human rights groups inside and outside El Salvador. Of the 32 cases that were published in the final report, half contained sufficient evidence to name individuals who had committed, ordered, or covered up the abuses. 40 military officers were named. Also six leaders of the ERP were named as responsible for implementing a policy of killing mayors.104 The process of collecting the evidence gave hope to thousands of men and women that their

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voices might finally be heard. The publication of the key cases in a UN document proved that their suffering had not been futile. Although the Salvadoran legislature would grant amnesty to the individuals named in the UN report, the process of relating personal experiences, discovering the truth, and publicly holding perpetrators accountable helped Salvadorans to reconcile. Conclusion The seven achievements are notable. However, the process of implementing the Chapultepec Accords also presents opportunities to criticize.105 The cease-fire and ending of violent conflict, the demobilization of the FMLN and the destruction of the most brutal units within ESAF, the creation of COPAZ, the legitimization of the FMLN and FDR, the “ad hoc” commission and its consequences, the investigation into human rights abuses, and publication of the UN Truth Commission’s report should be considered achievements and preferable to that which had historically existed. Destroyed was the structure of authoritarian rule in which ESAF’s High Command dictated directly, or indirectly, state security policies. By 1994, the armed forces were a weakened institution without direct access to political power. The oligarchy remained, but exercised diminished political influence. Over time, the Salvadoran presidency became less dependent upon the U.S. Congress for funding and relied more on tariffs, sales tax and some fiscal revenues to generate income. In the years following the Chapultepec Accord, U.S. funding for military assistance declined significantly.106 Economic assistance increased during the two years following the signing at Chapultepec Castle, but with the end of the Cold War and the end of communist presence in Central America, USAID reduced its presence and economic funding for El Salvador. The focus of U.S. national security turned toward Bosnia, and Washington tired with events in Central America. The UN remained in El Salvador until April 30, 1995, committed to the verification of the Chapultepec Accords. In the process, UN Peacekeepers oversaw the halving of ESAF from its size in 1989. ONSUAL administered police powers throughout the country and oversaw the land distribution program. The UNDP distributed funds to communities that reintegrated former combatants. Finally, the IMF exercised a strong degree of influence over the financial management of El Salvador’s economy. ONUSAL sought external funding to pay for the programs set out in the Accords, but when it was not forthcoming, UN officials recommended reallocation of monies from the Salvadoran treasury. The result of this comprehensive presence was growing Salvadoran resentment against the UN. This irritated many, but not all Salvadorans. The UN had demilitarized the country and had created space for broader participation in the political life of the nation. It had exposed the brutality of ESAF and the security forces. Finally, after the Chapultepec Accords, many FMLN supporters found the confidence to communicate their hidden secrets of rape, torture, and economic deprivation to the UN Truth Commission. The disclosure and the sympathetic response from the international community gave dignity where previously there was none.

Chapter 10

Challenges to the Peace Accords The euphoria that surrounded the Chapultepec Accords was reflected in public opinion polls, taken four months afterward that showed 70 percent of Salvadorans surveyed believed that “some things and the overall situation” were changing for the better.1 The opportunity to live in peace constituted the greatest source of satisfaction with the Accords.2 However, when the survey addressed economic questions, 30 percent of those polled considered that the country was in worse shape economically and 45 percent believed that the economic situation had not changed.3 A majority considered that the country’s root problems had not been solved and that Chapultepec had failed to improve social conditions in the country. With the ending of violent conflict, men and women released themselves from the daily fear of violence. El Salvador’s armed forces (ESAF) returned to barracks and the FMLN no longer fondled guns. With the knowledge that war was over, citizens turned their attention to the economy. They held high expectations for employment and poverty alleviation.4 When these expectations were not met, disillusionment set in. The international community supported the Accords with financial support for the creation of the new police force, the distribution of land to ex-combatants, reintegration through micro-enterprise development, reduction of the armed forces, and strengthening of democratic institutions, including the judiciary and electoral system. In the period from 1992 to 1995, the international community provided grants averaging more than 3 percent of GDP.5 However, donors preferred to finance infrastructure and security-related projects rather than currency support. The government through its Plan de Reconstrucción Nacional had to raise taxes to pay for socio-economic programs associated with rebuilding El Salvador’s economy.6 The parties estimated that $2 billion, or one-third of GNP, was needed to reinvigorate the economy and restore education, health, and housing needs, but at the same time, the IMF’s stabilization program required that these expenditures be reconciled with stiff fiscal restrictions.7 The formative years of the liberal, free market economy still required the disciplines inherent in the model. Government expenditures were limited and regulation became less onerous. At the same time,

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reconstruction required greater government outlays. Thus, inherent conflict existed between the need to comply with IMF conditionality and expenditures required to rebuild the Salvadoran economy.8 Over the next ten years, public opinion reflected the inability of the peace process to bring economic prosperity.9 A year after Chapultepec, official unemployment remained high at 9.8 percent.10 Under-employment was much higher. Three years later, only one-third of Salvadorans had a positive opinion of the peace accords.11 Land had not been distributed at the anticipated rate and common criminality had risen to an alarming degree. The Supreme Court and judicial reform remained unfinished. The Legislative Assembly was unwilling to vote upon reforms that affected the traditional interests of ARENA. Finally, popular organizations that had emerged during the eleven-year-long civil war displayed a reluctance to engage in public dialogue and project their needs. Instead, they withdrew to reconstruct their private lives.12 To what extent were the dashed expectations of a peace dividend derived from the failures of the Chapultepec Accords to address the underlying problems within Salvadoran society? The struggle to implement the numerous peace accords reflected the underlying contradictions between the protagonists of a decade-long civil war, as well as the inexperience of the UN mediators. Six weaknesses may be identified; some fundamental and others of a temporary nature that were overcome with the passage of time. ●

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The peace accords focused on security and political problems, relegating socioeconomic issues to a secondary position. Land distribution and the availability of credit became critical issues for the ex-combatants from the FMLN and ESAF. UN negotiators learned that socio-economic issues should be addressed in parallel with the demobilization of the armed forces.13 The failure to reintegrate ex-combatants—the FMLN as well as ESAF— resulted in the growth of criminal gangs who resorted to kidnapping, robbery, extortion, and murder. The absence of productive alternative livelihoods pushed ex-combatants into illicit occupations and widespread fears of wartime were replaced by the insecurity of criminal violence. In the face of common criminality, there arose public calls for old authoritarian ways. Distinct philosophies on the future economic policy for El Salvador exacerbated the IMF’s inability to understand the cost of peace building. This resulted in a shortage of domestic revenues to carry out the commitments in the peace accords. Memories of the war and hatred remained and a younger generation of leaders and legislators with a new mentality did not emerge. In the absence of a postwar generation, existing legislators, business leaders, and labor unions found it difficult to reach an agreement through dialogue and consensus. The members of the newly formed coalition, COPAZ failed to unite in seeking new solutions. Instead, they held on to old prejudices and stalled reform. A growing nationalist sentiment directed principally at the UN and the U.S. government prevented the full implementation of the UN Truth Commission. Following on the heels of the “ad hoc” commission’s report, a vigorous

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defensive stance erupted against foreign interference. Both supporters and critics of President Cristiani viewed the UN investigation as a violation of national sovereignty. In that nationalist mood, the Legislative Assembly passed a comprehensive amnesty law to protect the principal perpetrators of human rights abuse. The Chapultepec Accords mandate for broad judicial reform and the UN Truth Commission’s recommendation that the Supreme Court justices be removed did not move forward. Instead, nationalistic and defensive postures hardened and the prospect of new presidential and legislative elections in 1994 diverted attention. Weighing Security versus Socio-economic Issues

The mediators failed in the several peace accords to explicitly delineate the process for reintegrating armed men and women into civilian life as well as providing them with the means to achieve social and economic development. The Chapultepec Accords spoke of the desire for “sustained economic and social development of the country . . . [and] the need to provide certain basic guidelines so as to ensure the requisite social stability during the transitional period . . .”14 It was a broad goal and both the Chapultepec Accords of January 1992 and the Mexico City Agreement of April 1991 had called for the creation of new institutions, but they failed to set out the mechanisms by which those goals would be accomplished. The underlying reason was that the parties had reached neither a consensus, nor a common vision of the future Salvadoran state. Each party held distinct political philosophies for their country.15 The FMLN held a broad state-centered vision of the new Salvador, while Cristiani’s government engaged in a major economic reform toward a liberal, free market economy. To achieve those economic reforms, security had to be restored and investor confidence created. Alvaro de Soto, the UN mediator noted that on socio-political issues, Cristiani “at no point put forward a vision of what it [the government] wanted for the nation.”16 Furthermore, the FMLN did not place priority on socio-economic issues either, except for assuring sufficient land and funds with which to permit their forces to reintegrate into civilian life. The failure to propose broader socio-economic goals is best explained by the FMLN and FDR’s pragmatic focus on ending the war, gaining legitimacy, and subsequently achieving power to make social changes through electoral politics. Had the FMLN–FDR made socialist economic policies a priority in their negotiations, the Salvadoran government would have resisted even harder. Therefore, pragmatic reasons as well as the priority given to achieving an end to the war dominated FMLN and FDR thinking.17 In the face of contradictory philosophies for the future of the country, the text of the peace agreements failed to resolve deep-seated and conflicting social and economic issues with any workable language or precision. The FMLN had assumed that these issues could be addressed when they were elected into government office and able to influence economic and social policy.18 The ARENA government was intent on restructuring the Salvadoran economy toward a free market model with a reduced role for the state. Vagueness of language had enabled both protagonists to

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join in signing the several peace accords, but the text lacked sufficient guidance on how to accomplish broad social and economic goals. Alvaro de Soto did not focus on economic and social issues until September 1991—twenty months into the negotiations and too late to persuade the parties that equal attention should be given to these problems. Instead, the UN mediator responded to the demands of the protagonists and the agenda that had been agreed upon at the Geneva Conference in April 1990.19 Neither de Soto, nor the UN Under Secretary for Peacekeeping, Marrack Goulding anticipated significant tensions over the distribution of land and other socio-economic issues.20 Regretfully, as each of the protagonist focused on military and security matters, the problems that underlay the civil war were left to the end.21 (a)

Distribution of Land to Ex-Combatants

A significant weakness in the implementation of the various peace accords was the inability to distribute land to ex-combatants, as well as to give titles to those who occupied a few manzanas (1 manzana ⫽ 1.34 acres) during the war. This presented an ongoing problem that nearly derailed the entire peace process. The concentration of land among a few large landowners and the inadequacy of arable land for the majority of rural peasants had been a primary cause of Salvador’s civil war. However, when Handal raised the issue of land for ex-combatants in September 1991, he sought to ensure that ex-combatants did not resume fighting. He failed to address the social goal of delivering the means to sustain economic livelihood and preserve a cultural tradition.22 The New York Agreement of September 1991 stated that landless peasants—most of them FMLN supporters—who had seized land within the conflict zones would be granted ownership rights.23 This provoked a rush to occupy land without determining who held the title. The Chapultepec Accords supplemented this language by recognizing the Agrarian Reform program passed by the Legislative Assembly back in 1980.24 Both the 1980 and 1991 agreements addressed the issue of land reform, partially. Neither agreement established criteria, nor a timetable with the necessary means to accomplish the goals of acquiring land and agricultural livelihoods. For the negotiators, the issue was less about land reform and more about reintegrating ex-combatants into economically sustainable, civilian occupations. Men from peasant families, who had been dragooned into serving in either the FMLN or ESAF, sought a parcel of land for the sake of personal security. However, their childhood agricultural training alongside a family member was inadequate to turn a few manzanas into a profitable venture. Also, the quantity of land available was too small to support sustainable agricultural production. Five years after the signing at Chapultepec, 43 percent of demobilized FMLN and ESAF’s troops had either abandoned the land, or sold it in order to seek alternative means of livelihood.25 Without adequate training and the resources for tools, seed, and fertilizers, close to half the ex-combatants could not create a sustainable living for their families on a relatively small parcel of land. The issue of land was important to Schafik Handal, Joaquin Villalobos, Eduardo Sancho, Francisco Jovel, and other FMLN comandantes as proof of their ability to

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deliver rewards to their fighting men and women. If they were to demobilize their forces, they had to provide a benefit: remuneration measured in terms of landholding. For ex-combatants, it was the litmus test of their leader’s strength and effectiveness in negotiations with the government. In order to obtain that land, the FMLN negotiators withheld demobilization and the decommissioning of weapons. The only “bargaining chip” that they could exercise to ensure an economic livelihood for their combatants and logistical supporters was the withholding of arms and delay in discharging their men and women.26 However, the provision of land and credit required significant external funding, as well as an accurate inventory of both land for sale and the names of ex-combatants who wished to purchase. The land was not given to the ex-combatants. Instead it was to be purchased with credit provided by the Salvadoran government.27 That loan at 6 to 7 percent interest was well below current market rates of 20 percent and was repayable over 30 years.28 The FMLN’s initial inventory of 11,000 desired properties presented to ONUSAL was criticized roundly, because it identified plots too small to cultivate economically.29 Furthermore, much of the land was already occupied by rural peasants who had squatted on the land in the course of the civil war. Those peasant farmers might be willing to sell, but they lacked title deeds to prove ownership. The problem was made more complicated by widespread seizures of land that took place after signing the New York Agreement in September 1991. That agreement had stated that “lands in excess of the constitutional limit of 245 hectares . . . shall be used to meet the needs of peasants and small farmers who are without land.”30 Peasant farmers throughout Salvador seized upon this language to occupy lands. Consequently, the Chapultepec Accords of January 1992 agreed that the government would not evict those who had squatted on land after September 1991.31 (However, the Accords said nothing about private efforts to force squatters off land they had occupied.)32 Violence erupted throughout the country as potential sellers sought to evict squatters and assure buyers that they held clear title. In one instance, a U.S. Catholic priest defended the squatters’ rights to land on grounds of adverse occupation only to be arrested and deported.33 The failure to resolve numerous land seizures affected the FMLN’s willingness to move forward in gathering its followers into “concentration zones,” as well as decommissioning their weapons.34 The land problem remained a potentially explosive issue that could derail other aspects of the peace process. In the face of growing violence over land seizures and inadequate credit with which to purchase land, the UN Undersecretary Goulding intervened. He brought a UN team of experts including the Uruguayan economist, Graciana del Castillo to Salvador in March 1992 to develop a UN proposal under which plots of land averaging 3.5 hectares (just under 5 acres) would be distributed to ex-combatants. The proposal met with fierce opposition. Cristiani “was outraged” by the proposal and demanded that the UN team not share the proposal with the FMLN.35 The UN was proposing a land distribution scheme without the authorization of the Salvadoran legislature. On the other side, Handal opposed the UN proposal because the amount of land was insufficient for sustainable agricultural livelihood. Antagonism was as acute as during the most difficult periods of the peace negotiations. Handal insisted that a necessary condition for the reintegration of the FMLN

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combatants was the distribution of land, and if the government would not meet FMLN demands, the former comandantes would seek a complete revision of the implementation timetable.36 Handal also indicated that the FMLN might raise other demands as yet unspecified within the schedule for implementation. In short, he threatened to reopen the peace accords. The UN withdrew its proposal and its team of experts left El Salvador without an agreement. Back in New York, economist del Castillo pored over documents and prepared a compromise. Personally endorsed by the new UN Secretary General, Boutros Boutros Ghali, a man noted for his attention to detail, a revised proposal on land distribution, known as the Land Transfers Agreement, was sent to both sides in October 1992.37 The tentative agreement had the support of the Four Friends of the UN in El Salvador, namely the foreign ministers of Colombia, Mexico, Panama, and Venezuela, plus the United States, who now telephoned each of the protagonists to impress upon them the importance of accepting the UN’s revised land agreement.38 In its initial phase USAID provided $23 million for the land transfer program and the European Community granted a further $12 million.39 These funds were transferred into Salvador’s Central Bank for conversion into the local currency, colones. The funds were marked for land purchase, but the Salvadoran Ministry of Finance had more immediate uses for the USAID and European Community funds. As a result, six months after the signing of the Land Agreement of October 1992, less than 4,000 FMLN ex-combatants had received legal title to land.40 By June 1994 only 25 percent of those identified as eligible for credit with which to purchase land had received their parcels.41 This was nowhere near the UN target of 47,500 individual beneficiaries set out in the Land Transfers Agreement. The prospect for speeding up credit disbursement and land distribution was not good. Consequently, the FMLN continued to talk of an explosive situation with continued land seizures and evictions, each tempting the hated old security forces to intervene.42 (b)

Funding for Reconstruction and Development

The failure to meet budgetary goals continued to plague implementation of the socio-economic terms of the peace accords. In February 1993, the Salvadoran government’s planning department estimated the cost of implementing the Accords at $435 million.43 Of this, $141 million was needed over four years to establish the new civilian police force. Pledges of $800 million made by the international community for reconstruction in March 1992 had not been delivered, leaving significant shortfalls and dashed hopes.44 In a letter addressed to the U.S. Chargé d’Affaires, Peter Romero, dated April 16, 1993, Schafik Handal complained of the lack of funding for demobilization and immediate projects.45 He requested that USAID divert $128 million to be delivered in fiscal year 1993 from judicial and electoral reform, primary health, and basic education to reintegration programs, land distribution, and the new civilian police.46 In his opinion, training programs and economic support to ex-combatants were the only way that wartime supporters could be discharged and ex-FMLN integrated into civilian life.47 If the U.S. government and ONUSAL insisted on

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demobilization within a fixed timetable, further financial assistance was needed to relocate and reintegrate ex-combatants. Handal also raised the need for credit with which to pay for general reconstruction and reintegration projects. The current market interest rate of 20 percent was unacceptable to the FMLN.48 Therefore, as part of the March 1992 pledging conference, USAID had committed $11 million for agricultural credit with the probability of a further $17 million in credit extension.49 Nevertheless, Handal advised Romero that FMLN ex-combatants were not receiving subsidized rates. Handal argued that the transfer to civilian life required subsidized, not real, interest rates if reintegration programs were to move forward.50 Later, del Castillo would agree and urge for subsidized interest rates.51 Growth of Criminal Violence Del Castillo considered that the land distribution program was necessary to ensure that ex-combatants did not return to armed violence.52 However, both the protagonists and the UN had underestimated the problems associated with reintegrating demobilized fighters into civilian life.53 High expectations for both peace and security resulted from the signing of various peace agreements, but the funding for reintegration was not met immediately, leading to disillusionment and a search for alternative sources of income. Furthermore, combatants, as well as citizens who had witnessed civil war atrocities, firsthand, were damaged with varying levels of post traumatic stress syndrome.54 Their inability to form loving relationships of trust and their constant terror led many to leave their communities and join criminal organizations and youth gangs who fought with each other. Levels of criminal violence rose as men with no uniform, but experienced in fighting and possessing a weapon, illicitly sought the means to support themselves and their families. Primarily, the purpose of kidnapping, extortion, and car-napping was to increase the gang’s bank account, but a secondary purpose was to demonstrate that the ARENA government was incapable of keeping citizens safe.55 In late 1992, four military officers, two members of the old police force, and a demonstrator were murdered in separate incidents. A group calling itself the “Salvadoran Revolutionary Front” claimed responsibility for three of these murders as part of its campaign to target military and police officials.56 In the report of ONUSAL’s Human Right’s division for the first quarter of 1993, the UN noted one explicit case of torture and “a number of homicides in which the victims showed clear signs of torture prior to their death.”57 In July 1993, Archbishop Arturo Rivera Damas declared that the threats “show that the structure of the death squads hasn’t been touched and they have more impunity every day.”58 The killings were linked to members of the former Treasury police and the demobilized rapid infantry battalions (BIRIs).59 Carlos Molina, the Human Rights Ombudsman, and a target of threatening telephone calls, reflected upon “the existence of a climate, a will to use violence.”60 In November 1993, ONUSAL reported to the UN Security Council on “the disturbing reappearance of ugly features of El Salvador’s past,” with the resurgence of illegal armed groups holding political objectives.61 Much of the violence and threatening telephone calls were directed not only against the Human Right’s Ombudsman, but also labor leaders and Catholic priests.

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This sense of insecurity was not just felt by Catholic and human rights leaders, but also by ordinary citizens whose daily journeys to work were threatened by assault and robbery. In a 1993 public opinion survey by UCA’s Instituto Universitario de Opinión Publica (IUDOP), over 40 percent identified criminal violence as a concern that was almost equal to poverty and unemployment.62 By 1996, that number had risen to a little less than 50 percent and had overtaken economic issues as the principal concern of ordinary citizens.63 Salvadorans considered that despite the war’s end, they were just as insecure as they were during the worst years of the civil war.64 During the war, political violence could be avoided so long as a citizen stayed away from politics and certain geographic areas. In the post-war period, criminal violence—intentional homicide, kidnapping, robbery, and extortion—was random and affected all citizens regardless of ideological views or social background. Contradictory Economic Philosophies A third weakness of the peace accords was based not upon the text of the peace agreements, but on underlying economic philosophies. Two economic models clashed in the implementation of the Accords: the FMLN’s proposal for redistribution of agricultural land and subsidized credits for demobilized fighters conflicted with the new economic policies of the ARENA government. The FMLN’s belief in a large and active role for the state to protect vulnerable groups competed with ARENA’s commitment to free market forces and the reduction of the state’s role in society. As a political party, the FMLN sought to redistribute economic equities through progressive taxation with which to pay for a broad range of social policies. President Cristiani and his team of economic advisers were determined to “carry out macroeconomic stabilization and structural reform so as to put the economy back in a path of sustainable growth and development.”65 In the late 1980s, business leaders within ARENA, including Cristiani, subscribed to the so-called “Washington consensus” and received strong encouragement from the IMF and U.S. government to privatize state enterprises, allow the market to allocate resources, reduce the rate of inflation, and establish a flexible exchange rate.66 This resulted in an inflow of private capital and a lowering of the external debt.67 During the civil war in 1989, tight money policies were instituted to control inflation and tariffs were cut to increase the flow of goods and capital. In exchange for the reformed policies, the IMF awarded El Salvador its first IMF Structural Adjustment Loan of $75 million in 1991. However, policies that met the IMF criteria conflicted with internal demands to rebuild essential infrastructure destroyed during twelve years of civil war: basic health, housing, and employment needs had to be addressed. According to the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA), the ARENA government had no agricultural policy in the early 1990s beyond “correcting macro-economic imbalances of the past and removing the state from direct intervention in the sector.”68 Countering this, the World Bank officials in El Salvador believed that free market forces would stimulate growth and help agriculture to recover from the destruction of war. According to the Bank, a new agricultural policy should focus on institutional reform, implant an efficient system of rural finance, stimulate a market in land, consolidate and restructure the agrarian debt, and guarantee legal security of

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property in land.69 These goals may have been appropriate for the structural reform during peacetime, but it was unworkable for a country engulfed with other problems. Post-war El Salvador was struggling with inadequate sources of arable land, as well as destroyed bridges, roads, schools, and hospitals that needed rebuilding. The international obligations made to end that war and the cost of implementing the peace required a different set of priorities. Cristiani was faced with a fundamental contradiction: his determination to introduce free market economic policies conflicted with his commitment, and that of the UN, to rebuild infrastructure, reintegrate ex-combatants, and reform critical state institutions. Both de Soto and del Castillo understood and wrote about the contradiction.70 In the course of negotiating the cessation of hostilities and the construction of post-conflict institutions, the UN had not talked with the IMF.71 Both multilateral institutions worked in parallel, but failed to communicate. The result was considerable political and financial stress in implementing the Chapultepec Accords. Old fighters with Traditional Memories The implementers of the Chapultepec Accords remained steeped in the memories of conflict and animosity. Neither political leaders, nor their followers could shake off the shadow of the civil war, the hatred generated, and the deep suspicion of the other side. Furthermore, a new generation of consensus builders did not come forward. The old heroes remained within the FMLN and, amongst them, old authoritarian tendencies emerged.72 In the months following Chapultepec hopes were high that Salvadorans could bridge the divide. COPAZ welcomed the offer from representatives of the FMLN and other new political parties on the left to work together. The willingness to include former insurgents into national political debates was an achievement. COPAZ members exhibited an effort to be inclusive and there was hope that this legislative body would become the critical player in propelling forward the implementation of the peace process. In addition to drafting legislation that should implement particular aspects of the Accords, COPAZ was given the task of identifying a broad range of candidates to lead the new institutions, namely the new Police Academy, the Policía Nacional Civil (national civilian police force), the Electoral Tribunal, and the Ombudsman for Human Rights. Hope existed that by means of internal negotiations over candidates and nominees, COPAZ could achieve consensus on the leadership of the new Salvador.73 However, identification of single candidates for new leadership positions proved contentious and often inconclusive. A subcommittee of COPAZ was formed to oversee the formation of the new Police Academy and nominate suitable candidates for the leadership of the new police force. That subcommittee was divided over nominees and was incapable of agreement.74 Another subcommittee of COPAZ was tasked with overseeing the inventory of land parcels for sale and the list of ex-combatants eligible for credit with which to purchase land. That subcommittee was unable to assume the task because they had neither the means with which to inspect available land nor the staff with which to review the list of applicants. The failure to undertake either of these tasks earned COPAZ the contempt of ONUSAL and the concern of the Salvadoran president.75

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Within a year after the Chapultepec Accords, anti-democratic tendencies emerged within the Legislative Assembly and COPAZ became increasingly irrelevant. The expectation that this coalition of legislatures, members of civil society, labor leaders, the association of private business, and the Catholic Church would be able to identify and nominate candidates to fill the heads of the new institutions proved ill-founded. Internal bickering made it hard for them to arrive at a consensus candidate. Instead, political leaders hardened in their advocacy of traditional positions, displaying unwillingness to compromise. This rigidity became even more evident after the publication of the UN Truth Commission’s report in March 1993. Also, politicians began to jockey for positions in anticipation of presidential and legislative elections in March 1994. Consequences of the UN Truth Commission: Nationalistic Fervor and an Amnesty Back in July 1990, the protagonists had agreed to invite the UN to investigate human rights abuses.76 At that time, the prospect of outsiders examining human rights abuses by both sides was anticipated to apportion blame equally between ESAF and the FMLN. However, by early 1993, rumors out of New York intimated that the largest proportion of blame would be placed upon the government of El Salvador. In early February 1993, ESAF’s High Command began to consider how they might manage the consequences of the UN Truth Commission’s report, which was published only six months after the “ad-hoc” commission report. Virtually the entire military High Command was consumed with intense discussions on how to handle the challenges posed by both the reports.77 Concerted opposition to perceived external threats to Salvadoran sovereignty developed within ESAF and among ARENA members in the Legislative Assembly. Conspiratorial theories abounded of U.S. intentions to replace the armed forces with a gendarmerie (armed police force), and U.S. government manipulation of the UN’s Secretary General.78 The FMLN leadership responded more positively to the UN Truth Commission, because they believed that they could use the forthcoming report as leverage to oblige the Salvadoran government to reform the judicial system and ensure full compliance with the formation of the new police force.79 Despite the fact that the report had identified comandantes Joaquin Villalobos and Anna Maria Guadalupe Martinez as culpable of ordering the assassination of municipal mayors, both accepted the report’s conclusions.80 Both had testified, voluntarily, before the UN commission thus drawing attention to the acts of violence carried out by their forces, the ERP, including the assassination of municipal mayors. These statements were published. (However, neither proffered nor investigated were the countless acts of violence by those perpetrators who did not appear before the UN investigators. Their silence left them protected from public notification and the sanction of a ten-year disqualification from political office.) From the UN headquarters in New York where they came to hear the report, the FMLN leadership expressed a commitment to comply with the terms of the UN Truth Commission’s report.81 Cristiani had successfully discharged nearly all the military officers identified in the “ad hoc” commission report. However, the UN Truth Commission’s report

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reduced his ability to further purge the military High Command. The president was not strong enough politically to confront the military leadership a second time. The High Command demanded protection. On March 1, 1993, shortly before the publication of the UN commission’s report in New York, General Ponce sought to discredit the report as biased. In a pamphlet entitled, “The Threat to Sovereignty and the Destruction of the State,” Ponce denounced an ongoing communist threat with continued supply of arms to the FMLN from external forces.82 He suggested that the U.S. government treated El Salvador as “a laboratory for the creation of the principle of limited sovereignty,” whereby it imposed its will upon weaker nations.83 On March 12, General Ponce gave a fifteen-minute speech and a press conference, in which he reiterated points made earlier in his pamphlet. He denounced the “ad hoc” commission’s report as biased and directed “by foreign forces conspiring against Salvadoran institutions.”84 He also denounced the forthcoming UN Truth Commission report. He spoke of a continued communist presence and the flow of arms to the FMLN that required ESAF to maintain constant defense.85 The press conference reflected a deep sense of unease within the military and other sectors of Salvadoran society, about foreign intrusion into the peace process.86 On March 15, the UN Truth Commission published its report in New York. The Commission recommended the dismissal of 43 military officers for human rights violations, the barring of five comandantes from public office, a special investigation into the death squads, the strengthening of civilian control over the military, the dismissal of the President of the Supreme Court, and the replacement of the entire Supreme Court. General Ponce together with General Zepeda, Air Force Commander Bustillo and Chief of Staff, General Rubio were named as responsible for directing and thereafter covering up the murder of Father Ellacuria and the Jesuits in November 1989. The UN Truth Commission’s report presented a withering critique of ESAF. It charged the most senior military officers with acting with impunity in carrying out massive human rights violations and abuses of authority. The specific incidents examined throughout the 236 page narrative amounted to a “pattern of behavior” by the military that overrode domestic and international law. Regarding the Supreme Court’s failure to prosecute, if not acquiesce to illegal military actions, the UN Truth Commission sought the wholesale removal of El Salvador’s Supreme Court. On March 23, 1993, and one week after the publication of the UN report, General Ponce, accompanied by the entire leadership of ESAF addressed the nation on primetime television. Speaking on behalf of that institution, he rejected the UN Truth Commission’s report as “unjust, incomplete, illegal, unethical, biased, and bold.”87 He stated that the report “distorts reality” and has a “negative effect on the peace process.” He categorically rejected the report’s claim that he planned the murder of the six Jesuit priests, their housekeeper, and her daughter over three years earlier. He also criticized the report’s failure to include the 695 cases of atrocities committed by the FMLN, which members of ESAF had submitted to the UN Truth Commission. In short, General Ponce, on behalf of the armed forces refused to accept the report and demanded that it not be implemented. The day of General Ponce’s “Address to the Nation,” President Cristiani left the country. He was helpless to prevent Ponce’s television appearance. Although

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some commentators implied that the President had not approved of Ponce’s TV appearance, the U.S. Embassy believed that Cristiani had assented on grounds that ESAF was entitled to “one day in court.”88 Ruben Zamora, then Vice President of the Legislative Assembly, interpreted the address as a “technical coup d’état.”89 General Ponce had asserted ESAF’s supreme authority in the country. The U.S. Embassy reported on intense grumbling throughout ESAF, including among more progressive members of the officer corps. The Embassy concluded that, On balance, President Cristiani still commands fairly broad support within the military for his handling of the peace process. [. . .] However, President Cristiani is entering a new era in his dealings with the military. To a large extent, the President’s future dealings with the ESAF will depend on how smoothly the impending [military] command changes take place.90

The civilian President was vulnerable, and only scrupulous efforts to display his confidence in ESAF, as well as the introduction of an amnesty program would preserve his leadership. In the face of the UN Truth Commission’s report, the traditional dominant force in Salvadoran politics had reasserted itself. However, its ability to change government policy had ended. ESAF had not won Salvador’s civil war and the peace process was dedicated to weakening the military as an institution. General Ponce no longer had the capacity to remove the civilian leadership. Nevertheless, he would not surrender easily. General Ponce now demanded a “general and absolute amnesty” to protect the Battalion commanders, the High Command, and himself. In this, Ponce was supported by the conservative members within ARENA with whom he had several conversations about the appropriate reaction to the UN Truth Commission’s report.91 Furthermore, military officers who had reluctantly accepted the “ad hoc” commission’s report, because it was confidential and limited to the discharge of 102 officers (out of 2,000), were now confronted with a second challenge. In their minds, the publication of the UN Truth Commission’s report was more harmful than any other aspect of the peace accords.92 Only an absolute amnesty would save President Cristiani and the moderate leaders of the ARENA government. Discussions on a possible amnesty law had begun in late February, but in the wake of the UN’s report, these discussions assumed a critical urgency. General Ponce now sought from the Legislative Assembly an immediate and absolute amnesty. Cristiani’s preference was for a broad based, multiparty endorsement of an amnesty program, but he made it known that in the absence of broad support, he would seek a simple majority from the ARENA members in the Assembly.93 Even before Ponce had taken primetime television time to make his national address, Cristiani had appealed “to all the forces of the country to support a general and absolute amnesty to turn that painful page of history . . .”94 In early March 1993, the FMLN and the other opposition parties had been willing to accept a general amnesty on condition that the government implement the UN Truth Commission’s other recommendations.95 These included the creation of a civilian Minister of Defense, and the formation of a National Judicial

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Council to select and supervise judges. Both Handal and Villalobos understood that the President could not remove the Supreme Court without amending the Constitution, an event which could not take place until the next legislative elections in March 1994. Until then, no constitutional authority permitted the ouster of the whole Supreme Court. The only available remedy was the impeachment of individual Supreme Court Justices.96 President Cristiani did not give the political parties much time to discuss the amnesty, nor did he appear to consult with the business community and Catholic Church within COPAZ. On March 19, four days before General Ponce’s remarks to the nation, ARENA’s president, Armando Calderon Sol announced that he would seek a bipartisan agreement for an amnesty. Later that day, the General Secretaries of all the political parties met to discuss a bill to grant general and absolute amnesty to all those named in the UN Truth Commission’s report. Opposition parties sought more time to study the proposed bill within the Legislative Assembly, but ARENA leaders met privately and decided to introduce the amnesty bill the following day. The bill would be voted on by a simple majority. On March 20, ARENA members provided that majority and the amnesty became law.97 One month later, in a meeting with Congressman Daniel Glickman (D–Kan.), Cristiani claimed that he had previously acquired support from the FMLN. He argued that the opposition had agreed two months before the publication of the UN Truth Commission for “national reconciliation for the entire population.”98 In the President’s mind, national reconciliation required an amnesty to prevent counter-accusations and the possibility of violence.99 If the FMLN had supported an amnesty in January 1993, their leaders kept their counsel secret. Ignorant of the contents of the report, the FMLN played safe and sought amnesty for their men and women. The Legislative Assembly’s passage of the Amnesty Law on March 20, 1993 went beyond protection of ESAF’s officer corps; it introduced a slowing down or break on the implementation of the peace accords. Diehards found solace in the President’s acquiescence to an amnesty, and victims lost trust in Cristiani’s commitment to social justice. Progress in reforming the judiciary slowed to the point that observers wondered whether the government was serious about its commitment to establish new mechanisms for selecting judges and assuring their independence. The Amnesty Act cast a pall over the reform agenda required by the peace accords. From mid-March 1993 onward, both President Cristiani and the majority in the Legislative Assembly became increasingly resistant to the ongoing efforts to proceed with judicial reform. In response to the UN Truth Commission’s call for the immediate dismissal of the entire Supreme Court, a new nationalism emerged that was based on defending the state against foreign interference.100 The UN and the three foreign Commissioners who had drafted the report had attacked the sovereignty of El Salvador with the result that jurists and politicians with no sympathy for the Supreme Court and the Chief Justice rallied to the defense of the Court and Cristiani.101 The President found himself under increasing political pressure from the right wing of ARENA, and more vulnerable to criticism from both Defense Minister Ponce and the Chief Justice.102

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Challenges to the Reform of the Judicial System: Supreme Court and Ombudsman for Human Rights (a)

The Judicial System

The obstinacy of the Chief Justice, Dr. Mauricio Gutierrez Castro remained an obstacle to reforming the judiciary and implementing the recommendations of the UN Truth Commission. He opposed any judicial reforms that limited the powers of the Supreme Court, or reduced the authority of the police force. The UN report focused on the technical aspects of the criminal system, noting that serious deficiencies of the judiciary were responsible for “stimulating Human Rights abuses in El Salvador.”103 Furthermore, the report identified a fundamental weakness in the Salvadoran justice system, namely its inability to prosecute well-connected civilians and military officers. Historically, virtually anyone with financial, military, political, or social standing who committed a serious crime had little to fear from the judicial system.104 Not only the Salvadoran elite, but also the FMLN leaders had succeeded in avoiding conviction.105 In the case of the murdered Jesuits, only two military officers had been convicted. Those who had authorized the assassination had not yet been brought to justice. The Salvadoran judicial system was characterized by the prosecution of the poor and the un-influential, coerced confessions, and repeated delays in the resolution of complaints brought before the courts. The result was a deep and pervasive public distrust of the judicial system.106 This distrust facilitated, if not encouraged, extrajudicial killings and other human rights abuses. Therefore, the reform of the Justice system was among the principal goals of the peace accords. In the realm of judicial reform, the peace agreements had identified three principal goals: ● ●

●

the end of judicial impunity and the assurance of a depoliticized and impartial judicial process; the independence of the judiciary through the establishment of a National Council on the Judiciary, which should nominate judges based on professional quality not political connections; and the establishment of a Human Rights Ombudsman who would pursue abuse, as well as corruption by the Salvadoran state.

Critical to the sustainability of any peace agreement was the creation of public trust in an independent judicial system. Historically, El Salvador had never enjoyed this trust. Therefore, its creation became a necessary part of the new El Salvador. The Mexico Accord of April 1991 had called for constitutional change in the method of selecting Supreme Court justices. A two-thirds majority of the Legislative Assembly would be required to elect a justice, instead of the simple majority, and the justices would serve a lengthened term of office to permit a staggered turnover.107 The intent was to avoid any single Legislative Assembly from electing the whole court. In theory, these constitutional reforms should have assured that the 13 justices were removed from the influence of the majority political party

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in power. In reality, the political parties favored particular candidates for judicial office and local newspapers published charts showing which party supported which candidates.108 The justices became politicians, or the tools of politicians, lobbying for support from legislatures.109 An intense political debate took place within the new Legislative Assembly over the composition of the Supreme Court and judicial reform. However, the power of the majority ARENA party was able to block motions by the opposition. The shape of the Supreme Court that emerged in June 1994 reflected the end of the one-party domination of the Court, but it failed to end the politicization of the judiciary.110 The Chapultepec Accord created the National Council for Defense of Human Rights, also known as the Ombudsman for Human Rights.111 It was required to identify and eradicate any groups which engage in a systematic practice of human rights violations, in particular, arbitrary arrests, abductions and summary executions, as well as other attempts on the liberty, integrity and security of persons.112

The funding of the Ombudsman’s office was to come from the 2 percent of the national budget, dedicated in the Chapultepec Accords to “Public Funding.”113 The first appointed Ombudsman, Carlos Molina Fonseca approached the Finance Ministry for his budget only to be referred to COPAZ. It turned him down. He then turned to the President, who rejected the request on grounds that the legislature had to approve his budget. For several months in 1992, the Human Rights Commission had no funds.114 Later, funding was approved, but was inadequate to carry out the tasks assigned in the peace accord. Also, the Commission’s staff was inexperienced. Consequently, the Ombudsman was perceived as weak and ineffective.115 ONUSAL considered that the Ombudsman was critical to assume its tasks in evaluating compliance with the peace accords in the matter of human rights.116 Its Division of Human Rights, therefore, worked closely with the Ombudsman’s office to train staff and provide technical support in preparation for the day when ONUSAL would leave El Salvador. Also, UNDP’s office in Salvador supported the Ombudsman’s office, channeling funds for administration.117 However, after the initial period, the Salvadoran institution was required to stand on its own. Human rights advocates who articulated cases of abuse quickly found themselves without transport to move around the country. They were also subject to personal threats and obstacles to the implementation of their recommendations. Although an important institution for the protection of human rights, shortage of funds, opposition from members of the legislature, and a failure to appoint strong-minded attorneys to the position of Ombudsman resulted in a weak institution that was ineffective in carrying out its mission.

Growing Nationalism as Elections Approach As the March 1994 presidential election approached, political positions hardened. Ruben Zamora, the leader of the Convergencia Democrática lamented the growing stridency among politicians and their retreat into traditional ideologies that made compromise so arduous.118 President Cristiani was perceived as a lame duck

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and a “perceptible loss of momentum appeared, due partly to a certain fatigue in government circles.”119 Salvadoran political parties became less willing to engage in dialogue and reform. Their active commitment during the 1991 negotiations in Mexico City, and in the period following the signing of the Chapultepec Accord, had worn off. Instead, from November 1993 onward, political parties ceased serious dialogue and positioned themselves to compete in upcoming presidential and legislative elections. This affected their discussions over judicial appointments, with politicians displaying preference for partisan loyalty over judicial competence.120 As the level of insecurity grew in 1993, citizens spoke anxiously of the growing level of violence and an emerging preference for the old authoritarian ways.121 According to the opinion polls carried out by the IUDOP, citizens came “to question the effectiveness and legitimacy of the supposed new order that the [peace] accords ushered in.”122 In July 1993, and without seeking the requisite legislative approval, President Cristiani called out ESAF to patrol highways as a means of curbing rising violence and highway robberies. Furthermore, joint patrols, in which military personnel greatly outnumbered the new police force, were dispatched to protect the annual coffee harvest.123 In the face of new criminal gangs and increasing public insecurity, few objected to violations of the peace accords and, with the passage of time, the military regained a positive image in the minds of Salvadoran citizens.124 On another level, grassroots movements (GROs) and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) that had been so active during the civil war withdrew from the dialogue with municipal authorities over the future of their local communities. Community Development Councils distanced themselves from discussions with the Salvadoran government over reconstruction, and sought instead to improve their communities independently with external funding agencies.125 Many Development Councils also abandoned their community work in favor of personal and family priorities. A decade of commitment to social action was undermined as common criminality became a central issue and ordinary people retreated into their private realms to support and protect their families. The broader goals of social justice and autonomous communities were lost in the return to traditional animosities. ONUSAL became the butt of political cartoons and crude jokes as Salvadoran politicians sought to exclude the UN from the issues deemed internal and sovereign. The question of when ONUSAL and its white-painted vans would leave the country became a constant refrain.126 The challenges that faced the Salvadoran people after the Chapultepec Accords reflected the struggle to make the consolidation of democracy an integral part of the peace process. The peace agreements identified the new institutions of the state that should be created, or those which should be reformed significantly. However, the reform of institutions did not bring about changes in the attitudes and behavior of the men and women who led and worked in those institutes. More was needed. The destruction of the hated security units was accompanied by a training program and ONUSAL’s review of each candidate for the Police Academy. It was hoped that individuals with the willingness to change, as well as participate in the training program might lead to a respect for civilians, the rule of law, and a greater tolerance for divergent points of view. The process was slow and the resistance by those with a stake in the old system was fierce. Despite this and gradually over time, the changes

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mandated by the Chapultepec Accords and the UN Truth Commission ended the civil war and began the process of introducing tolerance, reconciliation, and mutual respect among Salvadorans. As Salvadorans pursued the UN mandate to establish an effective democracy, ONUSAL—the principal proponent of peace and democracy—became the scapegoat for the failure to accomplish a new El Salvador. UN funding was insufficient to curry favor with either the government or local communities. USAID funds were reduced as alternative priorities emerged. Other external funding commitments were slow in coming, or dried up. By September 1995, ONUSAL had left and the Salvadoran people were finally on their own to resolve their internal conflicts. Ten years later, ESAF was reduced from 42,000 to 14,265 men and no longer exercised dominant power.127 Criminal gangs, not professional armies, created a pervasive sense of insecurity, and the economic struggle to survive sent thousands of young men and women northward and to Europe in search of economic livelihood. Through opinion polls, the Salvadoran people expressed their disillusionment with the peace process; their sense of insecurity and the lack of economic opportunity. Externally the international community praised itself for the end of a violent civil war, the creation of an enduring cease-fire, macro-economic figures that showed a BB⫹ credit rating, acceptable public debt ratio, and the move away from traditional exports thus diminishing El Salvador’s vulnerability to swings in commodity prices.128 Two different perceptions lived side by side, neither challenging the other, as the international community moved on to solve other wars and the Salvadoran people struggled to recreate their own country finally freed of external presence.

Epilogue

El Salvador Today The Chapultepec Accords of January 1992 destroyed the political power of the Salvadoran armed forces and reduced them to a size necessary to respond to natural disasters. In 2009, seventeen years later, the business community lost presidential power to the candidate of the FMLN, Mauricio Funes. Together, these two events ended two centuries of landowning and military dominance of El Salvador. New forces gained the opportunity to lead the country. President Barrack Obama and his administration strongly supported Funes, with the Secretary of State attending the inaugural ceremonies and the President paying a State Visit in April 2011. The United States has strengthened its ties with the Salvadoran government, but recognized that Salvadoran recollections of the civil war remain strong. President Obama’s visit to Archbishop Romero’s tomb in San Salvador’s cathedral highlighted the memory for both the warriors and the victims of that war. Mauricio Funes won the presidency in March 2009. The outpouring of support among a majority of 3 million voters contrasted with the dismay of the conservatives who had governed the country since 1989. For many of those marching with banners and balloons through the capital city, the presidential election of the candidate for the FMLN marked the true end of the civil war. For conservative followers within the ARENA, the prospect of national leadership from members of a political party, which had fought the establishment and kidnapped or murdered their relatives, created renewed fears of social conflict. Could the Salvadoran people put behind them the memories of a twelve-year-old war and move forward together to confront the challenges posed by a global recession? Shortly before the presidential campaign of 2009, I spent time with candidate Mauricio Funes in San Salvador as I sought to determine whether peace had become a reality. In the course of two visits to El Salvador in 2008 and later in 2010, I endeavored to understand the extent to which the forces allied behind the ARENA government and those gathered within the FMLN had laid aside their animosity and developed a degree of mutual trust. How deep was the reconciliation between the political parties and within communities? Had Salvadorans created political space within which to express dissent and argue for alternative choices? Had institutions, necessary for any functioning democracy—the political parties, the Legislative

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Assembly, the Supreme Court, the Electoral Tribunal, and the police—become accountable to the public? Finally, I examined the nature of the relationship with the United States. How had that relationship changed? On the surface, El Salvador is a modern nation state with smooth and wide tarmac roads leading from a newly constructed airport into and through the capital city of San Salvador. Handsome, contemporary buildings have risen, carrying the names of major international companies, as well as the Salvadoran airline, brewery, and government entities. Salvadorans have built large shopping malls on the outskirts of the capital with boutiques selling international high-end brands. In the post war years, significant Salvadoran and foreign direct investment has brought prosperity and modernity. The policies of the “Washington Consensus” have attracted foreign capital, as well as strengthened Salvadoran investments in the service industry and light manufacturing. If you avert your eyes from the champas (shacks) under and between the arterial highways, you observe a nation that has modernized its economy and raised standards of living for the majority of its citizens. How extensive is this modernity, how evenly spread is the wealth and can it be reflected in a new found peace? Behind the appearance of peace and relative prosperity, there exists a wide gap between the rich and the poor, with minimum employment opportunities in quality jobs. Economic inequality can be expressed through the Gini index in which zero equals a state of perfect equality and 100 a state of perfect inequality. Based on these figures, Central America hosts some of the most unequal nations in the world. Despite improvements throughout the continent, the economic downturn of 2009 and 2010 prevented the poor in Central America from improving their standards of living. The index for El Salvador remains unchanged at 52 compared to 55 in Guatemala and 54 in Honduras.1 Significant public effort is being made to reduce inequality, but the anemic economic recovery in the industrialized world has made the task harder. Social programs designed to support the poorest families have a positive impact, but for those living on minimum incomes, remittances from family members working overseas often provide the principal financial support. For many in the rural areas, emigration provides both an escape from poverty and hope for family members left behind. Remittances are a critical source of income for thousands of Salvadoran families. However, tales of husbands and fathers who never returned, leaving single mothers to raise children with minimum, if any support, contrast with tales of relative prosperity. The social problems associated with absent fathers, mothers, or both have profoundly modified the composition of Salvadoran families.2 It has affected social cohesion, trust, as well as livelihood for those parents who start new families in the U.S.3 As we approach two decades after the signing of the Chapultepec Accords, the people of El Salvador have moved beyond the civil war, but they do not live in peace. El Salvador is a nation in transition from a patriarchal society based on an export economy to a nation absorbing new technologies, as well as expressing dissent and opinion freely. Into this cauldron of change, the state’s capacity to constrain illicit trade and behavior is relatively weak. Although the protagonists of El Salvador’s civil war now confront each other through electoral politics, San Salvador and the twelve municipalities are engulfed in violent crime and insecurity. Intentional

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homicide in these cities has made El Salvador one of the most insecure nations in the world with a murder rate of 52 per 100,000 in 2008, rising to 70.6 per 100,000 in 2010.4 Furthermore, kidnapping and extortion continue to rise.5 A poll taken in April 2011 revealed that Salvadorans were more concerned about insecurity than economic wellbeing.6 The illicit economy thrives on the shipment of cocaine from the Andes to the United States. Also, human traffickers use migrants as commodities for a welldeveloped international trade. In the face of transnational organized crime and the local criminal gangs, called maras,7 the government employs national law enforcement recourses only to find that numerous officials have offered their services to the criminal organizations out of fear, or for money. The phrase “plata o plomo” (silver or lead) resonates in contemporary El Salvador. At the summit meeting of European and Latin American leaders in May 2010, the presidents acknowledged that, “insecurity represents a grave risk to the [Central America] region’s democratic stability.”8 Fear of criminal violence outweighs historical memory and political arguments. From bank clerks to homemakers to corporate executives, there is a deep concern about the violence perpetrated by the criminal organizations and the maras, both of which extort payments from small businesses and transportation companies, assault people for money, watches, and cell phones, as well as assassinate rival gang members. Founded in the jails of Los Angeles in 1982, the maras have developed into a transnational phenomenon. They also subcontract with drug traffickers to carry out particular criminal projects. In 2011, an estimated 25,000 members of the various maras were active in El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras causing a high level of insecurity among the general population.9 Although, the maras do not represent a united force, the number of young men and women who choose to join illegal gangs reflect the inadequacy of education, the low levels of job skills and the rejection of traditional, poorly paid trades.10 Observers consider the violence perpetrated by the maras as “a bitter fruit of our war.”11 The violence has also provoked repressive state action that has failed to contain criminal behavior. The result is a pervasive lack of trust in public institutions. To contain criminal violence, the Salvadoran armed forces have emerged from the barracks to patrol city streets and national highways. Those forces have acquired considerable public respect based on their role as the principal responders in times of hurricanes and earthquakes; regular occurrences in El Salvador. The army is no longer the dominant political force in the nation. Instead, it has acquired a legitimacy not seen before. An April 2010 poll found that 60 percent of Salvadorans approve of the use of the armed forces to fight crime.12 However, the new police force has not received the same approval. Despite significant efforts to strengthen police leadership and reform institutional weaknesses, citizens continue to view the police as untrustworthy.13 Those wealthy individuals and corporations with means hire private security guards, whose number exceeds those working with the national police.14 Crimes such as extortion, robbery, and kidnapping are under-reported because citizens believe that authorities are involved in the criminal organizations. The result is a widespread sense of public insecurity that has replaced the fears that flamed during the civil war.15

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After a period of heavy repression against the mara under the presidency of Francisco Flores (1999–2004), his successor, President Antonio Saca (2004–2009) tasked a special unit within his cabinet to examine the appropriate forms of social prevention and intervention. Saca recognized that repression alone merely quashes the violence temporarily, but fails to tackle the underlying root causes, namely lack of skills, lack of quality jobs, and families fragmented by emigration.16 President Funes has inherited these problems and demonstrated through his Plan Quinquenal de Desarollo (five-year plan) a willingness to increase the proportion of the budget dedicated to poverty alleviation by 33 percent. However, the global economic downturn resulted in lower government revenues and shortfalls in meeting the Quinquenal targets. Recognition of the underlying socio-economic causes of the violence is combined with a new security plan that places soldiers in the twelve most violent municipalities and at checkpoints on major roads. Reflecting the intensity of public insecurity, Funes faced little opposition in his first months as President when he increased the number of the armed forces patrolling the highways and streets from 784 to 4,000.17 Both the ineffective quality of the new civilian police, as well as the newfound respect for the armed forces enabled Funes to call upon the very institution that the FMLN fought against so fiercely in the civil war. Much has changed but in the intervening years have the underlying structural causes of the civil war been addressed? Political Space What is the nature of the new political dynamic in El Salvador? The defeat of ARENA appears to be a conscious decision to seek an alternative model of development, as well as a level of political maturity that accepts a new governing class. Traditional leadership by political parties that demanded cohesion and treated disagreements as a “crisis within the party” is breaking down. Until recently, the expectation of unity and strong national leadership dominated the attitude of the voters, and dissent was neither expected nor viewed positively.18 A reduced public sector made the traditional practice of rewarding loyal followers with jobs and improved economic standing significantly harder. As the state withdrew from the market place, there were fewer jobs to hand out and the private sector assumed a greater role. A complex jobs market, in which skills and education replaced traditional loyalties, eroded a long-established political system in which patrons rewarded loyal followers. No longer does the assurance of economic reward exist, and a restless electorate now seeks broader economic choices. The absence of political space was a leading cause of the civil war and the Peace Accords agreed to a system that would encourage greater political participation. The prevalence of two dominant political groups remains, but new parties seek to advance particular interests despite the struggle to meet the minimum 3 percent voter support. There may be less predictability in the political debate, but the vigor of the dialogue between the presidency and politicians of distinct political persuasion reflects the emerging maturity of the Salvadoran democratic system. The FMLN is divided between the old guard who fought the revolution and more moderate elements led by Mauricio Funes who see their future through a

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“third way,” or Brazilian type of center-left government. Vice President, Salvador Sanchez Ceren, who acts also as the Minister of Education, represents the old guard within the FMLN. He retains his deep socialist commitment, expresses his views frequently, and has a vocal following in El Salvador.19 His presence in the senior leadership reminds staunch followers of the FMLN that their goals are heard. Internal Cabinet divisions are rarely aired in public. Instead, the government seeks to maintain the appearance of unity; a cohesion that characterized the different movements within the FMLN during the war. However, beneath the veneer of solidarity, there exists the concern of whether the FMLN will remain a single party, or whether Funes will split off to form his own political party, leaving the FMLN once more on the margin of Salvadoran political life. ARENA is also split based on personalities, not ideology.20 The divisions of contemporary Salvadoran politics have changed little since wartime, except that the extremes of both right and left no longer advance their interests through violence. The legacy of these political divisions is enduring distrust between entrenched classes, which continue to fear each other. To the extent that the extremes remain on the fringes of Salvadoran politics, we find sufficient cohesion among moderates to enable the government to function and the legislature to enact reforms. Nevertheless, after the first cup of tequila shared with this foreigner, old animosities erupt. Consensus on the management of the state remains fragile and bitter memories exist beneath the surface. El Salvador remains a polarized society with a degree of uncertainty in the political future leading the middle class to consider emigration.21 President Funes appears to have built a personal following and, one year after assuming the presidency, retains an enviable 65 percent popularity rating.22 With this support, Funes has entered into dialogue with all the major sectors of society—business, Catholic Church, unions and civil society—in order to build consensus on the way forward. In contrast to historical presidential orders, he prefers national dialogue.23 Although, the Plan Quinquenal does not reject liberal market forces, the drafters believe that free-market forces alone cannot produce economic growth. Therefore, a concerted effort among different sectors of the economy deliberates on the role of the state in the management of the economy and the provision of social services. Funes’ challenge is to hold the FMLN together and to persuade the party faithful that his personal popularity is advantageous for the party. He continues to consult widely, but in so doing, he has activated sectoral politics. There exists the risk that business leaders resort to old competition with union leaders’ and that campesinos (peasant farmers) return to conflict with the cattle ranchers and coffee plantation owners. Funes, however, is determined to change the traditional patterns of conflict and to seek unity through dialogue. Members of his cabinet worry that holding the FMLN together will be as challenging as stimulating the economy during a slower than anticipated economic recovery.24 Rule of Law Drug traffickers, organized criminal syndicates, and the maras challenge El Salvador’s new democratic institutions. The quantity of ready cash and the ruthlessness of

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the criminal organizations result in a relatively weak state. Strong, democratic institutions can contain criminal activity through effective policing, independent judiciaries, and a penitential system that effectively deters and punishes criminal behavior. However, centuries of authoritarian and patriarchal rule that resulted in twelve years of civil war present considerable challenges in the creation of democratic institutions. Police officials, judges, and court personnel can no longer rely on the patronage of men who placed them in their government jobs and expected a degree of obedience, if not subservience. The passage of time and a major cultural shift are needed to create independent judgment and a mentality of national service rather than patronage. The Salvadoran elite are fully cognizant of the need to change and much has already occurred. However, the crime wave presents a major obstacle: society demands immediate responses—peremptory justice and longer sentences. When that does not produce public security, there arises a popular urge to return to old authoritarian ways. To determine the ability to deliver the rule of law, we examine the key democratic institutions. (a)

The Judiciary

One of the underlying causes of the civil war was the absence of an independent, credible and fair judicial system. Therefore, the negotiators for the FMLN and the UN mediator, Alvaro de Soto developed criteria for a reformed judiciary, based primarily on a reformed Supreme Court. To what extent have they succeeded? There is general agreement that the administration of justice has improved significantly in the last eighteen years. Reforms in this area are considered to be more profound than in any other area of public life.25 Nevertheless, the process of reform is not finished. Serious problems in the realm of Salvadoran justice remain both in the structure of judicial power and in the administration of justice. To consolidate trust in democratic institutions, important reforms still need to be carried out. Leading this effort are the Salvadoran judges themselves: they remain the harshest critics of the judicial system.26 The judges focus on the following issues: lack of citizen confidence in the courts and lawyers; lack of access to the courts; lack of independence in the judicial institutions; slowness of justice; lack of financial and human resources; and corruption.27 Although Salvadorans place greater trust in judges and the courts than in the political parties, a lack of confidence persists. This is based on both the absence of information about cases and the process, as well as distrust in the operation and outcome of judicial proceedings. Citizens complain of a discourteous treatment, dragged out judicial cases, and incompetent lawyers who do not have expertise in the particular area of the law that is the focus of the case. Lawyers accept more cases than is reasonable for swift resolution of disputes with the result of inadequate attention to each argument. They also have a tendency to complicate or frustrate the judicial process rather than resolve the issue. In short, there exists considerable distrust of the lawyers who corrupt the judicial system through negligence, ineffectiveness, and a bias toward the powerful. In order to balance the power of the Supreme Court, the Peace Accords endorsed the creation of a National Council of the Judiciary, whose purpose was to review

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cases of attorney impropriety and recommend sanctions. The National Council is an independent body from the Supreme Court, but its relative weakness compared to the power of the Court, as well as the political partiality of its members, have provoked significant criticism.28 The National Council has not succeeded in relieving the complaint of a top down judicial structure with significant restrictive influences upon Salvadoran judges and lawyers. Therefore, the struggle for an independent and impartial judiciary endures. (b)

Police

Police functions are now separate from those of the armed forces and a new generation of police officers patrol communities and carry out criminal investigations. The civilian character and professionalization of police personnel has progressed substantially.29 However, problems of poor pay, inadequate training, and lack of equipment result in a less than effective force. Memory of the role the police played during the civil war results in reluctance to grant them real power. In 2011, only 9.6 percent of those surveyed considered that the police were able to confront insecurity. A far greater proportion of those polled believed that Salvador’s armed forces were more able.30 Recognition of the importance of a civilian effort to control lawlessness requires that greater resources and training be directed to the new police force. However, the strengthening of the police force remains a sensitive issue within the Salvadoran body politic. (c)

Prisons

Prison overcrowding has become a serious problem with jails built to house 8,080 now filled with 24,283 prisoners.31 Consequently, fights among prisoners are frequent and inter-gang warfare provokes further violence. Despite efforts to disrupt cell phone communication within the jails, prisoners continue to operate their criminal enterprises. Family members and prison guards often aid in these enterprises. Instead of a dreaded place to avoid, penitentiaries have become a routine part of many young men’s lives. Lengthy pre-trial detention followed by dismissal of the case for insufficient evidence results in young men expecting to spend time in a penitentiary. Here, they are introduced to the life of one or other mara; learning its traits, signals, and procedures. When they emerge, they have gained an education in the growing illegal economy. The Role of Nongovernmental Organizations Throughout the civil war, NGOs played a role in mustering support for the FMLN, raising awareness and money successfully. During the negotiations to end the war, mediators on both sides expected a greater contribution from civil society, but this did not occur. The organization created to stimulate greater social dialogue, COPAZ was not strong enough to influence behavior of either side.32 NGOs with close relationships to the business community, such as FUSADES continued their work, but others faded away for lack of funds and insufficient commitment to the role

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of a civil society. Today, young educated Salvadorans are forming NGOs to work in education, entrepreneurship, and housing. Their dedication indicates a commitment to engage with deep social problems and provide a bridge between entrenched interests. Foreign NGOs maintain a presence in El Salvador, building houses, extending micro-credit, caring for street kids and preserving the environment, but they do not function as a political force. The Catholic Church is vocal and the Archbishop of San Salvador, Jose Luis Escobar Alas is forceful in his protest against the violence. Recently, he cried out that “Violence is undermining El Salvador and is capable of sinking the entire country.”33 Another equally strident call is to blame U.S. citizens for their insatiable demand for drugs that has resulted in Salvadorans becoming the victims of another’s appetite for cocaine, methamphetamine, and marijuana. In the midst of uncontrollable violence, driven by narcotics trafficking, what is the nature of the relationship with the U.S.? El Salvador’s Relations with the United States During the civil war, the U.S. government’s support for presidents Jose Napoleon Duarte and subsequently Alfredo Cristiani was indispensable to the government’s capacity to prosecute the war against the FMLN. The end of the war could have presented an opportunity to review this relationship. Instead, relations with the United States have remained close and interlocking ties have developed between the two nations. One third of El Salvador’s population lives outside the country.34 Many of them hold U.S. citizenship or green cards that enable them to travel to and from their communities in El Salvador to their new homes en el norte. This has strengthened both political and economic relations between the two nations. In 2001, the U.S. dollar replaced the historical Salvadoran currency, el colon, as the national currency. Except in the small rural markets, citizens trade and save in dollars. Consequently, El Salvador benefited from reduced inflationary pressures as well as increased foreign investment. The economic recession and downturn affected the Salvadoran economy hard with dollar denominated exports made more expensive relative to their neighbors. However, with the emergence from recession in the fourth quarter of 2010, the stability of the dollar has helped increased foreign direct investment into El Salvador. In trade terms, ratification of the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) with the United States in March 2006 provided new growth opportunities through trade and investment. In May 2010, El Salvador signed a similar free trade agreement with the European Union. Increased trade opportunities have resulted in the strengthening of an urban middle class and a significant reduction in poverty levels from 47 to 35 percent of the population.35 An important contributor to economic growth lies in remittances from Salvadorans living outside the county. Documented and undocumented workers in the United States generate remittances equivalent to approximately 16.3 percent of GDP. Therefore, the capacity to continue working within the U.S., despite the lack of legal immigrant status, is critically important to the Salvadoran government and the families concerned. In the case of approximately half a million undocumented

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Salvadorans living in the United States, a Temporary Protective Status (TPS) protects 220,000 from deportation.36 Continued residency has enabled a broad distribution of income to rural communities. Money sent home to villages and small farms in La Union, Chalatenango, and Morazán embellishes the local church, the community hall or school, as well as their family’s home. Salvadorans not only send money, but they contribute new construction techniques, engineering skills, and creative ideas for the improvement of their neighborhoods. As a result, these communities know how to seek health and educational services, access to electricity, and the internet. The relationship between El Salvador and the U.S. government was intimate under successive ARENA governments and remains close under President Funes. Salvadorans served in the U.S. military and until 2008, 280 Salvadoran soldiers fought alongside U.S. forces in Iraq: a decline from 380 a few years earlier, but nevertheless a sustained presence in a war that has no direct relationship to Salvador’s security. The United States maintains a military presence in El Salvador to intercept the flow of narcotics, and supports a regional training center for prosecutors, judges, and police officers at the International Law Enforcement Academy (ILEA) at Santa Tecla, outside San Salvador. Funes retains close relations with Washington, recognizing that he needs U.S. help to sustain IMF credits as well as financial and technical support in the struggle against the transnational drug cartels. Ties between Funes and President Obama’s administration are close. The U.S. government supported El Salvador’s request for a $781 million standby arrangement with the IMF. Funes has committed to work closely with the United States in combating drug trafficking organizations and organized crime through his leadership within the Central American Regional Security Assistance program (CARSI). In short, Funes has prioritized his relationship with the U.S. government and rejected ideological positions in favor of pragmatism. This has caused divisions within the FMLN, but Funes’ popularity has enabled him to form coalitions with other political parties to gain a working majority in the Legislative Assembly.37 His national following has raised expectations of rising standards of living, a more equal distribution of wealth, and greater public security, but these expectations can be dashed in the face of deep-seated class divisions and ongoing public insecurity. Conclusion What lies ahead for the people of El Salvador? Memories of the civil war linger and ARENA politicians continue to raise fear of what their former enemies might do to the country. The intensity of political dialogue distinguishes El Salvador, with 68 percent of Salvadorans supporting democratic governance.38 The authoritarian tendencies of the past have not reappeared and a remarkable lack of bitterness allows former enemies to engage in political dialogue. In 2008, both former President Cristiani and the negotiator for the FMLN, Salvador Samayoa told me, “Ya, la guerra se acabo.” (The war is over.) In the 1980s, the challenge to citizen safety came from a powerful state, now the challenge comes from nonstate actors, such as the maras, and transnational criminal organizations. This inversion of threats continues to affect the institutions of the democratic state. The destruction of ESAF did not result automatically in a functioning democracy. Instead, the strengthening of the

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police, the judiciary, and correctional facilities will take time because the culture of a democracy is weak. Formal democratic structures may exist in El Salvador, but the spirit of democracy has not yet taken hold. Only by growing the economy will sufficient wealth be created to share it more equally. Only quality jobs will persuade a generation of young men that education and training in industrial skills is preferable to joining the maras. Salvadorans are a proud people who do not shy away from difficult tasks. They want to be part of the internet age and use digital communication for their own economic prosperity. They are not an isolated people, but rather linked to families and friends spread throughout the United States and southern Europe. Emigration will remain an option. However, the challenge is to offer sufficient economic opportunity at home to keep this talent for the benefit of the country. In this challenge, the U.S. role should be supportive, but at arm’s length. El Salvador’s leaders will then successfully modernize their society in their own unique way, taking into account their long agricultural tradition, their creativity, and their determination not to return to civil war.

Notes Chapter 1 1.

2.

3. 4. 5.

6.

7.

8.

9.

In the case of El Salvador, NGOs were often international not-for-profits with headquarters and funding sources in the U.S. and Europe. These NGOs supported national CBOs that directed the projects within El Salvador. In turn these organizations relied upon GROs to act in local communities. CBOs delivered the aid through the GROs and relied upon the latter to collect stories of victimization and need. These stories from the grassroots were used by international NGOs to gather international support and funds. Spoilers are defined as factions among the protagonists, who break away to spoil a negotiated political outcome. They see greater advantage in returning to violence to achieve their goals. See Stephen Stedman, “Spoilers in Peace Processes,” New Challenges to International Conflict Resolution, ed. Paul Stern (Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press, 2000). Since their formation in the 1970s, the five groups had fought a guerilla war against ESAF. Mario Lungo Ucles, El Salvador in the Eighties: Counterinsurgency and Revolution (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1990), p. 22. Alvaro de Soto, “Ending Violent Conflict in El Salvador,” Herding Cats: Multiparty Mediation in a Complex World, eds. Chester A. Crocker, Fen Osler Hampson, Pamela Aall (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Institute of Peace Press, 1999), p. 352. Fen Osler Hampson, “Parent, Midwife, or Accidental Executioner: The Role of Third Parties in Ending Violent Conflict,” Turbulent Peace: the Challenges of Managing International Conflict, eds. Chester A. Crocker, Fen Osler Hampson and Pamela Aall (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Institute of Peace, 2001). Ibid., pp. 289–290. Hampson recognizes four categories: the “hard realist,” the “soft realist,” the governance-based approach, and the social-psychological approach. The ‘hard realist’ applies to an external victor who imposes peace upon the vanquished party. This case was not applicable in El Salvador. Yale–UN Oral History Project, Central American Peace Process, interviews with Venezuela’s Permanent Representative to the UN, Diego Arias, September 5, 1997 and Mexico’s Permanent Representative to the UN, Ambassador Jorge Montano, October 1, 1999 (New Haven: Yale University, Center for UN Studies). Contadora and the Central American Peace Process: Selected Documents, ed. Bruce M. Bagley, Roberto Alvarez, and Kath J. Hagedorn (Boulder: Westview Press, 1985), pp. 14–16. Bruce M. Bagley and Gabriel Tokatlian, Contadora: the Limits of Negotiation (Washington, D.C.: Johns Hopkins University, Foreign Policy Institute, 1987), p. 39.

174 10.

11.

12.

13.

14.

15. 16.

17.

18.

19. 20. 21.

22. 23.

24.

Notes

Diego Arria, “Bringing Leverage to the Peace Process in El Salvador and Central America,” Leveraging for Success in United Nations Peace Operations, ed. Jean Krasno (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002). The term “Contra” refers to the Nicaraguan counter-revolution that was formed by the remnants of President Anastasio Somoza’s National Guard, Somocista politicians, and conservative anti-Somocistas who broke with the Nicaraguan revolution. The Union Revolucionaria Nacional Guatemalteca (URNG) was composed of indigenous and mestizo leaders, holding Marxists ideas. They coalesced in opposition to the systematic violence of the Guatemalan army against Mayan civilians. Joint Franco-Mexican Declaration on El Salvador, UN Security Council document S/14659 (New York: UN Department of Public Information, 1981). See also, Modesto Seara Vazuez, Politica Exterior de Mexico, 2nd ed. (Mexico City: Universidad Nacional Autonomo, 1984), 348. President Mitterand shared with President Lopez Portillo sympathy for socialist causes that had the affect of irritating the U.S. government. For France it presented an unencumbered means to curry favor with the French left. The Geneva Conventions of 1949 and their Additional Protocols are at the core of international humanitarian law. They regulate the conduct of armed conflict and seek to limit its effects. They specifically protect people who are not taking part in the hostilities (civilians, health workers, and aid workers) and those who are no longer participating in the hostilities, such as wounded and prisoners of war. Arria, “Bringing Leverage,” p. 3. The U.S. government was divided in its approach to the Contadora peace process. Assistant Secretary of State for Latin American Affairs, Thomas Enders supported the Contadora process. However, the U.S. Ambassador to the Contadora negotiations, Harry W. Shlaudeman, was determined to prevent the Contadora process from achieving its stated goals. He considered that the U.S. had a critical role to play in defeating the Sandinista government. George P. Shultz, Turmoil and Triumph: My Years as Secretary of State (Toronto: Charles Scribner’s & Sons, 1993), p. 298. Shultz supported the role of Contadora, but was irritated by the fact that those mediators sought to give equal status to Cuba and the U.S. as observers to the negotiations. Jose Napoleon Duarte, My Story (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1986). Joaquin Villalobos, Por que lucha el FMLN? (Morazan, El Salvador: Ediciones Sistema Radio Venceremos, 1983). U.S. Embassy San Salvador cable #01797, February 17, 1984 and U.S. Embassy San Jose, Costa Rica cable #12677, September 28, 1988. Declaracion de Esquipulas, Esquipulas, Guatemala, May 25, 1986. Esquipulas 11: Procedure for the Establishment of a Firm and Lasting Peace in Central America, UN Security Council document S/19085, August 7, 1987 (New York: UN Department of Public Information, 1987). The UN Secretary General witnessed the signing and the UN Security Council later ratified the accord. Paul Wehr and John Paul Lederach, “Mediating Conflict in Central America,” Journal of Peace Research, 28 no. 1 (1991): 87–88. The Frente Democratica Revolucionario (FDR) was a coalition of socialist groups, committed to political persuasion. It played a key role in accepting UN mediation, but later withdrew from the negotiations because it had no military commanders. Instead, the FDR participated in electoral politics. Arias proposed an immediate region wide cease-fire and the opening of talks with unarmed opposition groups, an end to outside support for insurgent forces, amnesty decrees within sixty days, a calendar of democratization including restoration of

Notes

25. 26.

27.

28. 29.

30.

31. 32.

33.

34. 35.

36.

37. 38.

39.

40. 41. 42.

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freedom of the press, free elections according to the constitutions of both El Salvador and Nicaragua, and arms reduction talks. See “Peace Plan by Oscar Arias,” 15 February 1987, English translation in Dario Moreno, The Struggle for Peace in Central America, Appendix A (Gainesville: University Press of Florida), pp. 184–190. U.S. Embassy Tegucigalpa, Honduras, cable #05169, March 30, 1987. Schafik Handal interview with Jean Krasno, interpreted by Michael Lanchin, June 19, 1997, Yale–UN Oral History Project, Central American Peace Process. (New Haven: Yale University Betts House.) “Security Council Resolution Concerning the Situation in Central America and the Esquipulas 11 Agreement,” S/RES/637, 27 July 1989. UN Blue Book Series IV, p. 91. Boutros Boutros-Ghali, Introduction, The United Nations and El Salvador, p. 6. Harold Saunders, “Pre-negotiation and Circum-negotiation: Arenas of the Peace Process,” Turbulent Peace, pp. 483–495. Ambassador Saunders, the U.S. observer to the Oslo Peace Process 1991–1993 advocates this approach in conjunction with other strategies. Osler Hampson, “Parent, Midwife,” p. 396. This author is more aware of the limitations to the subjective, psychological approach. Therefore, he also stresses the need for independent and neutral third party mediators to carry out these tasks. Saunders, “Pre-negotiation and Circum-negotiation,” pp. 493–494. Hampson, “Parent, Midwife,” pp. 395–396. Joseph V. Montville, “Epilogue: The Human Factor Revisited,” Conflict and Peacemaking in Multiethnic Societies, ed. Joseph Montville (Lexington, MA: Lexington Books, 1991), p. 538. Author’s interview with Iqbal Riza, New York City, February 2003. Ian Johnstone, Rights & Reconciliation: UN Strategies in El Salvador (Boulder, CO: Lynn Reinner, 1995). Human rights officers, military, and police advisers were deployed to “visit any place freely and without prior notice,” p. 20, n. 14. Ibid., p. 21. “From Madness to Hope: The 12-year War in El Salvador” Report of the Commission on the Truth For El Salvador, March 15, 1993, transmitted to the UN Security Council March 29, 1993 as UN document S/25500. Mike Kay, “The Role of Truth Commissions in the Search for Justice, Reconciliation and Democratization: the Salvadoran and Honduran Cases,” Journal of Latin American Studies 29 (1997): 693–716. Kaye was the parliamentary officer at the British Refugee Council, London. UN Security Council Resolution 637, S/RES/637, 27 July 1989. Blue Book Series IV, p. 89. David Escobar Galindo, Special Adviser to President Cristiani, interview with Jean Krasno, interpreted by Michael Lanchin, San Salvador, June 21, 1997, Yale–UN Oral History Project, Central American Peace Process (New Haven: Yale University Betts House.) Ruben Zamora, founder of the Christian Socialist party (MPSC) and presidential candidate for the1994 election, interview with Jean Krasno, San Salvador, July 24, 1997, Yale–UN Oral History Project, Central American Peace Process. New Haven: Yale University Betts House. Author’s interview with Alvaro de Soto, UN Secretary General’s Special Representative for El Salvador, 1989–1991, UN headquarters, New York, October 6, 2003. See Chapter 10 below—Challenges to the Peace Accords. Assistant Secretary for American Republic Affairs (ARA), Bernard Aronson’s private papers, Washington, D.C.

176 43. 44.

45. 46.

47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53.

54. 55. 56. 57. 58. 59.

60. 61. 62.

63. 64.

Notes

Peter Wallensteen and Karin Axell, “Conflict Resolution and the End of the Cold War 1989–93,” Journal of Peace Research, 31: 3 (1994). Draft of testimony prepared by Bernard Aronson for Hearings before the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, Subcommittee on Western Hemisphere Affairs, 101st Cong., 2nd Sess., January 24, 1990. Theresa Whitfield, Paying the Price: Ignacio Ellacuria and the Murdered Jesuits of El Salvador (Philadelphia: Templeton Press, 1994). Several leaders from both the government and the FMLN and FDR had received their university education from, or had been colleagues at the Jesuit, Universidad Centro Americana (UCA). Whitfield, p. 218. Proceso, Issue 681, Mexico City, November 20, 1987: 38. Ibid. Author’s interview with Ambassador William Walker, Rosslyn, Virginia, November 18, 2003. “Human Rights under Cristiani—the First Year,” U.S. Embassy San Salvador cable #10330, August 11, 1990. Harold H. Saunders, “Four Phases of Non-Official Diplomacy,” Mind and Human Interaction 3 ( July 1991): 1. Michael W. Foley, “Laying the Groundwork: The Struggle for Civil Society in El Salvador,” Journal of Interamerican Studies and World Affairs, 38 (Spring 1996): 67–104. Jenny Pearce, Promised Land: Peasant Rebellion in Chalatenango, El Salvador (London: Latin American Bureau Limited, 1986), pp. 250–254. Cathy McIlwaine, “Contesting Civil Society: Reflections from El Salvador,” Third World Quarterly 19 (1998): 65–672. Leigh Binford, “Grassroots Development in Conflict Zones of Northeastern El Salvador,” Latin American Perspectives, 24 (1997): 56–79. Ibid., pp. 67–68. Natan Sharansky with Ron Dermer, The Case For Democracy: the Power of Freedom to Overcome Tyranny & Terror (New York: Perseus Books Group, 2004), pp. 43–47. UN High Commission for Refugees’ camps in Honduras were filled, for the most part, with the elderly, women, and children from the rural areas of Chalatenango and Morazan departments. The author visited them on several occasions while working with the U.S. NGO, World Relief. Wood, “Civil War and Reconstruction: the Repopulation of Tenancingo,” Landscape of Struggle, pp. 143–144. Vincent J. McElhinny, “Between Clientelism and Radical Democracy: The Case of Ciudad Segundo Montes,” Landscapes of Struggle, p. 155. “Situación de los derechos humanos y libertades fundamentales en El Salvador a los dos anos del gobierno del Lic. Felix Cristiani, presidente de la Republica” (The Situation of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms in El Salvador Two Years into the Government of President of the Republic, Felix [Alfredo] Cristiani). La Comisión de derechos humanos en El Salvador (Commission for Human Rights in El Salvador), CDHES Report for 1991 (San Salvador: Central America Working Group, 1991). John Paul Lederach, Preparing for Peace: Conflict Transformation across Cultures (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1995). The term was first used by I. William Zartman in Ripe for Resolution: Conflict and Intervention in Africa 2nd ed. (Oxford University Press, 1989). However, the concept of a “hurting stalemate” is not limited to Africa. See Zartman and Saadia Touval, “International Mediation in the Post-Cold War Era,” Turbulent Peace, pp. 434–435.

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Chapter 2 1.

2.

3.

4. 5.

6. 7.

8. 9.

10.

11. 12.

13.

Baloyra’s choice of this date emphasizes the underlying socio-economic cause of the war. Enrique Baylora, El Salvador in Transition (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina, 1982), p. 101. Diana Villiers Negroponte “1979–1980, the Salvadoran Military Struggle for Democratic–Socialism; the Creation and Fall of Four Military/Civilian Juntas” Historical Perspectives of Latin American Dictatorships (Graduate Student Conference, University of Maryland, October 13, 2004). Between 1980 and 1981, the U.S. Congress authorized a doubling of economic aid ($57.8 to $113.6 million) and a sixfold increase in military aid ($5.9 to $35.5 million) to El Salvador. The increase continued until 1986, but at a reduced rate. Richard R. Fagen, Forging Peace: the Challenge of Central America (New Haven: Basil Blackwell Pubs., 1987), pp. 149–151. “From Madness to Hope: the Twelve Year War in El Salvador,” Report of the UN Truth Commission on El Salvador (New York: United Nations, 1993). El Salvador is approximately the same size as the state of Massachusetts. Massachusetts has a larger population with 6.2 million people, but holds a greater concentration of people in the cities thus placing less pressure on agricultural land. Economic and Social Progress in Latin America, Inter-American Development Bank Report (Washington, D.C.: 1992). Racial divisions within Salvadoran society had been an issue in the military’s mass murder of the peasant population of 1932, known as the matanza (massacre). However, there is no evidence that the divisions between the majority mestizo population, the small Caucasian, and much reduced Indian population played a role in causing or exacerbating the civil war of the 1980s. In this, El Salvador must be distinguished from neighboring Guatemala. It is also important to note that no movement existed to break away and create an autonomous region despite geographic centers of resistance to the central government. Instead, both sides held a strong sense of national identity, which remained firm throughout the war and contributed to the sustainability of the peace process. Ralph Lee Woodward, Jr. Central America: A Nation Divided, 2nd ed. (London: Oxford University Press, 1985), pp. 70–71. William Roseberry, “Introduction” to Coffee, Society, and Power in Latin America, eds. William Roseberry, Lowell Gudmundson, and Mario Samper Kutschbach (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press: 1995), p. 3. David Browning, “El Salvador: Landscape and Society,” Journal of Latin American Studies, 15:2 (November 1983) (London: Oxford University Press, 1971), pp. 165, 174. Ibid. Rafael Menjivar estimated that community landholdings accounted for 22 percent of agricultural land. When the lands owned by the indigenous communities are added the total amounts to 40 percent. Rafael Menjivar, Acumulación originaria y desarrollo del capitalismo, p. 90, cited in Héctor Perez Brignoli, “The 1932 Rebellion in El Salvador,” in Coffee, Society, and Power, p. 243. Hector Lindo Fuentes considers the totals to be exaggerated. See Hector Lindo-Fuentes, Weak Foundations: The Economy of El Salvador in the Nineteenth Century, 1821–1898 (Berkley: University of California, 1990), pp. 129–130. According to the coffee census of 1940, 263 estates and 192 joint coffee producers and processors held 53.7 percent of the total area of land dedicated to coffee. In the same census, 9,768 family and sub-family farms still existed and accounted for

178

14.

15.

16. 17.

18.

19. 20. 21.

22. 23. 24. 25.

26. 27.

28.

29.

Notes

18.9 percent of the total area dedicated to coffee. See Primero censo nacional del café (San Salvador: Asociación Cafetalera de El Salvador, 1940), p. 26. U.S. Consul Lynn W. Franklin to Secretary of State. “List of Coffee Growers in El Salvador,” Dispatch 29, March 25, 1920, Foreign Agricultural Relations Report, Record 166, Entry Box 168, National Archives, Washington, D.C. Hector Perez Brignoli “The 1932 Rebellion in El Salvador,” Coffee, Society, and Power, eds. William Roseberry, Lowell Gudmundson, and Mario Samper Kutschbach, p. 244. National Archives, Washington, D.C., File: Coffee 1912/1938, cited in Brignoli, “The 1932 Rebellion.” Erik Ching, “Patronage and Politics Under General Maximiliano Hernandez Martinez, 1931–1939: The Local Roots of Military Authoritarianism in El Salvador,” Landscapes of Struggle: Politics, Society, and Community in El Salvador, eds. Aldo Lauria-Santiago and Leigh Binford (Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2004), pp. 50–51. Cecilia Elizabeth de Saade and Evelyn Rivas de Rosal, “La concentración en la producción de café y las modificaciones inducidas por el de agraria: periodo 1970–1982” (San Salvador: UCA, 1983). Tommie Sue Montgomery, Revolution in El Salvador: Origins and Evolution, 1st ed. (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1992). Segundo Montes, Estudio sobre estraficación social en El Salvador, (San Salvador: UCA Editors, 1979). In 1983, the sociologist, Enrique Baloyra analyzed the comprehensive nature of El Salvador’s coffee class. Its nucleus, “was composed of the 240 or so largest agricultural planters, the twenty-six major groups engaged in export agriculture and specializing in coffee exports, cattle ranchers with interests in the banking sector, large merchants dedicated to the supply of agricultural machinery and other agricultural inputs, financiers and bankers associated with export agriculturalists, the major speculators in real estate, and some entrepreneurs of the food-processing and textile industries.” Enrique Baloyra, “Reactionary Despotism in El Salvador: an Impediment to Democratic Tradition,” Martin Diskin, ed. Trouble in Our Backyard: Central America and the United States in the Eighties (New York: Pantheon, 1983), p. 109. Baloyra, “Reactionary Despotism,” p. 110. Paige, Coffee and Power, pp. 52–57. Ibid., p. 54. Coffee producers in El Salvador are also cotton and sugar producers. The production of these three commodities became industrialized in the 1960s with the development of processing and derived products such as rum. U.S. Embassy San Salvador cable, #03586, November 18, 1989. Many of those interviewed by Paige in El Salvador used the term terrorist for the FMLN or rebels. They often corrected Paige’s use of the term, rebel. “Coffee and Power in El Salvador,” Latin American Research Review, 28: 3 (1993). The 3rd revolutionary Junta promulgated Decree No. 75 on December 20, 1979, which created a government monopoly of El Salvador’s major export activity in coffee. It purchased all domestic production of coffee and sold it on the international market. The price differentiation between the domestic price in Salvadoran colones and the international price in U.S. dollars created a profit that the government administered, much to the displeasure of the coffee producers and millers. Alfredo Cristiani Burkard was descended from Italian immigrants. His family had extensive interests in coffee milling. As such, Cristiani was elected president of

Notes

30. 31.

32. 33.

34. 35.

36. 37.

38. 39. 40.

41. 42. 43. 44.

45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51.

52. 53.

179

ABECAFE, the principal association representing the agro-industrial producers in El Salvador. Charles D. Brockett, Land, Power, and Poverty: Agrarian Transformation and Political Conflict in Central America (Boston: Unwin Hyman, 1988), p. 75. Ibid., Not all small holders had legal title to their land. The occupancy of land without a title became the justification for large-scale removal of rural families. In 1961, 12 percent of rural families were landless, a percentage that rose to 29 percent in 1971 and 40 percent in 1975. Lungo, El Salvador in the Eighties, p. 48. Stephen Webre, Jose Napoleon Duarte and the Christian Democratic Party in Salvadoran Politics 1960–1972 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1979), pp. 28–29. Mario Lungo Ucles, El Salvador en los 80 – contrainsurgencia y revolución (Costa Rica: EDUCA-FLACSO, 1990), p. 14. Cynthia McClintock, Revolutionary Movements in Latin America: El Salvador’s FMLN and Peru’s Shining Path (Washington, D.C.: United States Institute of Peace Press, 1998), pp. 253–256. Roberto Canas, interview with Jean Krasno and Michael Lanchin, Yale–UN Oral History Project, San Salvador, June 19, 1997, pp. 9–10. Thomas P. Anderson, Matanza: El Salvador’s Communist Revolt of 1932 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1971), Ed Moran [pseudo name for John McAward] “El Salvador’s Climate of Terror,” America, February 18, 1978, pp. 117–118. Lungo, El Salvador in the Eighties, p. 121. Most notable were the military coup d’états of 1944, 1948, 1960, 1964, and 1979. General Gerardo Barrios institutionalized the national army in 1858. Robert V. Elam, “The Army and Politics in El Salvador, 1840–1927” in The Politics of Antipolitics, eds. Brian Loveman and Thomas M. Davies (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1989). Tricia Juhn, Negotiating Peace in El Salvador: Civil-Military Relations and the Conspiracy to End the War (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1998), pp. 16–17. Elam, “The Army and Politics in El Salvador.” Lungo, El Salvador en los 80, pp. 13–14. William Stanley, “Partners in Crime: Intra-Elite Conflict and the Dynamics of State Terrorism in El Salvador,” paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, San Francisco, August 30, 1990. Blanca Antonino interview with Jean Krasno, Yale–UN Oral History Project, August 6, 1997, p. 14. For a discussion on praetorian forms of government see Samuel Huntington, Political Order in Changing Society (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1968). David Escobar Galindo interview with Jean Krasno and Michael Lanchin, Yale–UN Oral History Project, San Salvador, June 21, 1997. Arthur Schmidt, “Introduction” to Lungo, El Salvador in the Eighties, p. 12. Lungo, El Salvador in the Eighties, p. 116. Graham Hovey, “U.S. Calls Coup Leaders Moderate and New Direction ‘Encouraging,’” The New York Times, October 20, 1979, p. A10. Diana Villiers Negroponte, Perception and Reality in the Salvadoran Military Struggle for Democratic-Socialism, 1979–1980, Georgetown University graduate paper, 1999 (unpublished). Estudios Centro Americano, No. 372/373 October–November 1979. “Salvador Military Deposes President to ‘Restore Order,’” The New York Times, October 16, 1979, p. A1.

180 54.

55.

56.

57.

58.

59. 60.

61.

62. 63. 64. 65. 66.

67. 68. 69.

70.

Notes

The liberal businessman, Mario Antonio Andino, Guillermo Manuel Ungo, secretary of the Partido Democrato Social, and Ramon Mayorga Quiroz, rector of the UCA had joined the first Junta, bringing with them the support of the popular organizations. Baloyra, El Salvador in Transition, p. 90. “Report on Human rights in El Salvador” Americas Watch and American Civil Liberties Union Report 1982 (New York: Vintage Press). “Supplement to the Report on Human Rights in El Salvador,” Center for National Security Studies (Washington, D.C., July 20, 1982). El Salvador Land Reform 1980–1981, Impact Audit by Simon Laurence R. and, James C. Stephens (Oxford, England: OXFAM). Carlos M. Vilas, Between Earthquakes and Volcanoes (New York: New York University Press, 1995). Vilas differs only in his estimate of 13,000 deaths in 1980. Mario Zamora Rivas, the attorney general and brother of former Junta member Ruben Zamora was assassinated in his home by right-wing terrorists. Zamora paid the ultimate price for pushing forward the investigation into the “desaparecidos.” The graduating class from Salvador’s Military Academy was known as the tanda. It consisted of military officers bound to each other by loyalty. In 1966, an unusually large graduating class consisting of the sons and relatives of senior military officers, graduated. It was known as the tandona. From the time of independence from Spain in 1821, General Francisco Morazán attempted to form a single unified state capable of asserting its independence from Mexico to the north and Gran Colombia to the south. President Cerezo’s draft was accepted at the Guatemalan town of Esquipulas in May 1986 and became known as the Esquipulas 1 agreement. President Arias’s draft amended the Esquipulas 1 draft and was accepted by the Central American leaders at Esquipulas on August 7, 1987, thus creating a second accord, known as “Esquipulas II: Procedure for the Establishment of a Firm and Lasting peace in Central America,” See Moreno, The Struggle for Peace, Appendix 5, pp. 191–198. Francisco Rojas-Aravena, “Costa Rica: entre la neutralidad y el conflicto,” in América Latina y el Caribe: Políticas Exteriores para Sobrevivir ed. Heraldo Muñoz (Buenos Aires: Grupo Editor Latinoamericano, 1986), pp. 293–312. Eduardo Paz-Barnica, La Política Exterior de Honduras 1982–1986 (Madrid: Editorial Ibero-americano, 1986). Walter LaFeber, Inevitable Revolutions: The United States in Central America 2nd ed. (New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 1993), p. 25. Laurence Whitehead, ”Explaining Washington’s Central American Policies,” Journal of Latin American Studies, 15:2, November, 1983, p. 323. Ignacio Martin-Baro and Rodolfo Cardenal, “Introduction—Fifteen Years Later: Peace at Last,” in Tommie Sue Montgomery, Revolution in El Salvador. 2nd ed. p. 2. Montgomery, p. 53. “Human Rights in Nicaragua, Guatemala and El Salvador: Implications for U.S. Policy,” U.S. House of Representative, Hearings before the Subcommittee on International Organizations of the Committee on International Relations, 94th Congress, 2nd session, June 8, 1976, p. 47. Roque Dalton, El Salvador (San Salvador: Editorial Universitaria, 1970). Lungo, El Salvador en los 80, Table 13, p. 101. “U.S. Economic Aid to Central America, 1980–1993,” James Dunkerley, The Pacification of Central America, Political Change in the Isthmus 1987–1993, Appendix 7 (London: Verso Press, 1994), p. 145. “From Duarte to Cristiani: Where is El Salvador Headed?” Hearings before the House of Representatives Subcommittee on Western Hemisphere Affairs of the Committee on Foreign Affairs, 101th Congress, 1st Session, July 13, 1989.

Notes

71. 72. 73. 74.

75. 76. 77. 78. 79.

80.

81.

181

Martin-Baro and Cardenal, “Introduction” to Montgomery, 2nd ed., p. 2. Ibid. Whitehead, “Explaining Washington’s Central American Policies,” p. 329. Cynthia Arnson, “Background Information on El Salvador and U.S. Military Assistance to Central America,” Update No. 4 (Washington, D.C.: Institute for Policy Studies, April 1981). Walter Knut, & Philip J. Williams, “The Military and Democratization in El Salvador,” Journal of Interamerican Studies and World Affairs, 35: 1 (1993), p. 53. “From Madness to Hope: The 12-year war in El Salvador,” Report of the Commission on the Truth For El Salvador, “Chronology of the Violence.” Richard Alan White, “El Salvador Between Two Fires,” America, New York, November 1, 1980, p. 262. Ibid., pp. 265–266. Ted Moran, “Land of Massacres,” America, November 3, 1979, p. 246 and “Hoping Past Hope” America, March 22, 1980, p. 238 cited in Edward T. Brett The U.S. Catholic Press on Central America: From Cold War Anti-Communism to Social Justice (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 2003). “From Duarte to Cristiani: Where is El Salvador Headed?” Hearings of the Subcommittee on Western Hemisphere Affairs of the House of Representatives, Foreign Affairs Committee, 1st Session, July 13, 1989, Testimony of Michael Posner, Executive Director, Lawyers Committee for Human Rights, pp. 76–78. John McAward, “Commentary” to Tim Gibbs, Is There a Transition to Democracy in El Salvador? eds. Joseph S. Tulchin & Gary Bland (Washington, D.C.: Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars, 1992), p. 59.

Chapter 3 1. 2. 3.

4.

5. 6. 7. 8.

9. 10.

Author’s interview with Alvaro de Soto, the Special Representative of the UN Secretary General, Perez de Cuellar, UN Headquarters, New York, October 22, 2003. Schafik Handal interview with Jean Krasner and Michel Lanchin, Yale–UN Oral History Project, San Salvador, June 19, 1997. Michael W. Foley, “Laying the Groundwork: The Struggle for Civil Society in El Salvador,” Journal of Interamerican Studies and World Affairs, 38: 1 (Spring 1996), p. 74. Tracy Fitzsimmons & Mark Anner, “Civil Society in a Postwar Period: Labor in the Salvadoran Democratic Transition,” Latin American Research Review, 34: 3 (1999), p. 108. Roberto Canas, interview with Jean Krasno and Michael Lanchin, Yale–UN Oral History Project, San Salvador, June 19, 1997, pp. 9–10. McClintock, Revolutionary Movements in Latin America, p. 255. Marta Harnecker, “Con la mirada en alto: Historia de las fuerzas populares de liberacion Farabundo Marti,” (San Salvador: UCA Editores, 1993). Sanchez Ceren interview with Salvador Cortes, San Salvador July 1995 cited in McClintock, Revolutionary Movements in Latin America, p. 257. See also Harnecker, p. 41, and the New York Times, September 25, 1983. Ana Guadalupe Martínez Menendez interview with Jean Krasno and Michael Lanchin, Yale–UN Oral History Project, San Salvador, June 21, 1997, p. 3. Handal’s interview with Miguel Bonasso and Ciro Gomez Leyva, Cuatro minutos para las doce: conversaciones con el Comandante Schafik Handal (Puebla, Mexico: Magno Graf Publishers, 1992).

182 11.

12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21.

22. 23. 24. 25.

26. 27. 28. 29.

30. 31. 32. 33.

34.

Notes

Ana Guadalupe Martínez parents were active in the Catholic movement for Liberation Theology. See Martínez interview with Jean Krasno, Yale–UN Oral History, p. 2. James L. Connor, SJ, “El Salvador’s Agony and U.S. Policies,” America, April 26, 1980. Montgomery, Revolution in El Salvador, 2nd ed., p. 62. Salvador Cayetano Carpio statements, cited in Jenny Pearce, Promised Land: Peasant Rebellion in Chalatenango, El Salvador (London: Latin American Bureau, 1986). The Movimiento Revolucionario Nacional (MNR) was also a member of this electoral coalition, but the party was not large. Montgomery, Revolution in El Salvador, 2nd ed, p. 169. Mario Lungo Ucles, El Salvador en los 80: contrainsurgencia y revolucion, San Jose, Costa Rica: EDUCA-FLACSO (1990). Harnecker, Con la mirada en alto. In 1985, the ERP gained the reputation for assassinating mayors of rural towns and demanded total loyalty from its followers. “Miguel Ventura: El Salvador: the Church of the Poor and the Revolution,” Challenge Vol. 1, No. 2 (1990): 9–10. Elizabeth Jean Wood, Forging Democracy from Below: Insurgent Transitions in South Africa and El Salvador (Cambridge, UK: Press Syndicate of the University of Cambridge, 2000), p. 49. Joaquín Villalobos, “El estado de la guerra actual,” Estudio Centroamericanos, Vol. 449, UCA (1986). Ana Guadalupe Martínez, Las cárceles clandestinas de El Salvador (San Salvador: Editores UCA, 1987) cited in Martinez, Yale–UN Oral History Project, p. 6. Lungo, El Salvador in the Eighties, p. 140. Roberto Canas was married to the U.S. citizen Lauri Berenstein, famed for her support for the Senderos Luminosos (Shining Path) of Peru. She was also active in finding safe houses for the FMLN in Mexico City. “La Lauri” was known to the Mexican Ministry of Interior, and the information transmitted to Washington. Author’s interview with Crescencio Arcos, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Central America, 1988–1990 and Director for International Affairs at the Department of Homeland Security, Washington, D.C., September 7, 2005. McClintock, p. 51. Castro conditioned his support for the revolutionary movement in El Salvador upon unity. See Harnecker, p. 328. Leonel Gonzalez interview with Salvador Cortes, FPL leader, cited in McClintock, p. 257. The FDR was formed in April 1980 at the height of the death squad activity. Its formation represented a rupture between the Salvadoran government and its social democratic sector. Lungo, p. 141. McClintock, p. 62. “Arms for El Salvador” raised $1 million in West Germany and the U.S.-based “Medical Aid for El Salvador” raised over $5 million during the 1980s. Ambassador Jorge Montano, Mexican Permanent Representative to the United Nations interview with Jean Krasno, Yale–UN Oral History Project, Mexico City, October 1, 1999. Sanchez Ceren would play a more prominent role in the peace process after May 1991 when he replaced Villalobos. At the May meeting in Carabelleda, Venezuela,

Notes

183

intense discussions focused on the reform of the armed forces and the future political activity of the FMLN. See Marrack Goulding, Peacemonger (London: John Murray Publishing Ltd., 2002), p. 231. 35. Fidel Castro is known to have remarked that if the war could be won by the quantity of words and paper produced, the FMLN would have conquered the Salvadoran Armed Forces a long time ago. See Beatrice Rangel interview with Jean Krasno, Yale–UN Oral History Project, New York City, September 15, 1997. 36. Salvador Samayoa, El Salvador: la reforma pactada (San Salvador: UCA Editores, 2002). 37. The comunidades eclesiasticas de base brought people together in groups of 10–15 in order to relate social reality and the faith. Through this work, peasants and slum dwellers began to see that the social structures in El Salvador were unjust and that it was necessary to organize in order to change them. See Leigh Binford, “Peasants, Catechists, Revolutionaries: Organic Intellectuals in the Salvadoran Revolution, 1980–1992,” eds. Aldo Lauria-Santiago and Leigh Binford, Landscapes of Struggle: Politics, Society and Community in El Salvador (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2004), p. 106. 38. Binford, “Grassroots Development in Conflict Zones,” p. 58. 39. The Organización Democrática Nacionalista (ORDEN) was a right-wing peasant organization that was founded by the military in the 1960s to keep order in the countryside. By the mid-1970s, the presence of ORDEN was also felt in the cities. Its members did not wear uniforms, but acted as an auxiliary wing of the Guardia Nacional, which oversaw security throughout El Salvador. 40. Raymond Bonner, Weakness and Deceit: U.S. Policy and El Salvador (New York: Times Books, 1984). 41. In 1983, the author worked with World Relief, an NGO working in Colomoncagua, Honduras. 42. Elizabeth J. Wood, “Civil War and Reconstruction: the Repopulation of Tenancingo,” Landscape of Struggle, p. 126. 43. Gloria Daysi Alonso Jaimes, Robert C. Dash, Irma Fernandez Dash, “Testimony of Gloria Daysi Alonso Jaimes: Resistance and Struggle” Latin American Perspectives, 18: 4 (Autumn 1991), p. 90. 44. Wood, “Civil War and Reconstruction:” pp. 126–130. The additional half a million people who left their homes after 1985 must be added to the half a million people who had already left for the cities and emigrated north to Mexico and thence to the United States. 45. Karen Kampwith, Women Guerilla Movements: Nicaragua, El Salvador, Chiapas, Cuba (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2002), pp. 78–81. 46. Catherine Russo & Jack Fahey, “Enough Crying of Tears,’ Women Make Movies (New York: VHS, 1997). 47. Foley, “Laying the Groundwork,” p. 74. 48. Wood “Civil War and Reconstruction,” Landscapes of Struggle, p. 132. 49. Wood, Forging Democracy from Below, p. 49. Binford, “Grassroots Development in Conflict Zones,” pp. 63–65. 50. Vincent J. McElhinny, “Between Clientelism and Radical Democracy: The Case of Ciudad Segundo Montes,” Landscapes of Struggle, pp. 147–165. 51. Foley, “The Struggle for Civil Society,” pp. 75–76. 52. This was the case in the department of Usultan, where the leaders of the National Federation of Agrarian Cooperatives (FENACOA) were political officers in the ERP. Wood, Forging Democracy, p. 49.

184 53.

54. 55.

56. 57. 58.

59. 60. 61.

62.

63.

64.

65. 66. 67.

68. 69. 70. 71.

72. 73. 74. 75.

Notes

Wood gives the example of the United Municipalities and Communities of Usultan (COMUS) and the Coordinator for the Development of Cooperatives (CODESCOSTA). Wood, Forging Democracy, p. 50. “A large fraction of funds donated by European and American solidarity groups to opposition organizations went to the FMLN, whatever their [publicly] intended destination.” See Wood, Forging Democracy, p. 50. For the creation and action of FUSADES and its members, see Chapter 4. “An interview with Ruben Zamora,” Central American Bulletin, No. 7 (September 1988), pp. 1–2, 6–8. Ilja Luciak, Women in the Transition: the Case of the Female FMLN Combatants in El Salvador. Paper presented at the conference of the Latin American Studies Association (LASA) Washington, D.C., September 1995. Wood, “Civil War and Reconstruction;” pp. 138–140. William Zartman, Ripe for Resolution: Conflict and Intervention in Africa, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989). Shafik Handal, Secretary General of the Partido Comunista de Salvador, “El poder, el caracter y via de la revolucion y la unidad de la izquierda,” Fundamentos y Perspectivas, 1 (1982). They represented different perspectives from the Left, ranging from the Cuban model of Marxism-Leninism to protestant pastors with a socialist, but anti-communist philosophies. Mario Lungo, El Salvador, 1981–1984: La dimension politica de la guerra (San Salvador: UCA Editores, 1985). Marta Harnecker, El Salvador: partido comunista y guerra revolucionaria: entrevista a Schafik Handal (Buenos Aires: Ediciones Dialectica, 1987). The November meeting became a shouting match between Villalobos and the government. No quiet discussion took place. Instead propoganda speeches were relayed over loudspeakers to all who gathered outside the building in the small town of Ayaguelo. Then the FMLN attacked military installations and ESAF carried out a Christmas offensive in an area controlled by Villalobos. See Chapter 4. Handal, Yale–UN Oral History Project. Robert Levgold, “The Revolution in Soviet Foreign Policy,” Foreign Affairs, 68.1 (1989). Secretary General, Mikhail Gorbachev’s speech before the United Nations General Assembly, December 7, 1988. Provisional verbatim record of the 72nd meeting, UN documents A/43/PV.72, December 8, 1988. UN Library, New York City. For a more detailed narrative of each of these events, see Chapter 6. Author’s meeting with Oscar Bonilla, presidential advisor on security matters, El Salvador, June 2008. “Comandancia General del FMLN,” press release, San Jose, October 16, 1989. Guillermo Ungo, the leader of the FDR had died in Mexico City due to medical negligence in the course of surgery. Author’s interview with Ruben Zamora, Visiting Fellow, Woodrow Wilson Institute for International Studies, Washington, D.C., December 2001. Samayoa, Yale–UN Oral History Project, p. 13. Ibid. Handal, Yale–UN Oral History Project. In her analysis of both the Salvadoran and South African insurgencies, Elizabeth Wood recognized that the experience of repression fuels deep resentments that can be mobilized by insurgent groups. Based on their claim to common citizenship,

Notes

76. 77. 78. 79. 80. 81.

82.

83.

84. 85. 86. 87. 88. 89. 90. 91.

92.

93. 94.

95. 96. 97.

185

this resentment provides them with a collective identity. In the face of an oligarchic state, political cohesion takes priority over the economic needs of the insurgents. See Forging Democracy from Below, pp. 11–12. BIRI is the Spanish acronym for the Immediate Reaction Infantry Brigade, trained by U.S. forces. Article 248 of the Salvadoran Constitution of 1983. Lungo, p. 161. Schafik Handal, “El poder, el caracter y via de la revolucion y la unidad de la izquierda,” Fundamentos y Perspectivas, Vol. 1, Mexico City (1982). ANEDA was the strongest labor union with more members than any other trade union, due to its nationwide representation of the teachers. These popular organizations united twenty-five or more Salvadoran communities. They were prepared to achieve their goals by illegal occupation of urban lands, public protest, as well as parliamentary negotiations. Lungo Ucles, p. 156. In his meetings with social organizations in the department of Chalatenango, Iqbal Riza, the UN’s first director of ONUSAL heard the constant demand for land and credit with which to create sustainable, agricultural lives. Author’s interview with Iqbal Riza, New York City, March 5, 2004. At the New York meetings in September 1991, Samayoa and Martinez raised for the first time the need to complete the agrarian reform programs begun in 1981, to provide credit for returning farmers, and skill and technical training for returnees who desired to move to the cities. McClintock, p. 167. Kampwith, Women Guerilla Movements, pp. 51–52. La solucion negociada a la Guerra en El Salvador, was delivered to the UN on April 30, 1990. William Bollinger, “Villalobos on ‘Popular Insurrection,’” Latin American Perspectives, 16: 3. Samayoa, La reforma pactada, p. 278. Author’s interview with de Soto, October 22, 2003. FMLN official document presented to the government of El Salvador, April 30, 1990. See Samayoa, La reforma pactada, pp. 288. In July 1990, Alvaro de Soto had asked for $35,000 from the Swedish Secretary of State for Development to hold a conference of experts on human rights, together with experts on El Salvador. This conference took place in Geneva and contributed significantly to the negotiating process and the development of an appropriate Truth Commission for El Salvador. Author’s interview with de Soto, October 22, 2003 and Samayoa, La reforma pactada, pp. 163–164. Schafik Handal recognized the seriousness of the internal dispute over the appropriateness of discussing human rights at this point in the negotiations. See Handal, Yale–UN Oral History Project. Samayoa, La reforma pactada, p. 321. FMLN internal document circulated to its political and military forces and published over Radio Venceremos, July 19, 2003, FBIS (Latin America) July 20, 2003. Based on his conversations with Alvaro de Soto, Ian Johnstone of the International Peace Academy writes that both parties seized on the alternative offered by de Soto. See Ian Johnstone, “Rights and Reconciliation: UN Strategies in El Salvador,” (Boulder, CO.: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1995). Author’s interview with de Soto, October 22, 2003. Samayoa, La reforma pactada, p. 163. Ibid.

186

Notes

98.

99. 100.

The letter claimed that the president had given the order to assassinate the Jesuit fathers at their rectory on the UCA campus the previous November. Consequently, he should resign. See Washington Post, July 20, 1990. Samayoa, La reforma pactada, p. 331. Agreement on Human Rights signed at San Jose, Costa Rica between the Government of El Salvador and the FMLN, 26 July 1990, UN Document A/44/971-S/21541, The United Nations and El Salvador, pp. 107–109.

Chapter 4 1.

2. 3.

4. 5.

6. 7.

8.

9. 10.

11.

12.

13.

James Dunkerley provides the number of 8,000 FMLN fighters. This number must be compared to the number of active duty military men in El Salvador: 1985–1986 ⫽ 41,650. 1986–1987 ⫽ 42,640. 1987–1988 ⫽ 47,000. 1988–1989 ⫽ 42,000. 1989–1990 ⫽ 56,000 (including 12,500 civil defense forces). The Military Balance, International Institute for Strategic Studies (London: 2010). U.S. Embassy San Salvador cable #12302, September 22, 1989. Benitez Manaut, Le teoria militar y la guerra civil en El Salvador (San Salvador: UCA Editores, 1989) and Max Manwaring and Court Prisk, El Salvador at War: an Oral History (Washington, D.C.: National Defense University, 1989). John Paul Lederach, Building Peace: Sustainable Reconciliation in Divided Societies (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Institute of Peace, 1997). Michael W. Foley, “Laying the Groundwork: the Struggle for Civil Society in El Salvador,” Journal of Interamerican Studies and World Affairs, 28: 1 (Spring 1996), p. 67. See discussion of Jeffrey Paige’s hypothesis on coffee landholdings and political preferences from Coffee and Power at Chapter 2 above. Three Military/Civilian Juntas of 1979 and 1980 introduced agrarian reform, nationalization of commercial banks, and imposed state control over the export of coffee and sugar. Few of these reforms were implemented, but they were revived under the Duarte government in 1984. Ignacio Martin-Baro and Rodolfo Cardenal, “Fifteen Years Later: Peace at Last.” See, “Introduction” to Montgomery, Revolution in El Salvador, 2nd ed., pp. 2–3. After Martin-Baro’s death on November 15, 1989, Cardenal absorbed his ideas into his “Introduction” to the second edition. The Foundation for Social and Economic Development and known by its Spanish acronym, FUSADES. Carlos M. Vilas translated by Ted Kuster, Between Earthquakes and Volcanoes: Market, State, and the Revolutions in Central America (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1995), pp. 117–119. Carlos Rafael Cabarrus, Génesis de una revolución: análisis de surgimiento y desarrollo de la revoluciónes en Centro América (New York: Monthly Review Press, New York, 1995), p. 117–119. Carlos Rafael Cabarrus, Génesis de una revolución: análisis de surgimiento y desarrollo de la organización campesina en El Salvador (Mexico City: Ediciones de la Casa Chata, 1983), p. 144. Archbishop Oscar Romero, “The Political Dimension of the Faith from the Perspective of the Option for the Poor,” (Leuven: University of Louvain, February 2, 1980) cited in Liberation Theology: a Documentary History, ed. Alfred T. Hennelly (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1990), pp. 292–302. D’Aubuisson did not give an explicit order, but nodded his head when asked if the Archbishop should be killed. See interview with Oscar Romero’s convicted murderer, Washington Post, April 6, 2010.

Notes

14.

15. 16. 17.

18. 19. 20. 21.

22.

23.

24. 25.

26. 27. 28.

29.

30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35.

187

All along the route, people dressed in their Sunday best cheered and chanted “Queremos paz” (We want peace). They waved white flags and white paper doves. Montgomery, Revolution in El Salvador, p.188. In the early 1970s until his failed bid for the presidency, Duarte was President of the Boy Scouts of El Salvador. Author’s interview with Ruben Zamora, former presidential candidate, Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars, Washington, D.C., December 10, 2001. Ibid., Ruben Zamora, founder of the Union Democrática Nacional (UDN), a party linked to the international Christian Socialists remembered the unique quality of the dialogue and his optimism after the meeting of La Palma. Ibid. Jose Napoleon Duarte, My Story (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1986). Ibid. Members of the Salvadoran government team described the meeting to U.S. Embassy political staff. Reported to Washington in U.S. Embassy San Salvador cable #12302, September 22, 1989. Due to its inability to extract decisions from the protagonists, COPAZ became a much criticized observer of the negotiations and less than adequate supervisor of the implementation of the several peace accords. Ellacuria held honorary doctorates from universities in the USA, Spain, and the German Democratic Republic. Proceso, 681 (Mexico City: November 20, 1989): 36. Both in Salvador and Guatemala, Ellacuria’s words provoked the anger of conservatives more often than the admiration of centrists. Edward Said reflected upon Martin-Baro’s contribution to intellectual discourse and the Salvadoran war in his essay “Representations of the Intellectual,” The BBC Reith Lectures (New York: Pantheon, 1994). Theresa Whitfield, Paying the Price: Ignacio Ellacuria and the murdered Jesuits of El Salvador (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1995). Ignacio Ellacuria’s interview with Julio Scherer Garcia, publisher of Proceso, 565 (Mexico City, September 1987). “Lo mas previsible es que quien va a frenar el proceso es el gobierno de Ronald Reagan. Si El Salvador u Honduras se pliegan a las exigencias de Estados Unidos, se verá entonces que las cosas no han avanzado y que siguen dependiendo de las exigencias de una potencia extraña.” (We can predict that the government of Ronald Reagan will act as a break on the process. If El Salvador and Honduras bend to the will of the United States, we shall see no progress, but rather the continuation of the dependency on an external power.) Ibid. Cardenal wrote the introduction to Tommie Sue Montgomery’s first edition of her book on El Salvador with Ignacio Martin-Baro, the Director of UCA’s Center for Public opinion. He died with Ellacuria the night of November 15, 1989, but Cardenal incorporated his ideas into the introduction of Montgomery’s second edition of her book. “Introduction,” Montgomery, Revolution in El Salvador, 2nd ed. p. 2. U.S. Embassy Bogota cable #10770, August 5, 1987. Whitfield, Paying the Price, p. 141. Ibid . . ., p. 334. Joaquin Villalobos, “A Democratic Revolution for El Salvador,” Foreign Policy, 74: (Spring 1989). Joaquin Villalobos, “Popular Insurrection: Desire or Reality?” Latin American Perspectives, 16.3 (Summer 1989).

188 36. 37.

38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43.

44. 45.

46.

47.

48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56. 57.

58.

59.

Notes

Jill Smolowe, “Conversations with Two Foes,” Time Inc., October 2, 1989. David Escobar Galindo, the government’s representative could not offer that security and guarantee in the San Jose meeting of October 1989. But the fact that Villalobos had been willing to discuss the issue was a change from the past. See U.S. Embassy San Salvador cable #12302, September 22, 1989. Whitfield, p. 332. Author’s interview with U.S. Ambassador William Walker, Arlington, Virginia, November 18, 2003. Proceso, Mexico City, No. 683 (December 4 1989), 44. Whitfield, pp. 333–336. Ibid., p. 333. Interview with Orlando Sol, Proceso, Mexico City, No. 681 (November 20, 1989), p. 37. This slogan built upon an earlier slogan written shortly before Archbishop Romero’s murder in March 1980, “Be a Patriot: Kill a Priest.” Whitfield, p. 337. Ellacuria understood d’Aubuisson’s pragmatic side and the potential benefits coming out of the talks for his ARENA party. U.S. Embassy San Salvador cable #12097, September 1989. Edward T. Brett, The U.S. Catholic Press on Central America: From Cold War Anticommunism to Social Justice (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 2003). See Daniel Santiago, SJ, “The Peace Process in El Salvador: (A Hermeneutic of Suspicion)” America, 166: 1, January 4, 1992. “El Salvador: the More it Changes . . .” editorial, America, 166: 11, April 4, 1992. Dean Brackley SJ, “Beyond elections in El Salvador” America, 171: 7, September 17, 1994. William F. Schulz, “Joe Moakley’s Legacy is Global Justice,” The Boston Herald, December 22, 2008. “No other event has affected my life as the Jesuit murders have,” Boston Herald, December 22, 2008. Jim McGovern (D–Mass.) was elected to fill the seat left by Joe Moakley in 1991. The Jesuit community in Spain sought the pardon of the two mid-level officers and insisted that the masterminds who ordered the murder be brought to justice. UN Truth Commission to Investigate Serious Acts of Violence in El Salvador, The United Nations and El Salvador, 1990–1995, pp. 312–317. “Talking Points,” The Boston Phoenix, May 31–June 7, 2001. Ibid. William Stanley, The Protection Racket State: Elite Politics, Military Extortion, and Civil War in El Salvador (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1996), p. 232. U.S. Embassy San Salvador cable #03586, March 19, 1989. Aldo A. Lauria-Santiago’s illuminating essay stresses the importance of the cultural, local, and historically structured aspects of state terror. See, “The Culture and Politics of State Terror and Repression in El Salvador,” in eds. Cecilia Menjivar and Nestor Rodriguez, When States Kill: Latin America, the U.S. and Technologies of Terror (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2005). U.S. Embassy San Salvador cable #03586. William Stanley claims that Uncle Bob’s followers were previously members of ORDEN, the paramilitary force that hired peasants to work with the military, armed them, but left them to work without a uniform. Stanley, The Protection Racket State, p. 232. The contribution made by the coffee growers to the national budget had fallen from 40–60 percent in 1980—depending on international coffee prices—to 20–30 percent by 1990. Jose Z. Garcia, “The Tanda System and Institutional Autonomy of

Notes

60. 61.

62. 63. 64.

65. 66.

67. 68. 69.

70.

71.

72. 73.

74.

75. 76.

77.

78.

79.

189

the Military,” Joseph S. Tulchin & Gary Bland eds. Is There a Transition to Democracy in El Salvador? (Boulder, Col: Lynne Rienner Publishers Inc. 1992), p. 102. U.S. Embassy San Salvador cable #03586. ANEP consisted principally of urban businessmen with interests in manufacturing and retailing. They had no need for rural security forces, although they may have needed protection for their industrial installations. In the early 1980s both ANEP and the Chamber were opposed to President Duarte, the Christian Democrats, and the U.S. Embassy’s attempts to moderate death squad activities of ESAF. U.S. Embassy San Salvador cable #03586. Stanley, The Protection Racket. Alexander Segovia, “The War Economy of the 1980s,” ed. James K. Boyce, Economic Policy for Building Peace: The Lessons of El Salvador (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1996), pp. 54–55. U.S. Embassy San Salvador cable #03586. Roberto Murray Meza, “The State of the Economy,” speech to the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, April 25, 1991 printed in Tulchin & Bland, “Is There a Transition to Democracy”. U.S. Embassy San Salvador cable #03586. Ibid. In 1984, ARENA won over 46 percent of the vote in the presidential run-off election and emerged as the second political force in the country. Duarte and the Christian Democrats won the majority. In order to maintain the support of the U.S. Congress, the State Department supported the Christian Democrats with funding and training to ensure its victory over d’Aubuisson and ARENA. When vice-presidential candidate, Hugo Barrera left to form his own party in 1985, many observers concluded that ARENA’s days as the dominant party of the right were about to end. U.S. Embassy San Salvador cable #03586. Dona Margarita de Cristiani was a devout Catholic with a reputation for caring for the poor. She exercised considerable influence upon her husband and accompanied him on all his visits abroad to negotiate with the FMLN and FDR. She attended all discussions and took copious notes. “Cristiani’s motives include which I [William Walker] believe is a personal commitment to a negotiated constitutional solution; a conviction that further political and economic progress requires peace.” U.S. Embassy San Salvador cable #12271, September 22, 1989. Murray, “The State of the Economy.” In December 1989, after the FMLN’s “final offensive,” a group of junior military officers came to Saul Suster with their complaints of corruption and incompetence by the tandona. Suster’s advice to Cristiani was to “get rid of some of the dead wood [within the senior officer corps.]” U.S. Embassy San Salvador cable #16198, December 14, 1998. David Galindo Escobar interview with Tommie Sue Montgomery, April 12, 1984. Galindo was an intellectual and acted as a personal adviser to Cristiani. He was a member of the Salvadoran government’s delegation to the UN-mediated peace talks. Joel Millman, “El Salvador’s Army: a Force Unto Itself,” New York Times Magazine, December 10, 1989. Millman laid out the interlocking relationships between the officer corps and the private sector. It had become a mutually beneficial enterprise with the potential for corrupt gains on both sides. Murray, “The State of the Economy.”

190

Notes

80.

81.

82. 83.

84. 85. 86.

87.

88. 89.

90. 91. 92. 93.

94.

95. 96. 97.

Management and Business Assoc., Final Evaluation of the Salvadoran Foundation for Economic and Social development (FUSADES), submitted to USAID El Salvador, July 15, 1996, p. 73. Ibid., pp. 23–24. In its first year, FUSADES obtained a $185,000 contract from AID to promote the Caribbean Basin initiative. See Michael W. Foley, “Laying the Groundwork: the Struggle for Civil Society in El Salvador,” Journal of Interamerican Studies and World Affairs, 38.1 (Spring 1996). Ibid., p. 71–72, citing The Industrial Stabilization and Recovery Program, USAID Report to the U.S. Congress 1991, p. 19. Final Evaluation of FUSADES, p. 32. For the role of USAID in grooming elites in the Philippines, but not El Salvador, see William I. Robinson, Promoting Polyarchy: Globalization, U.S. Intervention and Hegemony (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 101, 106–107. Ibid., 101 Segovia, “The War Economy of the 1980s,” p. 42. By 1992, USAID disbursements to FUSADES had reached $156,849,000. See Herman Rosa, AID y las transformaciones globales en El Salvador: el papel de la politica de asistencia económica de los Estados Unidos desde 1980 (Managua: C.R.I.E.S., 1993). From 1984 onward, Salvadoran government’s social expenditures declined while the relative share spent on the military increased. The government grew increasingly dependent on FUSADES to address social problems. Segovia, “The War Economy,” p. 43, citing USAID Report to Congress 1992. Final Evaluation of FUSADES, pp. 9–11. FIPRO promoted occupational safety in the work place, Fundación HABITAT focused on housing, FEPADE concentrated on educational development, FORTAS strengthened the governance of the Salvadoran NGO community, Junior Achievement, COMCORDE distributed funds for economic development in eastern El Salvador, FUNDASALVA was dedicated to the antinarcotics programs, and CAM was organized to help small business. Rosa, AID y las transformaciones globales. Final Evaluation of FUSADES, pp. 40–41. Cathy McIlwaine, “Contesting Civil Society: Reflections from El Salvador,” Third World Quarterly, London (1998). Final Evaluation of FUSADES, pp. 28–30. K. Murray, E. Coletti, and Jack Spence, Rescuing Reconstruction: The Debate on PostWar Economic Recovery in El Salvador (Cambridge, MA: Hemisphere Initiatives, 1994), p. 35. Segovia, “Macroeconomic Performance and Policies Since 1989,” ed. James K. Boyce Economic Policy for Building Peace: The Lessons of El Salvador (Boulder, CO: Lynne Reinner Publishers, 1996), p. 55. Author’s interview with Ambassador Walker, November 18, 2003. Millman, Time, December 10, 1989. David Escobar Galindo interview, Yale–UN Oral History Project.

Chapter 5 1. 2.

President George Herbert Walker Bush (1988–1992) is hereafter referred to President Bush. The Democratic majority in Congress reduced funding for U.S. military aid ESAF from $116 million in 1987 to $81.5 million in 1988, and $81.4 million 1989. During the same period, economic aid was reduced from $508.9 million

as to in to

Notes

3.

4.

5.

6. 7.

8.

9. 10.

11.

12.

191

$314.1 million, and in 1989 to $307 million. See: “U.S. Economic Aid to Central America 1980–1993” and “U.S. Military Aid to Central America 1980–1993,” Central American Report (CAR) 30.7.91 cited in James Dunkerley, The Pacification of Central America (New York: Verso Books, 1994) Appendix 7 and 8. “The Atlacatl battalion was formed and trained in El Salvador in 1981 with U.S. personnel providing individual and small unit tactics instruction . . . some of its officers and non-commissioned officers were trained in the United States.” Memorandum for the Office of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff by USAF Colonel Antonio J. Ramos, Director Southern Command’s J5, 25 June, 1993. (National Security Archive, Doc. OCLL 00611, June 25, 1993). U.S. Congress. “The Situation in El Salvador,” Hearings before the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, subcommittee on Human Rights and International Organizations, and Western Hemisphere Affairs, 98th Cong. 2nd sess., February 6, 1984. Laurence Whitehead, “Explaining Washington’s Central American Policies,” Journal of Latin American Studies 15 (November, 1983). The U.S. Congress exercised greater constraint on ESAF’s human rights behavior than the military advisers and Defense Attaches working out of the U.S. Embassy in San Salvador. The pattern of human rights abuse, which characterized the early part of the war, diminished after 1984. See U.S. Congress. House Committee on Foreign Affairs, subcommittee on Western Hemisphere Affairs, 99th Cong. 1st session, January 31, 1985, pp. 10–26. “Report of the Delegations to Latin America,” U.S. Congress. House Committee on Armed Services, 99th Cong. 1st session, April 1985, pp. 30–42. U.S. Military aid for El Salvador rose from $81.1 million to $196.6 million in the years 1983 to 1984. A Democratic majority in Congress thereafter imposed restraints on military funding, reducing the annual appropriation to $136.3 million in 1985, $121.7 million in 1986, and $116 million in 1987. Thereafter, military funds declined to approximately $81million per year until 1991. See: “US Military Aid to Central America 1980—1993,” CAR, cited in Dunkerley, Pacification of Central America. Military men and policemen would take off their uniforms, but retain their government-provided weapons to work on a hired basis when off-duty. The restraints exercised while in uniform were ignored when working for pay. Many of the abuses of human rights were carried out by off-duty men whose leaders sought to avoid incriminating ESAF. George P. Shultz, Turmoil and Triumph: My Years as Secretary of State (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1993), pp. 290–299. William M. Leogrande, “From Reagan to Bush: The Transition in U.S. Policy towards Central America,” Journal of Latin American Studies, 22 (October 1990): 596. “It was clear to us both [Baker and President Bush] however, that there was one huge stumbling block to any hope of restoring bipartisanship: the bleeding sore of Central America.” James A. Baker III and Thomas M. DeFrank, The Politics of Diplomacy: Revolution War and Peace 1989–1992 (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1995), p. 47. James Baker was Treasury Secretary from 1985 to 1988. He left the Treasury briefly to run George Bush’s presidential campaign. Earlier in the 1980s, Baker was Chief of Staff to President Ronald Reagan. In each of these capacities Baker closely followed the changes that Mikhail Gorbachev introduced after becoming General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Soviet Union in March 1985.

192 13. 14. 15.

16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25.

26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40.

41.

Notes

Baker, Politics of Diplomacy, p. 45. Ibid., p. 135. Scowcroft in “Forging a New Relationship,” Cold War Endgame: Oral History, Analysis, Debates, ed. William C. Wohlforth (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2003), p. 6. Ibid. Author’s interview with retired General Brent Scowcroft, Fort Meade, Maryland, August 27, 2005. James A. Baker, “Forging a New Relationship,” Cold War Endgame, p. 17. Interview with Bernard W. Aronson, former Assistant Secretary of State for American Republics Affairs. Washington, D.C., February 18, 2003. Bernard W. Aronson, Preliminary Thoughts About Central America, February 2, 1989 (unpublished), p. 4. Wayne Smith & Lauren Gilbert, “Central America and Cuba in the New World Order,” Arms Control Today, 24 (March 1994). Ibid., citing President Fidel Castro at the Missile Crisis Conference in Havana, January 1992. Baker, Politics of Diplomacy, p. 42. Baker, “Forging a New Relationship,” p. 17. Aronson had gained the support of Henry J. Hyde (R-Ill.) who had proposed his name to James Baker for the position of Assistant Secretary of State for Latin American Affairs. However, conservatives regarded Aronson as a latecomer and not an entirely reliable convert to their cause. Liberals regarded him as a turncoat because of his assistance to President Reagan. See Leogrande, “From Reagan to Bush”: 197. Baker, Politics of Diplomacy, p. 51. Aronson, Preliminary Thoughts About Central America, p. 4. Ibid., p. 6. Ibid. Ibid. Author’s telephone interview with Aronson, April 3, 2004. Yuri I. Pavlov, Soviet–Cuban Alliance 1959–1991, 2nd ed. (Boulder, CO.: North South Center Press, 1996), 205. Carolyn McGiffert Ekedahl and Melvin A. Goodman, The Wars of Eduard Shevardnadze (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1997). U.S. Department of State, Washington, cable #384861, December 2, 1989. Yuriy Dubinin served as Soviet Ambassador to the United States from 1987 to 1990. Ibid. Ibid. Aronson, Preliminary Thoughts, p. 2. “Report of the Secretary of State’s Panel on El Salvador,” July 1993, National Security Archive, Doc. 01324, July 1993, pp. 35–38. Leogrande, “From Reagan to Bush”: 596. “History of El Salvador: 1979–1992,” National Catholic Reporter, 146: 50639, December 12, 1996. U.S. Congress. “From Duarte to Cristiani: Where is El Salvador Headed?” Hearing before the House Foreign Affairs subcommittee on Western Hemisphere Affairs, 101st Cong., 1st session July 13, 1989. James Baker, as president Reagan’s Chief of Staff “won the enmity of many conservatives for leavening Reagan’s conservative instincts with a dose of political realism.” Leogrande, “From Reagan to Bush”: 596.

Notes

42.

43.

44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56.

57.

58. 59. 60.

61. 62.

63.

193

U.S. Congress. Michael Posner, Executive Director, Lawyer’s Committee for Human Rights, testimony before the House subcommittee on Western Hemisphere Affairs, July 13, 1989, pp. 24–26. Robert Kagan, A Twilight Struggle: American Power and Nicaragua, 1977–1990 (New York: Free Press, 1996). Interview with Cresencio Arcos, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Central America 1987–1989, Ambassador to Honduras 1989–1992, Washington, D.C., September 7, 2005. Ibid. Baker, The Politics of Diplomacy, p. 49. Interview with Arcos, September 7, 2005. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Baker, The Politics of Diplomacy, p. 56. Interview with Aronson, February 18, 2003. Ibid. Baker, The Politics of Diplomacy, p. 58. U.S. Congress, House Foreign Affairs Committee, Subcommittee on Human Rights and International Organizations, January 24, 1990. Senator Jesse Helms, Here’s Where I Stand: A Memoir (New York: Random House, 2005), p. 208. Arcos accompanied Vice President Quayle to Salvador in June 1989. After the lunch, Quayle approached d’Aubuisson to deliver his condemnation of death squad activity. Arcos stood by ready to interpret the Spanish. D’Aubuisson threw his arms around Arcos proclaiming in Spanish, “You are the only one we can trust in this group.” Mortified, Arcos withdrew knowing that ambassador William Walker was watching, disapprovingly. Later, Arcos discovered that Deborah DeMoss had called d’Aubuisson ahead of the vice president’s visit to brief him on the purpose of the U.S. mission. From 1981 the administration certified progress on human rights in El Salvador in order to sustain Congressional funding. The hearings were held every six months until President Reagan’s pocket veto at the end of 1983. The Certification Hearings acquired a theatrical quality with the administration claiming progress in order to sustain funding, and the Congress contesting the administration’s report, aware that their criticism was inadequate to cut or terminate financial support for the Salvadoran government. U.S. Congress. “Hearings on the Situation in El Salvador,” Senate Foreign Relations Committee, April 9, 1981, 97th Cong. 1st session, pp. 117–118. Helms, p. 209. U.S. Congress. testimony of Aryeh Neier, Executive Director, Human Rights Watch before the Subcommittee on Western Hemisphere Affairs, House Committee on Foreign Affairs, July 13, 1989, p. 77. United Nations Security Council Resolution 637 of July 27, 1989 (S/RES/637). U.S. Embassy San Salvador cable #14754, November 12, 1989. While, the Salvadoran government and the U.S. Embassy had known the approximate timing for the start of the attack, they were taken by surprise by the force and persistence of the guerillas offensive. The president and Dona Margarita de Cristiani were not at home when the attack occurred.

194 64.

65. 66. 67. 68.

69. 70. 71.

72.

73. 74. 75. 76.

77.

78.

79. 80.

81.

Notes

Interview with Walker: The U.S. Ambassador’s residence was located near the Estado Mayor, the ESAF headquarters and was, therefore, close to the fighting and bombardment by FMLN troops. U.S. Embassy San Salvador cable #16782, December 17, 1990. Ibid. U.S. Embassy San Salvador cable #15366, November 28, 1989. One witness survived and left Salvador shortly afterward to tell her story in Miami. The degree of pressure that she experienced both from the U.S. and Salvadoran investigators is unknown. Despite the U.S. government’s insistence that she was not subjected to undue pressure, a U.S. official was “heavy handed” in his treatment of the witness. Author’s interview with Peter Romero, former U.S. Charge d’Affaires, U.S. Embassy in El Salvador, Bethesda, Maryland, December 8, 2003. U.S. Embassy Madrid Cable #14916, November 20, 1989. Author’s interview with Walker, November 18, 2003. Ibid. Neither the government, nor the Estado Mayor held press conferences. Walker did not know, with certainty, who had carried out the assassinations, but he suspected that military officers were the culprits. Lee Hockstader, “Our Man in El Salvador, Upbeat Amid the Crisis: Ambassador William Walker Defending U.S. Policy in an Anguished Time,” Washington Post, December 19, 1989. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Reflective of the nervousness in Washington about the Jesuit murders and the anxiety over the consequences for U.S. policy in El Salvador, Aronson received intelligence in the days immediately following the murders that identified Roberto d’Aubuisson as the mastermind of the Jesuit killing. Upon receiving that information, Aronson instructed the Embassy in San Salvador to “prepare a snatch.” While preparations were in progress, Aronson received further intelligence that contradicted the original report. D’Aubuisson had not been included in the planning and should be absolved from suspicion. The plot to snatch him was called off. Author’s interview with Aronson, April 3, 2004. Damage to property during the three week offensive was estimated at $150 million. Further damage, of a kind difficult to estimate, was the loss attributable to deferred investment and capital flight. U.S. Embassy San Salvador cable #09338, July 12, 1990. After the election of President Duarte in 1984 and the diminution of nightly murders by death squads in the streets of San Salvador, the international press transferred their focus to the Nicaraguan war with the Contras. The U.S. press corps returned to focus on El Salvador in November 1989. All the major U.S. newspapers carried front page stories about the murder of the Jesuit priests. U.S. State Department, Washington, cable #109696, April 16, 1991. The Central Intelligence Agency was asked to report on the role of General Juan Rafael Bustillo as a coconspirator. In a letter to Bud Shuster (R–Pa.), Ranking Minority Member, House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, the CIA deputy director for Operations reported that there was no conclusive evidence one way or another linking Bustillo to the Jesuit murders. DNSA, Doc. EL0067, March 26, 1992. But, the UN Commission on the Truth in El Salvador found Bustillo to be in collusion with Colonel Rene Emilio Ponce in ordering the attack on Ellacuria and leaving no witnesses. See, The United Nations in El Salvador, p. 312. U.S. State Department cable #386889, Washington, December 5, 1989.

Notes

82.

83. 84.

85. 86. 87.

88. 89. 90.

91.

92. 93.

94.

95. 96. 97.

195

U.S. Congress, “Violence and Civil War in El Salvador,” Hearing before the Senator Foreign Relations Committee, subcommittee on the Western Hemisphere and Peace Corps Affairs, 101st Cong., 1st session, November 17, 1989. Interview with Aronson, February 18, 2003. ESAF’s High Command had publicly supported Cristiani’s inaugural address in which he committed his government to negotiate unconditionally with the FMLN and to remain at the negotiating table. However, members of the tandona did not accept the idea of negotiating with an enemy, guerilla force. Aronson’s testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations, November 17, 1989. Alfredo Cristiani’s inaugural address, San Salvador, June 1, 1989, FBIS–Latin America, June 2, 1989. Whitfield, p. 84. Memorandum from Assistant Secretary Aronson to General George Joulwan, USCINC, Southern command, Panama, January 27, 1991, DNSA, Doc. ELO1256, paras. 3 and 4. Interview with Walker, November 18, 2003. Interview with Romero, December 8, 2003. Ibid. In 1989, Cristiani’s principal liaison to the High Command was General Renee Emilio Ponce, the Chief of Staff of the Armed Forces. A member of the tandona, Ponce was himself under pressure from younger officers. Author’s interview with Gerardo Le Chevalier, Washington, D.C., February 9, 2004. Le Chevalier died at the UN headquarters in Haiti when a massive earthquake hit Port au Prince on January 12, 2010. Interview with Le Chevalier, February 2004. Interview by telephone with Aronson, April 3, 2004. Aronson has repeatedly disputed Le Chevalier’s intimate knowledge of the November 13 meeting at the High Command. Furthermore, Aronson emphasized the political rivalry between the two men; Cristiani of the ARENA party and Le Chevalier of the PDC. “In a 1 year period ending in 1989, the FMLN assassinated 12 elected mayors and threatened 214 others with death.” Aronson went on to testify that on March 15, the FMLN murdered Francisco Peccorini, age 75, a former Jesuit and a conservative writer and thinker. On April 12, the FMLN assassinated the attorney general, and on June 9 they murdered the Chief of Staff to the president, Rodriguez Porth. They shot and killed a conservative thinker Edgar Chacon on June 30 and his assistant on July 19. The wife and son of newspaper editor Luis Hernandez were assassinated on October 10. On October 17, while the FMLN negotiated with the government in Costa Rica, killers assassinated 23-years-old Maria Isabel Casanova Porras, the daughter of an active duty army Colonel. On November 11, the FMLN tried to kill President Cristiani, Vice President Merino, the First Delegate and the president of the National Assembly. U.S. Congress, Aronson’s testimony before the House Subcommittees on Western Hemisphere Affairs, Human Rights, and International Organizations,101st Cong., 2nd sesssion, January 24, 1990, p. 16. Ibid., p. 66. Ibid. For fiscal year 1990, Congress appropriated $235 million for direct economic assistance, $85 million for military aid, and $140 million in economic credits. The monies would be disbursed in three installments. The administration had to report to Congress before disbursing the final installment that the Salvadoran government was engaged in serious efforts to negotiate an end to the war and to improve human rights. Aronson’s testimony before Congress, January 24, 1990.

196

Notes

98. 99. 100. 101. 102. 103. 104. 105. 106. 107.

108. 109. 110. 111.

112. 113. 114.

115.

116. 117. 118. 119. 120. 121.

122. 123. 124. 125.

“Salvador: Doing the Right Thing,” Editorial, Boston Globe, April 3, 1990, p. 19. “Senator Dodd asks Conditions on Salvador Aid” San Francisco Chronicle, February 9, 1990, p. A19. See Chapter 4 for Congressman Joe Moakley and Jim McGovern’s role in the Commission to Investigate the Jesuit Murders in El Salvador. “Pouring Money down a Bad Hole,” Newsweek, November 19, 1990, p. 49. PL101–513 was signed into law by President Bush in November 1990, one year after the 1989 offensive and Jesuit murders. “Dollars and Death Squads,” New Republic, June 18, 1990, pp. 7–8. “Bush Releases Funds for El Salvador,” Congressional Quarterly Weekly Report, June 29, 1991, 49: 1775. Bernard Aronson, “Peace in El Salvador” Editorial Page, Washington Post, October 12, 1990. Interview with Aronson, February 18, 2003. Arcos called Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs, Robert Kimmit to determine the position of the U.S. government regarding the legitimacy of FMLN participation. He received word that political discussions required implicit recognition of the FMLN’s political status. Author’s interview with Arcos, September 7, 2005. Alvaro de Soto, Yale–UN Oral History Project, New York, 1997. U.S. Embassy San Salvador cable #08549, June 27, 1990. Whitfield, p. 357. The juridical basis for the joint declaration was their mutual support for the Esquipulas II Accord of August 1987, which had been endorsed by the UN Security Council, including the U.S. and the USSR. Report of the press conference held by Monsignor Rosa Chavez, San Salvador, April 14, 1991 in U.S. Embassy San Salvador, cable #04866, April 20, 1991. Ibid. Aronson was adamant that he did not draft language. However, he strongly encouraged Chavez Mena and supported the PDC role as a mediator. See Aronson, Yale–UN Oral History. Interview with Romero, December 8, 2003. In his interview with Jean Krasno, Roberto Cañas, the representative of the RN did not discuss meeting Romero. However, he indicated that he was among the first to establish contacts with U.S. officials. See Roberto Cañas, UN-Yale Oral History Project, San Salvador, June 19, 1997. U.S. Embassy San Salvador #cable 2242, August 30, 1991. Jung, pp. 104–106. Interview with Walker, November 18, 2003. Until that time, the Embassy had respected Cristiani’s instruction that its staff not meet with the FMLN on grounds of their personal safety. Jung, p. 105. Annex to the joint letter singed by James A. Baker III and Aleksandr A. Bessmertnykh, August 1, and sent to the UN Security Council. S/22947, August 15, 1991. United Nations in El Salvador, pp. 142–143. Ibid., p. 143. Author’s interview with Alvaro de Soto, United Nations, New York, October 6, 2003. Thomas Pickering had been U.S. Ambassador to El Salvador from 1983 to 1985. The U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service waived its exclusion of communists for the issuance of a visitor visa so as to allow the FMLN representatives

Notes

126.

127. 128. 129.

197

to participate in the session, although they restricted their mobility to a few square blocks of Manhattan. Under a rotational system for electing a secretary general, the different regions of the world take it in turn to put forward the secretary general. Following Latin America’s contribution of Perez de Cuellar, it was the turn of Africa to provide the successor. Egypt is considered part of the Africa group. Boutros Boutros-Ghali served one term. Kofi Annan from Ghana filled Africa’s second term. Author’s telephone interview with U.S. Deputy Permanent Representative to the United Nations, Alexander Watson, New York, March 17, 2004. Alvaro de Soto, “Ending Violent Conflict,” pp. 378–379. Author’s interview with Alvaro de Soto, October 6, 2003.

Chapter 6 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15.

16. 17. 18. 19.

Samayoa, El Salvador: la reforma pactada, pp. 70–71. Samayoa, Yale–UN Oral History Project, pp. 6–7. Ruben Zamora interview with James Sutterlin, Yale–UN Oral History Project, San Salvador, July 24, 1997, pp. 15–16. Robert Levgold, “The Revolution in Soviet Foreign Policy,” Foreign Affairs, 68.1 (1989). Alvaro de Soto, the UN Special Representative of the Secretary General consulted frequently with the Cuban delegation at the UN and visited Havana on one occasion in order to assure that Cuba accepted the UN-led peace process. Author’s interview with Alvaro de Soto, October 6, 2003. Handal, Yale–UN Oral History Project. H. Michael Erisman, Cuba’s Foreign Relations in a Post-Soviet World (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2000), p. 170. “Central America and Cuba in the New World Order,” Arms Control Today, 24: 2 (March 1994). Lungo, El Salvador in the Eighties, pp. 161–162. Jan S. Adams, A Foreign Policy in Transition; Moscow’s Retreat from Central America and the Caribbean, 1985–1992 (Durham: Duke University Press, 1992), p. 139. Zamora, Yale–UN Oral History Project, p. 15. Ibid. Martinez, Yale–UN Oral History Project. See also, U.S. Embassy Managua cable #00901 February 11, 1991. U.S. Embassy Managua cable #00901. Ibid. During the final offensive in November 1989, numerous SAM-7s were sent to the FMLN, but these weapons were less lethal than the SAM-14s held in reserve for the FMLN back in Nicaragua. Interview with Leonel Gonzales, member of the FMLN directorate. Barricada, February 1, 1991, Managua. Virginia Valenta and Jiri Valenta, “Sandinistas in Power,” Problems of Communism (September-October 1985), p. 21. Adams, A Foreign Policy in Transition, p. 108. The U.S. Defense Department calculated that from the inauguration of the Sandinista Junta in July 1979 to 1982, the Nicaraguan armed forces had quadrupled from 10,000 to 40,000 making it the largest force in Central America. The Challenge to Democracy in Central America, Washington, D.C., June 1986, p. 20.

198 20. 21. 22. 23. 24.

25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39.

40. 41. 42. 43.

44.

45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50.

Notes

In the last year of Brezhnev’s life, Soviet experts were already questioning the Soviet’s economic capacity to support another ally in the Caribbean area. Adams, p. 108. The Sandinista Military Build-up, U.S. Department of State & U.S. Department of Defense, Washington, D.C. (May 1985), p. 29. Soviet exports from 1980 to 1983 grew from 0.1 million rubles to 42.4 million rubles. Adams, p. 108. Jan S. Adams, “Incremental Activism in Soviet Third World Policy,” Slavic Review, 48 (Winter 1989). Carol Fogarty & Kevin Tritle, “Moscow’s Economic Aid Programs in Less-Developed Countries: A Perspective on the 1980s,” in Gorbachev’s Economic Plans, Study Papers submitted to the Joint Economic Committee, U.S. Congress, Vol. II, pp. 537–539. In many cases, these loans were written off, as Moscow agreed to extend or postpone repayment. Erisman, p. 108. Yuri Pavlov, Soviet Cuban Alliance: 1959–1991 (Miami: North-South Center Press, University of Miami, 1996), p. 144. A. Koslov cited in Levgold, “The Revolution in Soviet Foreign Policy.” Ibid. Levgold, Part II. Pavlov, p. 121. In 1989, Soviet subsidies to Cuba amounted to $2.5 billion and trade credits to $1.5 billion. Granma, Sept. 8, 1992, www.granma.co.cc Pavlov, p. 124. Castro “interrogated” every high-level Soviet visitor to Cuba, asking questions and listening attentively to the replies. Ibid., p. 114. Ibid., p. 111. Ibid., p. 112. Granma, October 22, 1989. Granma, December 18, 1991. Erisman, p. 169. Mikhail Gorbachev’s speech before the United Nations General Assembly. (UNGA) December 7, 1988. Provisional Verbatim record of the 72nd Meeting, A/43/PV.72, December 8, 1988. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. According to Yuri Pavlov, Castro saw “no advantage to his regime in the termination of the Cold War and the end of the Soviet–American confrontation.” Further improvement in relations between the superpowers could only increase Cuba’s insecurity. Pavlov, p. 123. The consensus in Moscow was that substantial changes in Cuba depended more on Castro’s personal views and decisions than on any objective circumstances, such as the U.S. policy toward his regime. Ibid., p. 121. Ibid. Erisman, p. 108 U.S. Foreign Broadcasting Information Service (FBIS) coverage of the two-day meeting and public statements. FBIS-SOV-89, April 4 and April 5, 1989. Pavlov, p. 134. Erisman, p. 169. Gorbachev speech to the Cuban National Assembly, FBIS-SOV, April 4, 1989.

Notes

51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56.

57. 58. 59.

60.

61. 62. 63. 64. 65. 66.

67. 68. 69. 70. 71. 72.

73. 74. 75.

199

TASS, April 14, 1989 cited in FBIS-SOV, April 17, 1989, p. 8. Adams, p. 109. Author’s interview with Arcos. Arcos accompanied Assistant Secretary Bernie Aronson to Moscow in June 1989. Proceso, No. 647, Mexico City, October 23, 1989, p. 39. The initial agreement was that the Soviets would provide 40 percent of Nicaragua’s oil needs. See Proceso, No. 647. In March 1988, Ortega signed a cease-fire with the Contras and extended it unilaterally when the cease-fire lapsed. He also committed his government to hold national elections in February 1990. As a prerequisite for the election, the Nicaraguan government released 1,894 former members of the Somozan guards and lifted a ban on the operation of Radio Catolica and other opposition radio stations. See FBIS–SOV, April 5, 1989, p. 46. Pavlov, p. 146. Author’s interview with Scowcroft. FBIS-SOV, August 8, 1989. It has also been suggested that the Soviet Foreign Ministry encouraged Ortega to walk out of the Tela summit, but there is no proof of this assertion. The U.S. State Department was surprised by Ortega’s action and the positive acclaim from Moscow. Secretary Baker sought an explanation from Deputy Assistant Secretary Arcos, who responded that uncertainty over the new U.S. policy had created a high degree of skepticism toward the new U.S. policy. The Honduran Foreign Ministry’s criticism of the new policy created space for the Soviets to test the limits of Central American commitment to a negotiated outcome. Author’s interview with Arcos. Foreign Minister Shevardnadze has just left a meeting with Baker in Montana and was on his way to Cuba to brief Fidel Castro. David E. Albright, “Soviet Economic Development and the Third World,” Soviet Studies, 43: 1 (November, 1991). Weapons delivery had previously been undertaken secretly either directly to Nicaraguan ports, or via Cuba. See Proceso, No. 647, p. 39. Mark Uhlig, “Moscow Reducing Its Military Aid to Nicaragua,” New York Times, October 16, 1989, p. 4. Proceso, October 23, 1989, p. 40. This agreement had been reached in May of 1989, shortly after receiving and leaking Gorbachev’s letter of May 6 that announced that the Soviets had halted arms shipments to Nicaragua. Michael Kramer, “Anger, Bluff – and Cooperation,” Time, June 4, 1990, p. 40. Bernie Aronson was the source for Kramer’s article. Adams, p. 123. Handal, Yale–UN Oral History Project. Ibid. Martinez, Yale–UN Oral History Project, pp. 9–10. “Joint Declaration of Central American Presidents,” San Isidro de Coronado, Costa Rica, December 13, 1989. See Moreno, The Struggle for Peace in Central America, pp. 117–118. Pavlov, p. 154. Ibid., p. 155. Ibid.

200

Notes

76.

77.

78. 79. 80. 81. 82. 83. 84. 85. 86. 87. 88.

89. 90.

91. 92. 93.

94.

95. 96. 97. 98. 99.

100. 101.

Moscow Radio’s World Service spoke of western criticism that “intimate[s] that the decision on introducing American troops was taken not so much in Washington as in Malta, in the meeting between Mikhail Gorbachev and George Bush. Panama, they [the critics] hint fell victim to collusion between the two super powers.” The Soviet spokesman continued that, on the contrary, “The Malta meeting encourages political solutions of all regional problems, security and trust building measures.” Moscow Radio, January 3, 1990, FBIS–SOV, January. 4, 1990, p. 32. The outrage went further than the traditional U.S. critics in the Mexican intellectual community, but President Salinas was determined that it would not affect his trade discussions with Washington. Proceso No. 692, February 5, 1990. Pavlov, p. 156. Ibid., p. 157. The Sandinista government lost the Presidency with 40.8 percent of the votes to the National Opposition Union (UNO) gain with 55.2 percent. Samayoa, Yale–UN Oral History, p. 12. Ibid., p. 13. Handal, Yale–UN Oral History. Proceso, No. 647, p. 40. Samayoa, Yale–UN Oral History, pp. 4–5. Adams, pp. 179–180. Samayoa, Yale–UN Oral History, pp. 9–10. Ambassador Jorge Montano was Mexican Permanent Representative to the United Nations 1988–1993, foreign policy adviser to President Carlos Salinas de Gortari 1987–1988, and previously Under Secretary for International Organizations. Yale–UN Oral History Project, p. 8. Guillermo Ungo later died in Mexico City of complications following surgery. The FMLN invited Guillermo Ungo to join them, but he refused, insisting that his followers within the FDR were not a fighting force, but rather a political movement within the Salvadoran opposition. Montano, Yale–UN Oral History Project, p. 15. “Joint Franco–Mexican Declaration on El Salvador” United Nations Security Council Document, S/14659, August 28, 1981. Both presidents expressed support for leftist causes, so long as they did not impact domestic programs at home. Modesto Seara Vazuez, Politica exterior de Mexico, 2nd ed. Mexico DF: UNAM (1984), p. 348. The Energy Cooperation Program for Central American and Caribbean Countries, August 3, 1981. The program provided up to 160,000 barrels of oil a day, and the two regional powers also pledged to contribute financially to the recipient nations. Moreno, p. 57. Montano, Yale–UN Oral History Project, p. 14. Miguel de la Madrid H. Cambio de rumbo: testimonio de una presidencia, 1982–1988, Fondo de la Cultura Económica, Mexico (2004). Montano, Yale–UN Oral History Project, p. 16. Ibid. President Jose Napoleon Duarte complained publicly to the Mexican ambassador about the freedom of movement that the Mexican Ministry of Interior had given to the members of the FMLN/FDR in Mexico. Ibid., p. 21. Ambassador Jorge Montano was then Undersecretary for Global Affairs in the Mexican Foreign Ministry and responsible for Mexico’s UN policy. Ibid., p. 16.

Notes

102.

103. 104. 105.

106.

107. 108. 109. 110. 111. 112.

113. 114.

115. 116. 117.

201

The Houston meeting took place in a military base in Houston approximately one week before the inauguration of Salinas and approximately seven weeks before Bush’s inauguration. Ibid., pp. 15–16. Ibid., p. 16. Ibid., p. 18. Gabriel Szekely “Forging a North American Economy: Issues for Mexico in the 1990s” Mexico’s External Relations in the 1990s, ed. Riordan Roett (Boulder, CO.: Lynne Rienner Pub. 1991). According to the president’s Chief of Staff, Jose Cordova, by early 1990 Castro was fearful of provoking the Soviets into cutting economic support, including oil for the island. Therefore, he would not provoke them. Interview with the U.S. ambassador to Mexico. Roberta Lajous, editor of Examen, the Foreign Ministry magazine e-mail message to the author, July 26, 2005. Samayoa, Yale–UN Oral History, p. 9. “We had leverage with the FMLN. We had leverage with the FDR, but we don’t have that clout with the [Salvadoran] government.” Montano, p. 24. Ibid., p. 19. Ibid., p. 18. The Mexican president’s request to the business community to support financially presidential projects was a traditional posture that was accepted on a number of matters. In exchange, the business leaders could count on ready access to the presidential palace at Los Pinos and the president’s staff to resolve their commercial and financial problems. During 1990, the Mexican government hosted 180 meetings; the following year, they hosted 120 meetings in the Mexico City area. Montano, Yale–UN Oral History, pp. 24–25. The Mexican business community also paid for air tickets to and from San Salvador to Mexico. They considered it essential that the members of the FMLN–FDR be present, so “we [Mexicans] had to pay for that.” However, the delegates of both sides were not always pleased with the accommodation; “at the time it was very annoying that we [Mexicans] were paying, we were putting everything together, and some of them [Salvadorans] were not very pleased with the food, for instance.” Ibid., p. 25. The most critical meeting on constitutional reforms was held in Mexico City in April 1991. Montano, Yale–UN Oral History, p. 45. Ibid., p. 46.

Chapter 7 1. 2.

The UN Security Council is charged with acting when “threats to peace and security” arise. Charter of the United Nations, Article 1.1. Several Resolutions of the UN General Assembly had been passed relating to the Dominican Republic, Panama, and the Islas Malvinas a.k.a. Falkland Islands. UN Security Council meetings had also taken place concerning the maintenance and strengthening of international peace in Latin America, but only in the case of Panama, had these meetings culminated in a Security Council Resolution. Resolution 330 of March 21. 1973. Resolutions and Statements of the United Nations Security Council (1946–2000): A Thematic Guide, ed. Karel Wellens (The Hague: Kluwer Law International, 2001).

202

Notes

3. 4.

UN Security Council Resolution 530 of May 19, 1983 and Resolution 562 of May 10, 1985. Resolutions and Statements, p. 108. The Secretary-General should continue his mission of good offices in consultation with the Security Council in support of the Central American Governments in their effort to achieve the goals set forth in the Guatemalan [Esquipulas II] agreement.

5. 6. 7.

8.

9. 10. 11.

12.

13. 14.

15.

16. 17. 18. 19.

20.

“Security Council Resolution concerning the Situation in Central America and the Esquipulas II Agreement,” S/RES/637, 27 July 1989, cited in United Nations and El Salvador, Doc. 2, pp. 91–92. Security Council Resolution 637, Article 4. Letter of Security Council President, Li Luye to the Secretary-General, 23 November 1989. Statement by the President of the Security Council expressing concern over the situation in Central America, 8 December 1989, S/21011, United Nations and El Salvador, Doc. 5, p. 100. Michael F. Brown & Chantal de Jonge Oudraat “Internal Conflict and International Action,” Nationalism and Ethnic Conflict, ed. Michael E. Brown (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2001), pp. 166–168. Charter of the United Nations, Article 2.7. Aryeh Neier, War Crimes: Brutality, Genocide, Terror and the Struggle for Justice (New York: Random House, 1998), pp. 22–23. Connie Peck, “The Role of Regional Organizations in Preventing and Resolving Conflict,” eds. Chester A. Crocker, et al. Turbulent Peace: the Challenges of Managing International Conflict (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Institute of Peace, 2001), pp. 562–563. Declaration of San Isidro de Coronado, 12 December 1989, A/44/872-S/21019, in United Nations and El Salvador, pp. 100–102. This declaration was not a UN-sponsored agreement, unlike the presidential letter of November 1989 and presidential statement of December 1989. However, it was recognized as an important agreement and, therefore, recorded within the documents that are pertinent to the peace accords. Handal, Yale–UN Oral History Project. In fact, the Mexican government maintained close ties with the FMLN and consulted with them frequently. On May 20, 1991, UN Security Council Resolution 693 authorized the formation of ONUSAL, among which purposes was the monitoring of frontiers to stop the passage of arms. , S/RES/693, United Nations and El Salvador, Doc. 19, pp. 141–142. Ian Johnstone, Rights and Reconciliation: UN Strategies in El Salvador (Boulder, CO.: Lynn Reinner Pub., 1995), p. 20. See also, ONUSAL’s report, November 1991, S/23222, United Nations and El Salvador, para. 175. Johnstone, p. 24. Besides the UN headquarters in San Salvador, regional offices existed in San Vicente, San Miguel, and Santa Ana. Subregional UN offices existed in Chalatenango and Usulután. De Soto, Ending Violent Conflict. p. 353. Views expressed in a speech drafted by Alvaro de Soto and delivered by the SecretaryGeneral at the International Conference on Central American Refugees, May 29, 1989 at Guatemala City (A/44/311, annex).The Security Council’s recognition of the FMLN as an “insurrectionalist movement” in Resolution 637 provided the legitimacy needed to engage them in the peace process. De Soto, “Ending Violent Conflict,” p. 353. The Contadora Group consisted of Mexico, Venezuela, Colombia, and Panama.

Notes

21. 22. 23.

24. 25.

26. 27. 28. 29. 30.

31.

32. 33. 34.

35.

36. 37. 38.

39. 40. 41. 42. 43.

44. 45.

46.

203

Ibid., p. 356. Author’s interview with Alvaro de Soto, New York, October 22, 2003. Diego Arria, Venezuelan Permanent Representative to the UN 1991–1993 and member of the Security Council 1992–1993, interview with Jean Krasno, Yale–UN Oral History Project, New York, September 5, 1997. De Soto, Ending Violent Conflict, p. 353. De Soto had informally and orally deliberated a series of ideas which, in November 1986, became a “non-paper.” This informal report from a member of the UN staff lacked official status. It could be denied as coming from the UN. It could also be called an informal options paper. Javier Perez de Cuellar, Pilgrimage for Peace: A Secretary-General’s Memoir (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1997), p. 399. De Soto, Ending Violent Conflict, p. 354. Perez de Cuellar, Pilgrimage for Peace, p. 399. De Soto, Ending Violent Conflict, p. 354. The Contadora Group had created a Support Group that might contribute funding and moral support to implement the terms of the Esquipulas 1 Accord. Argentina, Brazil, Peru, and Uruguay made up the Contadora Support Group. See Perez de Cuellar, Pilgrimage for Peace, p. 400. De Soto, Ending Violent Conflict, p. 354. Perez de Cuellar remembers a more positive reply from all the five Central American countries, but endorses de Soto’s reflection of the cooler reception from the Contadora Group. See de Cuellar, Pilgrimage for Peace, p. 400. De Soto, Ending Violent Conflict, p. 354. Perez de Cuellar, Pilgrimage for Peace, p. 401. Ibid. Perez de Cuellar attributes this action to Ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick, but she had left in 1985 and been replaced by Ambassador Vernon A. Walters, known for his use of irony. Marc W. Chernic, “Peacemaking and Violence in Latin America,” The International Dimensions of Internal Conflict, ed. Michael E. Brown (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1996), p. 278. De Soto memorandum to author, June 2011. Dario Moreno, The Struggle for Peace in Central America (Miami: University of Florida Press, 1994), pp. 86–87. There was a cost to pay for this independence from Washington’s policy. The significant USAID appropriation for Costa Rica was cut in half in 1988 obliging President Oscar Arias to fly to Washington and seek reinstatement. Perez de Cuellar, Pilgrimage for Peace, p. 401. Ibid. “Peace Plan by Oscar Arias,” 15 February 1987, reprinted in Moreno, The Struggle for Peace, Appendix 4, pp. 184–198. Moreno, The Struggle for Peace, pp. 86–87. “Peace Agreement between the Government of El Salvador and the FMLN,” signed at Chapultepec Castle, Mexico City, 16 January 1992, A/46/864-S/23501, The United Nations and El Salvador 1990–1995, Document No. 36, pp. 193–230. Chernik, Peacemaking and Violence in Latin America, p. 281. The Procedure for the Establishment of a Firm and Lasting Peace in Central America, known as “The Esquipulas II Declaration,” See Moreno, The Struggle for Peace, Appendix 5. Alvaro de Soto continued to meet with the FMLN leaders on the edge of international conferences. See interview with the author, New York City, October 6, 2003.

204 47.

48. 49.

50. 51. 52.

53. 54.

55.

56. 57. 58. 59. 60. 61. 62.

63. 64. 65.

66. 67. 68. 69. 70. 71. 72.

Notes

Author’s interview with Iqbal Riza, then Chief of Staff to the Secretary-General, New York City, March 5, 2004. Riza arrived in El Salvador in January 1991 to set up the preparatory offices for ONUSAL. Author’s interview with Gerardo Chevalier, Washington, D.C., February 9, 2004. Chevalier was a member of the PDC and a political opponent of Alfredo Cristiani. David Escobar Galindo, Chief of Staff, and advisor to the Salvadoran president on the peace process. Interview with Tommie Sue Montgomery, San Salvador, April 12, 1994 (unpublished). President Alfredo Cristiani Burkard interview with Tommie Sue Montgomery, San Salvador, April, 25 1994 (unpublished), p. 5. Ibid. “Realmente para el FMLN era un doble juego, estaba jugando al proceso de paz, pero en el fondo su verdadera línea seguía siendo la línea militar.” (Truly, for the FMLN, it was a double role, playing the peace process but fundamentally continuing to pursue a military line.) Cristiani interview with Montgomery, April 21, 1994, p. 3. Ibid., p. 4. Raul Julia, Romero, a John Dugan Film, Videmark Entertainment Film (1988) represents the life of Archbishop Oscar Romero of El Salvador and the efforts of the Catholic Church to mediate between the state and the FMLN. See also, James R. Brockman, Romero: A Life (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1989). Cristiani interview with Montgomery, p. 4. Perez de Cuellar had proposed the inclusion of the U.S. as well as Cuba and the Soviet Union in his letters to the five Central American presidents, and Cristiani acceded to this proposal. Escobar interview with Montgomery, p. 7. Ibid. Ibid., pp. 7–8. General Mauricio Vargas oral interview with Jean Krasno, Yale–UN Oral History Project, San Salvador, June 20, 1997, pp. 3 and 5. Ibid., p. 5. Ibid. Alfredo Cristiani, President of the Republic of El Salvador, “The United Nations, ONSUAL and Negotiations,” interview with Tommie Sue Montgomery, San Salvador, April 25, 1994, p. 4 (unpublished). Ibid., pp. 4–5. James Sutterlin’s interview with Alfredo Cristiani Burkard, Yale–UN Oral History Project, San Salvador, July 25, 1997. Pedro Nikken was a Venezuelan jurist, contracted by the UN to assist the SecretaryGeneral in the Salvadoran peace talks. He was brilliant with words and synthesized distinct positions so as to arrive at a commonly agreed text. De Soto, “Ending Violent Conflict,” p. 361. Escobar interview with Montgomery, pp. 3–4. Ibid., p. 4. Ibid., p. 3. Ibid., p. 4. De Soto memorandum to the author, June 2011. “Entonces cada parte le presento sus posiciones. Entonces el [Álvaro de Soto] las comparto ye de las comparaciones resultaba que no habían grandes diferencias.” (So, every party presented their respective positions. Then, he [Alvaro de Soto] reviewed and compared the texts with the result that little difference existed.) Escobar, Yale–UN Oral History Project, p. 23. De Soto later claimed that in general the parties “were separated by a chasm.” Memorandum to the author, June 2011.

Notes

73.

74. 75. 76.

77. 78. 79. 80. 81. 82. 83. 84.

85.

86.

87.

88.

89. 90. 91. 92. 93. 94.

205

Ibid. Escobar believed that “ellos [FMLN] tuviervon grandes problemas internos en ese momento, por esa situación,” (They faced great internal problems at that time over this situation.) and Handal, Yale–UN Oral History Project, p. 9. “Lo que pedimos es la disolución de la Fuerza Armada.” (They asked us for the dissolution of the Armed Forces.) Escobar, Yale–UN Oral History Project, p. 23. Ibid., p. 4. “La Fuerza Armada de El Salvador es una institución fundamental para la seguridad nacional, de carácter permanente,” (The Armed Forces of El Salvador is an institution that is fundamental to national security with permanent status.) Article 212, Constitution of the Republic of El Salvador cited in Humberto Corado Figueroa, “La fuerza armada; pieza fundamental del proceso de negociación” (The armed forces: fundamental component of the peace accords) Conferencia internacional sobre los acuerdos de paz en El Salvador y Guatemala, San Salvador, September 14–15, 1997 (San José, Costa Rica: FLACSO, 1997). Samayoa, la reforma pactada, pp. 288–291. Ibid., p. 293. Escobar’s interview with Montgomery, p. 5. Ibid. Cristiani interview with Montgomery. Cristiani, Yale–UN Oral History Project, San Salvador, July 25, 1997, p. 16. Ibid. A pattern of behavior between President Cristiani and the Secretary-General’s Personal Representative reflected the level of irritation. When asked how he might have irritated Cristiani, Alvaro de Soto responded, “Well, I used the ‘tu,’ the familiar with him.” As between a Peruvian aristocrat and the Salvadoran head of state, the use of the familiar grammatical form might be forgiven. Cristiani neither forgave, nor forgot and the issue of failed respect continued to color the attitude that Cristiani held toward de Soto. Author’s interview with Alvaro de Soto, October 22, 2003. Dr. Guillermo Manuel Ungo was the leader of the Movimiento Nacional Revolucionario (MNR), who had run for the Salvadoran presidency in coalition with Jose Napoleon Duarte in 1972. The coalition won the electoral vote, but was denied victory by a military coup d’etat. Ungo went into exile and became active with the Socialist International. He retained his leadership of the MNR until his death in a Mexico City hospital in 1992. Hector Oqueli Colindres was the founder of the FDR (Frente Democratica Revolucionario) a political party allied with the FMLN, but which rejected military solutions. He had been Duarte’s vice-presidential candidate in 1987. In January 1990, Oqueli was kidnapped and murdered on his way to Guatemala airport having just met with U.S. Senator Chris Dodd (D–Conn.). In 1981, Ungo and Oqueli had set up an office in Washington and continued to maintain contact with the U.S. Congress, as well as nongovernmental organizations. See, Ana Guadalupe Martinez, Yale–UN Oral History Project, p. 3. Samayoa, Yale–UN Oral History Project, p. 2. Vendrell would later become the Secretary-Generals deputy special representative for the peace processes in Central America. Samayoa, la reforma pactada, p. 78. Samayoa, Yale–UN Oral History Project. Salvador Samayoa, la reforma pactada, p. 212. Ana Guadalupe Martínez, Yale–UN Oral History Project, pp. 9–10. Ibid., p. 2. Samayoa, la reforma pactada, p. 213.

206

Notes

95. 96.

97. 98. 99. 100. 101. 102. 103.

104. 105.

106. 107. 108.

109. 110. 111.

112. 113. 114. 115. 116. 117. 118. 119. 120.

De Soto, Ending Violent Conflict, p. 357. Ibid. The UN allowed South African police to restore order at the start of the Namibia independence plan before the arrival of UN military and police personnel. The FMLN interpreted this as a sign of UN weakness. FMLN letter of November 5, 1989, cited in Samayoa, la reforma pactada, p. 213. FMLN letter of November 10, 1989, cited in Samayoa la reforma pactada, pp. 213–214. FMLN Communiqué of December 10, 1989, cited in Samayoa, la reforma pactada, p. 213. Samayoa, la reforma pactada, pp. 211. FMLN Diplomatic Notes of November 10, 1989. FMLN letter of November 13, 1989, to the OAS Secretary-General, cited in Samayoa, la reforma pactada, p. 214. “[El ] FMLN jugaba a varias cartas internacionales de manera indiferenciada y poco precisa,” (the FMLN played with various international letters in a manner that failed to distinguish between the parties and lacked precision.) Ibid. Ibid. The FMLN requested that Alvaro de Soto meet with them in Mexico. De Soto proposed New York. In the face of difficulties to obtain U.S. visitor visas, de Soto changed his mind and proposed the UN’s Civil Aviation Organization offices in Montreal. See, Perez de Cuellar, Pilgrimage for Peace, p. 418, de Soto, Ending Violent Conflict, p. 356. Ana Guadalupe Martinez, Yale–UN Oral History Project. Samayoa, la reforma pactada, p. 215. The letters were drafted and dated December 7, 1989, but were dispatched only after de Soto’s meeting in Montreal to ensure that the FMLN were in agreement. Alvaro de Soto, Ending Violent Conflict, p. 358 See also, Samayoa, la reforma pactada, p. 211, 216. Perez de Cuellar, Pilgrimage of Peace, p. 408. Statement by the president of the Security Council, 8 December 1989, United Nations and El Salvador, S/21011. “los mandatarios demandaron energicamente al FMLN que renuncie publicamente a toda acción violenta” (the leaders insist, energetically, that the FMLN publicly renounce all violent action.) Article 3, Declaration of San Isidro de Coronado, December 12, 1989. See The United Nations and El Salvador, p. 101. Samayoa, la reforma pactada, p. 79. Ibid., p. 81. Security Council Resolution concerning the situation in Central America and the Esquipulas II Agreement, S/RES/637, 27 July 1989. Samayoa, la reforma pactada, pp. 79–81. Letter transmitting the Declaration of San Isidro de Coronado, 12 December 1989, A/44/872-S/21019. United Nations and El Salvador, Doc. 6, p. 100. Perez de Cuellar, Pilgrimage of Peace, p. 419 and Samayoa, la reforma pactada, p. 79. FMLN letter to the Secretary-General, December 18, 1989, cited in Samayoa, la reforma pactada, p. 80. Ibid. “Mire, en primer lugar, nunca hubo mediadores. Técnicamente hablando, mediador nunca hubo. Eran intermediarias, que es cosa distinta.” (Look, in the first place, there were never mediators. Technically speaking, there was never a mediator. They

Notes

121. 122. 123. 124. 125. 126. 127. 128. 129.

207

were intermediaries, which is something different.) Handal, Yale–UN Oral History Project, p. 6. Ibid, p. 3. Resolution of the General Assembly A/RES/38/10, 11 November 1983, United Nations and El Salvador. Samayoa, Yale-UN Oral History Project, pp. 9–10. No documents exist to support the evidence of these FMLN meetings However, reference to the three meetings is made by Samayoa, la reforma pactada, p. 241. Ibid. Meetings of January 11 and 12, UN Headquarters, New York. Author’s interview by telephone with Alexander Watson, Washington, D.C., March 17, 2004. Perez de Cuellar, Pilgrimage of Peace, pp. 418–419. Ibid., p. 417. Ibid.

Chapter 8 1.

2.

3. 4.

5.

6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18.

General Manuel Vargas, the military representative on the government’s negotiating team is fond of recalling that the talks lasted 23 months and three days of which all, but one day, were spent discussing the reform of the Salvadoran Armed Forces. General Mauricio Vargas, Yale–UN Oral History Project, p. 12. El Diario de Hoy was owned by Orlando de Sola, a member of the extreme right of the ARENA party. See his interview with Enrique Ortego in Processo, Mexico City, No. 681, November 20, 1989, p. 37. The formal monthly sessions also occurred in San Jose, Costa Rica; Carabelleda, Venezuela; and other places in Mexico. In the last few days of the December negotiations, Perez de Cuellar became personally involved in the detailed negotiations. His presence helped both the protagonists make their final concessions and reach an agreement on a final text. Diego Arria, Yale–UN Oral History Project, p. 29. Assistant Secretary Bernie Aronson, U.S. Permanent Representative to the UN, Thomas Pickering and William Pryce, from the National Security Council met at length with Alvaro de Soto and Francesc Vendrell, the Spanish deputy Special Representative for Central America’s peace process. Ibid., para. 2. Ibid. Ibid., para. 3. Ibid., para. 5. Ibid. U.S. Department of State cable #216340, July 2, 1991. Ibid. General Secretary, Mikhail Gorbachev’s speech before the UNGA, December 7, 1988. U.S. Mission to the UN cable #00515, February 23, 1990, para. 3. Ibid. Ibid. De Soto, “Ending Violent Conflict,” p. 361. Ruben Zamora interview with Tommie Sue Montgomery, San Salvador, June 9, 1994 (unpublished).

208 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28.

29. 30.

31. 32. 33.

34.

35.

Notes

De Soto later recognized that he had made a mistake in becoming irritated with the presence of Salvadoran parliamentarians at the Mexico City talks in April 1991. Samayoa, la reforma pactada, pp. 318–320. Handal, UN-Oral History Project. Handal’s interview with Montgomery, and Escobar, Yale–UN Oral History Project, p. 24. Cristiani interview with Montgomery. Escobar, Yale–UN Oral History Project, p. 24. Cristiani interview with Montgomery, p. 11 Escobar, Yale–UN Oral History Project, pp. 24–25. Cristiani interview with Montgomery, p. 11. “Yo diría mas bien ONG’s de tipo religioso o cuasi político” (I [Cristiani] would say that the principal pressure was from those NGOs representing religious and quasireligious groups.) Cristiani interview with Montgomery, p. 11. Ibid. General Mauricio Vargas was the military member of President Cristiani’s negotiating team. In an interview given several years after the war, he recalled the importance of improving El Salvador’s image in the world. “A nosotros se nos veía fuera come un estado arcaico y primitive, so nos veía como una institución troglodita y salvaje,” (Externally, we [the Salvadoran government and the Armed Forces] were viewed an archaic and primitive state, we were seen as a troglodyte and savage institution.) Vargas, UN-Oral History Project, p. 4. Cristiani interview with Montgomery, p. 10. Ibid. p. 11. The Agreement on Human Rights signed at San Jose, Costa Rica, between the Government of El Salvador and the FMLN, 26 July 1990. A/44/971-S/21541 stated that “No one may be arrested for carrying the lawful exercise of his political rights,” Article 2(a). Arbitrary arrest is prohibited, Article 2(9b). Charges must be made publicly and without delay, Article 29(c). No one may be arrested with the intent to intimidate, or at night unless caught in the course of a criminal act, Article 2(d). “No one shall be subject to torture or other cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment.” Article 2(f ). All political prisoners shall be held only according to appropriate legal procedures and timetables for their release. Article 3. “The broadest possible publication shall be given to this Agreement” to ensure that persons are not held isolated and out of contact with family and lawyer . . . Article 4. “The right of all persons to associate freely for ideological, religious, political economic, labour, social, cultural sporting or other purposes shall be fully guaranteed. Trade union freedom shall be fully respected.” Article 5. “Freedom of expression and of the press, the right of reply and the activities of the press shall be fully guaranteed.” Article 6. United Nations in El Salvador, pp. 107–109. On September 6, 1990, the UN Security Council approved the recommendation of the Secretary General that the UN Observer Mission in El Salvador (ONUSAL) be created. In January 1991, it opened its doors with four officers. On July 26, 1991, ONUSAL began its work investigating human rights. See Report of the Secretary-General on ONSUAL and the first report of the ONUSAL Human Rights Division, A/45/1055-S/23037, 16 September 1991. United Nations in El Salvador, and Tommie Sue Montgomery, “Getting to Peace in El Salvador: the Roles of the United Nations Secretariat and ONUSAL,” Journal of Interamerican Studies and World Affairs, 37: 4 (1995). The three international jurists were Belisario Betancur, former President of Colombia, Reinaldo Figueredo Planchart, the former Foreign Minister of Venezuela,

Notes

36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47.

48. 49. 50.

51.

52.

53. 54.

55. 56. 57. 58.

209

and Thomas Buergenthal, the Dean of the American University School of Law and member of the Central American Court of Human Rights. Vargas, Yale–UN Oral History Project, pp. 6–7. Ibid. See also Cañas, Yale–UN Oral History Project. Juhn, Negotiating Peace, p. 89. Ibid. Vargas, Yale–UN Oral History Project, p. 5. Juhn, Negotiating Peace, p. 91. Joseph G. Sullivan, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Central American Affairs, “How Peace Came to El Salvador,” Orbis, 38.1 Winter (1994). Ibid. De Soto Ending Violent Conflict, p. 376. Sullivan, “How Peace Came to El Salvador.” Zamora interview with Montgomery. In a relatively small nation of 3.5 million people, the politicians often found that they had been to the university together and formed acquaintances that juxtaposed the distinct political commitments that each had made. The result was a sense of camaraderie at the Hotel Radisson in Mexico City that was incompatible with the violence back home. Author’s interview with de Soto, October 22, 2003. Goulding, Peacemonger, pp. 232–233. The negotiating sessions in Mexico City are replete with stories of the protagonists gathering in side corridors and around the bar to debate directly with each other. Marrack Goulding interview with Jean Krasno, Yale–UN Oral History Project, Oxford, England, June 30, 1998. U.S. Embassy Mexico cable #08883, April 17, 1991 discussed the paper presented by Alvaro de Soto the previous day. It reported on the reaction of the Salvadoran government’s negotiating team. The team considered that de Soto had stooped to petty revenge in drafting a complicated and unworkable constitutional reform section. This would have to be revised. The following day, the U.S. Embassy observers described the consequence of Alvaro de Soto’s departure for San Salvador. Sessions were cancelled and Schafik Handal left the meetings for pressing business elsewhere. U.S. Embassy Mexico cable #09156, April 19, 1991. Blanca Antonini, legal adviser to Alvaro de Soto and a member of the UN mediating team interview with Jean Krasno, Yale–UN Oral History Project, New York, August 6, 1997. State Department’s Talking Points for Ambassador Pickering prior to the Security Council’s consultations on El Salvador, April 30, 1991. U.S. Department of State cable #027084, January 27, 1991. This cable goes on to request that General Joulwan establish a more constructive relationship with the High Command that might lead to Cristiani using Joulwan as a sounding board for the military advice that he received from his High Command. Author’s interview with U.S. Ambassador William Walker, November 18, 2003, Rosslyn, Virginia. Escobar, Yale–UN Oral History Project, p. 19. Ibid. This protection was carried out, principally, by publicly asserting the White House’s commitment to President Cristiani. In February, Vice President Quayle returned to El Salvador ostensibly for the funeral of the former President Jose Napoleon Duarte, but also to reiterate the U.S. president’s support for his successor Cristiani.

210

59.

60. 61.

62.

63. 64. 65. 66. 67. 68. 69.

70. 71. 72.

73. 74. 75. 76.

77.

78.

Notes

Also, in 1991, the White House invited Cristiani to a meeting with President Bush in order to demonstrate strong support and publish a photograph of both leaders in the Oval office. This was intended to warn opponents within El Salvador that Bush would continue to stand beside Cristiani. See Escobar, Yale–UN Oral History Project, p. 19. State Department Memorandum and Talking Points for Ambassador Pickering in preparation for the April-30 meeting of the Security Council on El Salvador, April 30, 1991. Bernard Aronson interview with Jean Krasno, Yale–UN Oral History Project, Washington, D.C., October 9, 1997. “[c]reo que Estados Unidos hizo una labor muy importante en el sentido de asegurarle al FMLN, sobretodo en la etapa final de la negociación, que los acuerdos se iban a cumplir, que ellos iban a poner todo lo que estuviera de soporte para que los acuerdos se cumplieran.” (I believe that the United States carried out an important work by assuring the FMLN, particularly in the final round of negotiations that the agreements would be carried out, that the U.S. would do all in its power to assure that the accords were carried out.) Escobar, Yale–UN Oral History Project, p. 19. Text of the Mexico City Agreement and Annexes, signed April 27, 1991, by the Government of El Salvador and the FMLN, A/46/553-S/23130, United Nations in El Salvador, pp. 167–174. Author’s interview with de Soto, October 6, 2003. Goulding, Peacemonger, p. 230. Author’s interview with de Soto, October 6, 2003. Armando Calderon’s memorandum to the President’s negotiating team, July 24, 1991, cited in Juhn, p. 101. Ibid., p. 107. Ibid., p. 95. General Vargas wrote that “[The Four Friends of the Secretary General] aren’t putting up with it anymore. Salinas is being really tough . . . The Friends are going to talk to Castro. The Spanish Chancellor is fed up.” Vargas memorandum of August 15 1991 cited in Juhn, p. 97. Diego Arria, Yale–UN Oral History Project, p. 5. Ibid., p. 16. Joint Letter dated August 1, 1991, from the U.S. Secretary of State and the Soviet Minister for Foreign Affairs concerning the peace process in Central America, and a Joint Statement on USSR–United States Cooperation in Central America, S/22947, United Nations in El Salvador, pp. 142–144. De Soto, “Ending Violent Conflict,” p. 380. Juhn, pp. 101–102. Minutes of a meeting between the Christian Democrat, Gerardo Le Chevalier and FMLN–FDR negotiator, Salvador Samayoa. See Juhn, p. 103. Thomas R. Pickering interview with James Sutterlin, Yale–UN Oral History Project, Washington, D.C. April 3, 2000. From his service as U.S. Ambassador to El Salvador (1983–1985), Pickering was familiar with the contentious issues as well as the government leaders. President Salinas of Mexico offered his presidential plane to fly Cristiani to New York with the expectation that the plane would return in two to three days. There was concern and additional Mexican pressure on Cristiani when the plane remained in New York until September. 27. Vargas, UN-Oral History Project. Diego Arria, UN-Oral History Project, p. 20.

Notes

79. 80. 81.

82. 83. 84. 85. 86.

87. 88. 89. 90.

91. 92. 93.

94. 95.

96. 97.

98.

99.

211

Handal interview with Montgomery. Goulding, pp. 231–232, Juhn, pp. 95–97. The parties spent considerable time discussing who would choose the director of the Police Academy. In the Chapultepec Accord, they agreed that the President would nominate and the legislature would confirm. “Entendidos del Acuerdo de Nueva York,” Samayoa, la reforma pactada, pp. 459–461. Sullivan, “How Peace Came.” Ibid. Cristiani was also concerned about frequent land seizures, which he believed were orchestrated by the FMLN. Article VII, The New York Agreement and the Compressed Negotiations, September 25, 1991, A/46/502-S/23082, United Nations and El Salvador, p. 161. The New York Agreement and the Compressed Negotiations – Article 11 (1) signed 25 September. A/46/502-S/23082, 26 September 1991. United Nations in El Salvador, pp. 159–163. U.S. Mission to the UN cable #03211, September 18, 1991. The initiative to form COPAZ took place at the Mexico City meeting in April 1991. It was confirmed at the New York meeting in September that year. New York Agreement, Article 1. United Nations and El Salvador, pp. 159–160. The New York Agreement, Article 111 (91) (b) states that “the plan for the reduction [of ESAF] (manner, timetable, budget, etc.) shall be drawn up. Article V11 (3) (c) states that, “The Forum [for economic and social participation] may be open to participation by other social and political sectors as observers, under terms to be determined by it.” Antonini, Yale–UN Oral History Project, and Samayoa, la reforma pactada, p. 461. Goulding, Peacemonger, p. 235 and Los derechos humanos en El Salvador en 1991 (San Salvador: UCA, Instituto de Derechos Humanos, 1992). Chargé d’Affaires Peter Romero’s draft of letter for Secretary Baker to send to Perez de Cuellar urging increased UN action to complete the negotiations. U.S. State Department cable #348715, October 23, 1991. Goulding, Peacemonger, p. 237. For the government, the agreement of December 31, 1992, was signed by Dr. Oscar Santamaria, Ambassador Ana Cristina Sol, General Mauricio Vargas, Dr. David Escobar Galindo, Col. Martinez Varela, Abelardo Torres, and Rafael Hernan Contreras. For the FMLN, the following signed: Schafik Handal, Ana Guadelupe Martinez, Francisco Jovel, Salvador Sanchez Ceren, Eduardo Sancho, and Joaquin Villalobos. President Alfredo Cristiani, Armando Calderon Sol, head of ARENA, General Larios, his military aide. Marrack Goulding did not appear for the photograph in the Secretary-General’s conference room: an event that he reflects upon, without complaint, in his book, Peacemonger, Goulding, p. 238. However, he attended the formal signing at Chapultepec Castle and was seated prominently on the left of UN General Secretary, Boutros Boutros-Ghali. Preamble to the “Peace Agreement between the Government of El Salvador and the Frente Farabundo Marti para la Liberación Nacional, signed 16 January 1992 at Chapultepec Castle, Mexico City, and transmitted by letter to the UN Secretary General, January 27 1992. A/46/8643-S/23501, United Nations in El Salvador, pp. 193–230. Thereafter known as the Chapultepec Peace Accord. Alvaro de Soto and Graciana del Castillo, “Obstacles to Peacebuilding,” Foreign Policy, 94: Spring 1994.

212

Notes

Chapter 9 1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

7. 8. 9.

10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16.

17.

18. 19. 20.

“The Mexico Agreement,” signed on 27 April 1991, by the Government of El Salvador and the FMLN, A/46/533-S/32130. United Nations in El Salvador, pp. 167–174. The New York Agreement and the Compressed Negotiations signed 25 September. A/46/502-S/23082, and addendum signed 26 September 1991 A/46/502 Add. 1-S/23082/Add.1. United Nations in El Salvador, pp. 159–163. Hereafter called the “New York Agreement.” The New York Act and the New York Act II signed December 1991 and 13 January 1992, respectively. A/46/864-S/23501. United Nations in El Salvador, pp. 193–231. Hereafter called the “Chapultepec Accords.” “Report of the Commission on the Truth in El Salvador,” 15 March 1993, S/25500, United Nations in El Salvador, pp. 290–414. Hereafter called “UN Truth Commission.” David S. Toolan, “Life After Death in El Salvador: an Interview With John Guiliano,” America, 169: 8, December 4, 1993. John Guiliano was a U.S. mental health worker. Rubén Zamora, “Introducción,” De la Experiencia Salvadoreña a la Esperanza Guatemalteca: Acuerdos de Paz en El Salvador y Guatemala, International Conference under the auspices of Facultad Latinoamericana de Ciencias Sociales (FLACSO) and Instituto Salvadoreño para la Democracia (ISPADE) San Salvador, January 14–15, 1997. Ibid. Lederach, Preparing for Peace: Conflict Transformation Across Cultures (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1995). General Ponce and other colleagues within the High Command received telephone death threats that accused them of being traitors for signing the peace accords. U.S. Embassy San Salvador cable # 04523, April 24, 1992, para. 8. As the 1994 elections approached, attacks of distinct forms from the extreme right grew. “Salvadoran Cease-Fire Situation Report” U.S. Embassy San Salvador cable #02608, March 6, 1992. “Ponce Readout on BIRI Demobilization” U.S. Embassy San Salvador cable #07019, July 8, 1992. “ESAF views on the Peace Process” U.S. Embassy San Salvador cable #04877, May 5, 1992. Author’s interview with de Soto, October 2, 2003. U.S. Embassy San Salvador cable #06307, June 17, 1992. The Chapultepec Accords created “designated areas” as a technique for demobilizing the opposing forces. It was not intended to separate forces within one side. See, Goulding, Peacemonger, pp. 234–235. Marrack Goulding, the UN Director for Peacekeeping visited Salvador in March 1992 and forcefully asked that personnel from the two security forces not be transferred into the new PNC. U.S. Embassy San Salvador cable #02953, March 13, 1992. “The National Guard and the Treasury Police shall be abolished as public security forces and their members shall be incorporated into the army.” Chapter 1, Article 6 (C). The transfer took place in April 1992. U.S. Embassy San Salvador cable #04457, April 24, 1992. U.S. Embassy San Salvador cable #07019, July 8, 1991.

Notes

21.

22. 23. 24. 25.

26.

27.

28. 29.

30. 31.

32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49.

213

U.S. Embassy San Salvador cable #02953, March 13, 1992. The purpose of placing them under the UNDP was to emphasize the demilitarized nature of this postwar transfer and to begin the incorporation into civilian life. The UNDP provided the basic infrastructure of water and electricity. Goulding, Yale–UN Oral History Project. Chapultepec Accord, Chapter 11, Article 5(A). U.S. Embassy San Salvador cable #02485, March 4, 1992. Alvaro de Soto was skeptical of the offer, knowing the reputation for corruption among Mexico City’s police force. Author’s interview with de Soto. See also “Background Information for American Police Officers Seconded to ONUSAL,” U.S. Embassy cable #08162, August 11, 1992. In Calendar Year 1993, the U.S. government had committed $16 million to the PNC and $10 million to the Police Academy. This represented approximately one quarter of the funds needed to refurbish the building and provide operating costs. U.S. Embassy San Salvador #12024, December 14, 1993. First, the Legislative Assembly would abolish the Treasury Police and the National Guard. Concurrently, the Assembly would create two new units within the military, the Border Guards and Military Police. U.S. Embassy San Salvador cable #06307, June 17, 1992. President Cristiani agreed that 20 percent of the initial class of new police recruits could come from the FMLN, in exchange for 20 percent deriving from the old police force. The remaining 60 percent would be recruited from capable civilians, evaluated by the government and screened by ONUSAL. U.S. Embassy San Salvador cable #13069, December 18, 1992. This information was collected from U.S. consular officers in the process of visa interviews for candidates seeking training at the U.S. police training center in Puerto Rico. See U.S. Embassy San Salvador cable #11984, November 18, 1992. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. U.S. Embassy San Salvador cable #12232, December 20, 1993. New York Agreement, Article 1.1. New York Agreement, Article 1.2. New York Agreement, Article 1.4. U.S. Embassy San Salvador cable #06426, June 20, 1992. Ibid. Handal interview with Montgomery, June 1994. Chapter IV of the Chapultepec Accord reaffirmed commitments made in the Mexico City Agreement. U.S. Embassy, San Salvador cable #05763, May 30, 1992. Ibid . . ., para. 4. Ibid. Ibid. U.S. Embassy, San Salvador cable #06003, June 6, 1992. Report of conversations between Joaquin Villalobos and Francisco Jovel with Charge d’Affaires Peter Romero, U.S. Embassy San Salvador cable #06615, June 26, 1992. For a brief period in 1931, the communist party had been legalized. Outbursts of rural dissension were linked to the existence of the communist party resulting not only in the removal of its legal status, but widespread persecution and murder of its members. While the exact number is unknown, approximately 10,000 people are

214

50. 51. 52. 53. 54.

55. 56.

57.

58. 59. 60. 61.

62. 63. 64. 65. 66. 67. 68. 69. 70.

71.

72. 73. 74. 75. 76. 77. 78.

Notes

believed to have been killed in the matanza of 1932. See Roque Dalton, El Salvador, San Salvador: Editorial Universitaria, 1979. U.S. Embassy San Salvador cable #01265, February 5, 1993. U.S. Embassy San Salvador cable, January 21, 1993. Ibid . . ., para. 5. Foreign Broadcast Information System (FBIS) January 13, 1993, Latin America 1989–1994. Provision for the Truth Commission was incorporated into the Mexico Agreements of April 1991 and amplified in the final comprehensive Chapultepec Accord. See “From Madness to Hope: the 12-Year War in El Salvador,” Report of the UN Truth Commission. The “ad hoc” commission was thus named because they could think of no better title that would avoid offending one protagonist or another. Goulding, Peacemonger. Former President of Colombia, Belisario Betancur, former Venezuelan Foreign Minister, Reinaldo Figueredo and Dean of the American College of Law, Thomas Buergenthal led the investigation and drafted the report. An analysis of Truth Commissions is found in Stanley Cohen, “State Crimes of Previous Regimes: Knowledge, Accountability, and the Policing of the Past,” Law and Social Inquiry, 20: 1, Winter 1995. New York Agreement Article II (1). Chapultepec Accord, Ch. 1, Article 3(A). Chapultepec Accord, Ch. 1, Article 3( J ). In his memoir of the peace process, Marrack Goulding the head of UN Peacekeeping, states that 103 officers were named for discharge or reassignment. The discrepancy can be explained by his inclusion of the Minister of Defense, General Ponce. In all U.S. Embassy cables, a number of 102 officers are given. Earlier that same day, the High Commission had learned of the “ad hoc” commission’s findings. Peter Romero’s note to author, September 9, 2011. Ibid. Author’s oral interview with Peter Romero, Bethesda, Maryland, December 8, 2003 Ibid. Romero’s note to author, September, 2011. Author’s oral interview with Romero. Ibid. Ibid. Romero’s conjecture is that General Ponce called the President after Romero’s departure. Romero himself did not call the President to let him know and the issue of the “ad hoc” commission was not raised until Aronson’s meeting with President Cristiani on October 1, 1992. “You [Peter Romero] have proved a key player in overcoming delays by both sides.” “Country Director’s Evaluation of Reporting,” Department of State cable #106021, April 8, 1993. Interview with Romero, December 8, 2003. Ibid. U.S. Embassy San Salvador cable, #02301, March 5, 1993. U.S. Embassy San Salvador cable, #10412, October 6, 1992. The change in government to President Clinton did not result in a change of Assistant Secretary of State for American Republics Affairs. Aronson remained for a while. U.S. Embassy San Salvador cable #10412. Ibid.

Notes

79. 80. 81. 82.

83. 84. 85. 86. 87. 88. 89. 90. 91. 92. 93.

94. 95. 96. 97. 98. 99. 100. 101. 102. 103.

104. 105.

106.

215

Ibid. Ibid. Interview with Romero. 25 officers were transferred to noncommand positions. 4 officers were discharged for disciplinary reasons. 19 officers were discharged for administrative reasons. 38 officers were placed on leave-with-pay status, pending completion of their time-inservice for retirement eligibility. This period was estimated as six months. In addition, 7 officers were appointed as military attaches to Salvadoran Embassies abroad. The Deputy Minister of Defense, Zelaya remained in active service until his retirement on March 1, 1993 because he had just lost his wife and two sisters at approximately the same time. See U.S. Embassy San Salvador cable #01610, February 17, 1993. Ibid. U. S. Embassy San Salvador cable #00494, January 16, 1993. Ibid. Ibid. Goulding, Peacemonger, p. 244. U.S. Embassy San Salvador cable #00494. Goulding, Peacemonger, p. 244. Goulding, Peacemonger, p. 245. Ibid. U.S. Embassy San Salvador cable #01610. The actual reason for not sending Goulding was the resumption of civil war in Angola and the need for his assessment of the situation on the ground prior to recommending the dispatch of UN Peacekeepers. Goulding had formerly been the British Ambassador to Angola. U.S. Embassy San Salvador cable #01941, February 25, 1993, para. 4. Ibid . . ., para. 5. Goulding, Peacemonger, p. 244. As part of the privatization policy, 51 percent of ANTEL stock was sold to domestic and international strategic partners in 1998. U.S. Embassy San Salvador cable #10412, October 6, 1992. Interview with Romero. Ibid. “From Madness to Hope: Report of the Commission on the Truth,” Chapter II (A). Ibid. The Truth Commission received more than 2,000 testimonies about violations of human rights involving more than 7,000 victims. It, therefore, focused on a smaller group of particularly important or representative cases. Margaret Popkin and Naomi Roht-Arriaza, “Truth as Justice: Investigatory Commissions in Latin America,” Law and Social Inquiry, 20.1 (Winter 1995). “From Madness to Hope,” Chapter IV.E (1), United Nations in El Salvador, p. 365. For a comprehensive review of the literature on the transition to democracy until the President elections in March 1994 see Richard Stahler-Sholk, “El Salvador’s Negotiated Transition: From Low-Intensity Conflict to Low-Intensity Democracy” Journal of Interamerican Studies & World Affairs, winter 1994. Vol. 36, Issue 4. Lawrence Michael Ladutke, Freedom of Expression in El Salvador: the Struggle for Human Rights and Democracy ( Jefferson, N. Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., Pub. 2004). James Dunkerley, The Pacification of Central America, Political Change in the Isthmus 1987–1993 (London: Verso Press, 1994), Appendix B.

216

Notes

Chapter 10 1.

2.

3.

4. 5. 6.

7. 8. 9.

10.

11.

12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21.

22. 23.

The survey was carried out in May 1992, four months after the Chapultepec Accord. Los salvadoreños ante los acuerdos finales de paz (San Salvador: UCA, Instituto Universitario de Opinión Publica [IUDOP] June 1992). “Los acuerdos de paz diez anos después: una mirada desde los ciudadanos,” José Miguel Cruz, IUDOP, Estudios Centroamericanas (ECA) 641 (March–April 2002): pp. 235–251. IUDOP survey of February 1992. This perception existed despite steady increase in GDP of 6 to 7.5 percent in the years 1992–1995. See IMF Annual Report on El Salvador for 1994. IUDOP survey, February 1992. Rebuilding War-Torn States: The Challenge of Post-Conflict Economic Reconstruction, Graciana del Castillo (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), p. 113. Ibid. In early 1993, the government introduced VAT at 10 percent, a Fiscal Crime Law to reduce tax evasion and a fiscal package that raised revenue equivalent to 2 percent of GDP. Ibid., p. 111. Del Castillo, “Implementation of Comprehensive Peace Agreements: Staying the Course in El Salvador,” Global Governance, 1 (1995): pp. 189–203. In concrete terms, many of those surveyed expected the peace accords to control the cost of living, create jobs, and provide social compensation programs for the neediest. See IUDOP report of June 1992. Unemployment had fallen from 13 percent in 1989, but its decrease was slow. Central Reserve Bank of El Salvador, Ministry of Finance, IMF Annual Report on El Salvador (1994). IUDOP survey of January 1995 showed that only 33 percent of those surveyed held a positive evaluation of the peace accords. This percentage rose in the subsequent survey of October 1995 to 43.3 percent due to an economic stimulation package, but it would require six more years before a clear majority of Salvadorans surveyed held positive evaluation of the economic consequences of the peace accords. Rubén Zamora, “De la experiencia Salvadoreña,” p. 7. Graciana del Castillo, “Post-Conflict Reconstruction and the Challenge to International Organizations: The Case of El Salvador,” World Development, 29: 12 (1995). The Mexico Agreement, Chapter V: Economic and Social Questions. Article 1. United Nations in El Salvador. Rubén Zamora, “De la experiencia Salvadoreña,” p. 9. De Soto, “Ending Violent Conflict,” p. 380. Author’s interview with Salvador Samayoa, San Salvador, June 5, 2008. De Soto, “Ending Violent Conflict,” p. 381. Ibid. Goulding, Peacemonger, p. 239. In his analysis of the peace negotiations, Alvaro de Soto regrets that he did not initiate more discussion on socio-economic issues. See, “Ending Violent Conflict,” p. 381. Gracianna del Castillo oral interview with author, New York, March 3, 2004. De Soto had a reputation for great skill as a negotiator of political issues. However, he was known to hold less interest and expertise on socio-economic matters. Del Castillo, “Post-Conflict Reconstruction,” 29:12. “The current land-holding situation in the conflict zones shall be respected until a satisfactory legal solution for the definitive land-holding regime is arrived at.” The New York Agreement, September 25, 1991.

Notes

24.

25. 26. 27. 28.

29.

30. 31. 32.

33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38.

39.

40. 41.

217

“The Government of El Salvador shall transfer rural farmland that has not yet been transferred under articles 105 and 267 of the Constitution . . . The Government . . . shall seek to acquire and transfer through the Land Bank lands voluntarily offered for sale by their owners. Once the said lands are acquired they shall be transferred to beneficiaries of the agrarian reform.” Chapultepec Accords, Chapter V, Article 2(A) (C). Zamora, “Introducción,” De la experiencia Salvadoreña, p. 9. Conference on the Implementation of the Peace Accords, Centro para los estudios democráticos (CEDEM), San Salvador: August 28, 1993. Chapultepec Accord, Ch. V Article 2 (E). Under the Chapultepec Accords, the government had agreed to purchase private land on two conditions: that the seller hold clear title and that the sale be made to identifiable former combatants. In support of this, an inventory should be drawn up of legitimate land for sale, and a list composed of ex-FMLN and ESAF combatants. The preparation of those lists was cumbersome and lengthy. The FMLN did not have the administrative staff to undertake it and ONUSAL had only a small handful of experts who could assist in the process. It became clear that the work of identifying both land and good faith purchasers was not going to be completed by October 31, 1992, the date agreed upon for the final demobilization of the FMLN. The issue was made more complicated by the need for purchasers to identify where they wanted to purchase land. Government lands were plentiful in the coastal areas, but ex-FMLN came from the mountainous region, bordering Honduras, and sought land near their homes. In that area, only small parcels held by impoverished farmers was available. The Salvadoran Land Reform Institute (ISTA) accepted that the FMLN inventory presented in March 1992 provided a baseline for further negotiation. However, 60 percent of the land identified was considered too small to be included, because the average size was less than 10 manzanas (13.4 acres). See U.S. Embassy San Salvador cable #03467, March 27, 1992. New York Agreement, Chapter VII (1) United Nations in El Salvador, p. 161. Chapultepec Accord, Chapter V (3) (A) United Nations in El Salvador, p. 207. To compensate for inadequate available land, the government committed to selling state-owned farmland and large estates previously identified in the Agrarian Reform program of 1980. U.S. Embassy San Salvador cable #02958, March 14, 1992. U.S. Embassy San Salvador cable #07820, July 29, 1992. Goulding, Peacemonger, p. 242. Ibid. Goulding, Yale–UN Oral History Project, p. 73. Summary of UN proposals relating to land transfers agreed to on October 13, 1992 and published 25 May, 1993, in Secretary General’s report to the Security Council, S25812/Add.2, United Nations in El Salvador, pp. 443–447. (Hereafter known as ‘The Land Transfers Agreement.’) A total of $45 million dollars was appropriated to cover the 1st phase from October 1992 to January 1993. An additional $12 million was made available for the 2nd phase from February to April 1993. A 3rd phase to complete the land distribution was contemplated, but a further $85 million was needed. See, the Land Transfers Agreement, Annex II. U.S. Embassy San Salvador cable #04718, para. 18. Gene Palumbo, “The Right Wins Big: ARENA at the Controls, for Now,” Commonweal, 121:12 ( June 17, 1994).

218 42.

43. 44.

45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52.

53. 54. 55.

56. 57. 58. 59.

60. 61.

Notes

The government’s explanation for the snail’s pace in distributing land and confirming title to land was the failure of combatants and squatters to produce legal documents, or appear in person to sign deeds to settle their property. Also, the laborious legal and bureaucratic process required to verify the legitimacy of claims, to establish clear title, and to negotiate fair market prices further delayed the process. Handal and Jovel were convinced that government bureaucrats had been instructed to delay, if not defeat efforts to purchase land in order to damage the FMLN politically. According to them, the ex-Vice Minister of Agriculture, Mauricio Salazar, had been appointed coordinator of Land Issues within the Chapultepec Accords with instructions to delay resolution of the land problems. U.S. Embassy San Salvador cable #07820, July 29, 1992, para. 6. Ibid. A March 23, 1992 pledging conference resulted in the commitment of $800 million to be disbursed over two years. However, turning pledges into financial transfers was problematic with preference given for the financing of particular development projects over general government administrative costs. U.S. Embassy San Salvador cable #01492, February 12, 1993. U.S. Embassy San Salvador cable #04718. Ibid. Handal, Yale–UN Oral History Project. U.S. Embassy San Salvador cable #04718, analyzes Schafik Handal’s letter to Assistant Secretary Aronson of April 16, 1992. Ibid . . ., para. 20. Reintegration projects included technical training, micro-enterprise development, and housing programs. See del Castillo, “Post-Conflict Reconstruction,” 29.12. Del Castillo, “Obstacles to Peacebuilding,” Foreign Policy 94: Spring 1994. Graciana del Castillo, Economic Reconstruction in Post- Conflict Transitions: Lessons for the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Organization for Economic Co- operation and Development, Working Paper No. 228, December 1, 2003, p. 15. Author’s interview with Graciana del Castillo, New York City, March 3, 2004. Tom Diaz, No Boundaries: Transnational Latino Gangs and American Law Enforcement (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2009). p. 21. “Violencia, Inseguridad Ciudadana y Las Maniobras de las Elites: La dinámica de la reforma policial en El Salvador,” José Miguel Cruz, Seguridad y Reforma Policial en Las Américas: Experiencias y Desafíos, eds. Lucia Dammert & John Bailey, Mexico D.F.: Siglo XXI Editores (2005), pp. 241–243. Statement by Acting State Department Spokesman, Joseph Snyder, June 10, 1993. U.S. Department of State Dispatch, Vol. 4:25. Report of the ONUSAL Human Rights Division for the period from 1 February to 30 April 1993. United Nations in El Salvador, p. 467. Gene Palumbo, “Threats, Attack El Salvador Arouse Fears that the Death Squads are Back,” National Catholic Reporter, 30:33, July 1, 1994. Ibid. Archbishop Rivera y Damas said that letters implicating officials at the army garrison in the eastern city of Cojutepeque were found on the murdered corpse of former army sergeant Jose Rodriguez. Ibid. UN Secretary General Boutros Boutros Ghali report on the implementation of the recommendations of the Commission on the Truth, S/26581, 14 October, 1993. The United Nations in El Salvador, pp. 480–491.

Notes

62.

63. 64. 65.

66. 67.

68.

69.

70. 71. 72. 73. 74.

75.

76.

77.

78. 79.

219

Jose Miguel Cruz, “The Peace Accords Ten Years later: A Citizens’ Perspective” The Salvador’s Democratic Transition Ten Years After the Peace Accords, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, Washington, D.C. (2003) p. 23. Ibid. Ibid . . ., pp. 28–30 Upon assuming the presidency, Cristiani had a three-pronged policy: negotiate an end to the civil war, reduce poverty, and introduce the structural adjustment program. See del Castillo World Development 29:12, 1972. John Williamson ed. Latin American Adjustment: How Much has Happened? (Washington, D.C.: Institute for International Economics, 1990). The value of the colon was depreciated in real terms by 20 percent in 1993, increasing the value of Salvadoran exports, but increasing the cost of imports. Del Castillo, “Post Conflict Reconstruction.” Michael W. Foley, George R. Vickers & Geoff Thale, Land, Peace, and Participation: The Development of Post-War Agricultural Policy in El Salvador and the Role of the World Bank (Washington, D.C.: Washington Office on Latin America, June 1997), p. 4. Ibid . . ., p. 5 citing Ayuda de Memoria: el Salvador Proyecto de Tierra y Servicios al Agro: Misión de Preparación y Proyecto de Reforma e Inversión Sectorial Agropecuaria, Misión de Supervisión. Memorandum of the World Bank, October 28, 1994. de Soto & del Castillo, “Obstacles to Peacebuilding,” pp. 69–73. Del Castillo, Rebuilding, pp. 114–115. Ibid. Ibid . . ., pp. 7–8. The challenge of nominating candidates for government jobs was demonstrated in May 1992 when the FMLN members withdrew from COPAZ to protest the attack on their bodyguard, Vladimir Flores. During their seven-day absence from deliberations within COPAZ, the other members forwarded a slate of three nominations for director of the new police force to the President. The FMLN expressed its displeasure at COPAZ’s decision to nominate candidates without their participation, but swiftly returned to COPAZ on May 27 to ensure that their voice was heard on all subsequent nominations. U.S. Embassy cable, #05763, May 30, 1992. In a March 1992 meeting with ONUSAL, President Cristiani had to stop the snickering about the uselessness of COPAZ. He justified their slowness to act on grounds that “with COPAZ nothing happens quickly . . . that’s the price of democracy.” U.S. Embassy San Salvador cable #02485, March 4, 1992. Following the UN Director for Peacekeeping, Marrack Goulding’s visit to El Salvador in August 1992, ONUSAL’s director Iqbal Riza briefed the Diplomatic Corps and admitted that COPAZ was not “working well, and has been the cause of many problems in complying with the peace accords.” U.S. Embassy San Salvador cable #08771, August 28, 1992. The San Jose agreement to create a UN commission to examine human rights violations in El Salvador, ratified in the Mexico City Agreement, April 27, 1991, A/46/533-S/32130. See Chapter 5 above. For nearly a month prior to the publication of the report, the High Command had been grappling with the unresolved issues of the “ad hoc” commission report, as well as the fallout from the Truth Commission. U.S. Embassy San Salvador cable #03305, April 1, 1993. U.S. Embassy San Salvador cable #02636, March 15, 1993 and U.S. Embassy San Salvador cable #03305. FMLN Press Communiqué and Press Conference, March 15, 1993 reported in U.S. Embassy San Salvador cable #02659, March 15, 1993.

220

Notes

80.

81. 82. 83. 84. 85. 86.

87.

88. 89. 90. 91. 92. 93.

94. 95. 96.

97.

98.

99. 100.

“Violence against Opponents by the FMLN,” UN Truth Commission Report, Chapter IV E.1, United Nations in El Salvador, pp. 365–368. The Truth Commission Report recommended that the civilians and members of the FMLN Command named in the report “be disqualified from holding any public post or office for a period of not less than 10 years, and should be disqualified permanently from any activity related to public security or national defense.” Chapter V, Article 3.I (C), United Nations in El Salvador, p. 380. U.S. Mission to the United Nation cable #01283, March 16, 1993. “The Threat to Sovereignty and the Destruction of the State,” Ministry of Defense of El Salvador, March 1, 1993. Ibid. U.S. Embassy San Salvador cable #02636. Ibid. After the publication of the UN Truth Commission report on March 15, the U.S. Embassy warned Washington of sullenness turning to anger among the High Command and Battalion commanders. These feelings were directed toward U.S. political officers, as well as the MILGROUP attached to the Embassy. Charge d’Affaires, Romero sought restoration of U.S. funding in order to maintain influence with ESAF. This was restored later in 1993. Text of the broadcast by General Rene Emilio Ponce, Minister of Defense, delivered March 23, 1993 and reported in U.S. Embassy San Salvador cable #03012, March 25, 1993. Cristiani meeting with Congressman Cass Ballenger (R-N.C.), March 22, 1993 reported in U.S. Embassy San Salvador cable #02912, March 23, 1993. U.S. Embassy San Salvador cable, # 03012. U.S. Embassy San Salvador cable, #03305. U.S. Embassy San Salvador cable, #03012. Ibid . . ., para. 3. ARENA President, Calderon Sol declared the President’s strong preference for a multiparty agreement on the amnesty. See U.S. Embassy San Salvador cable #02873, March 20, 1993. Ibid. FMLN press communiqué March 8, 1993 in U.S. Embassy San Salvador cable #02393, March 9, 1993. Within the Salvadoran media, public debate focused on the need to reform the judicial system as well as the issue of an amnesty. Both issues were given more time than the Truth Commission’s condemnation of ESAF’s High Command. U.S. Embassy San Salvador cable #02865, March 19, 1993. General Amnesty Law for the Consolidation of Peace, March 20, 1993 reported to the Organization of American States Permanent Council, March 31, 1993. State Department cable #096229, March 31, 1993. Cristiani interpreted the phrase “ample measures for national reconciliation” as approval for an absolute amnesty. When all 15 members of COPAZ signed the document, he interpreted their support for an amnesty as the best step to prevent a continuation of recriminations, counter-accusations, and perhaps violence. COPAZ document of January 23, 1992 sent by fax to the Department of State. See U.S. Embassy San Salvador cable #03880, April 16, 1993. Ibid. US Embassy political officer, Philip Chicola analyzed the emergence of this new nationalist spirit in response to the publication of the UN’s Truth Commission. See U.S. Embassy San Salvador cable #03066, March 25, 1993, para.13.

Notes

101.

102. 103. 104.

105.

106. 107.

108. 109.

110. 111. 112. 113. 114.

115. 116.

117. 118.

119. 120.

221

The prominent legal activist, Lic. Feliz Ulloa, a sharp critic of the Supreme Court President, argued that no way existed to compel the Supreme Court magistrates to resign against their will. The majority of jurists believed that Gutierrez Castro and his colleagues on the Supreme Court would serve out their terms until June 1994. Ibid., paras. 12–13. U.S. Embassy San Salvador cable #04622, May 10, 1993, para. 5. Report of the Commission on the Truth, Chapter V (D) (A). United Nations in El Salvador, p. 380. “The judiciary was weakened as it fell victim to intimidation and the foundations were laid for its corruption; since it had never enjoyed genuine institutional independence from the legislative and executive branches, its ineffectiveness steadily increased until it became, through its inaction or its appalling submissiveness, a factor which contributed to the tragedy suffered by the country.” Report of the Commission on the Truth, Chapter V (1) United Nations in El Salvador, p. 378. U.S. Embassy cable #03066, para. 3. The only exception to the Amnesty Law was the three Salvadoran hit-men who had murdered U.S. labor advisors in Mexico City in 1982. Ibid. “Judges of the Supreme Court of Justice shall be elected by the Legislative Assembly for a term of nine years, with one-third of the judges coming up for renewal every three years.” The Mexico Agreement, Article 11 (1)(a), amending Article 186 of the Constitution of the Republic of El Salvador, United Nations in El Salvador, p. 170. Ibid., p. 4. Supreme Court President, Gutierrez Castro campaigned for votes. Justice Delayed: the Slow Pace of Judicial Reform in El Salvador, Margaret Popkin, Jack Spence and George Vickers (Cambridge, MA : Washington Office on Latin America, December 1994), p. 6. Justice Delayed, p. 5. Mexico Agreement Article 11 (1) (c) and Chapultepec Accord Chapter III (2) (A-C). Chapultepec Accord, Chapter III (2) (C). “Public Funding” included law enforcement, prisons, the judiciary as well as the Ombudsman for Human Rights. After 35 days in office, the newly appointed Human Rights Ombudsman, Carlos Molina Fonseca had received no funding from the Government and no budget had been approved by the Legislative Assembly. See U.S. Embassy San Salvador cable #03739, April 3, 1992. Justice Delayed, p. 13. Report of the ONUSAL Human Rights Division for the period 1 February to 30 April 1993, United Nations in El Salvador, pp. 466–471. Report of the ONUSAL Human Rights Division for the period 1 May to 31 July 1993, United Nations in El Salvador, pp. 476–480. USAID did not contribute to the formation of the Ombudsman’s office. Introductory Remarks to the International conference comparing the Salvadoran and Guatemalan experiences. “De la experiencia Salvadoreña a la esperanza Guatemalteca,” FLACSO January 14–15, 1997, pp. 9–10. Del Castillo, “Implementation of Comprehensive Peace Agreements:” The result was a pluralized and politicized judiciary as each party supported its candidates to the bench. Charles T. Call, “Democratisation, War and State-Building: Constructing the Rule of Law in El Salvador,” Journal of Latin American Studies, 35: (2003) 853 and 859.

222

Notes

121.

122. 123. 124. 125. 126. 127. 128.

Jose Miguel Cruz, “The Peace Accords Ten Years Later: A Citizens’ Perspective,” The essay was based on opinion surveys carried out by IUDOP in 1993 and 1996. El Salvador’s Democratic Transition, p. 29. William D. Stanley, Protectors or Perpetrators: The Institutional crisis of the Salvadoran Civilian Police, Washington, D.C. (1996). “Encuesta de evaluación del año 2001,” IUDOP (San Salvador: UCA, 2001). The principal funding agencies were under the auspices of the European Economic Community and the UN Development Program. Author’s interview with Iqbal Riza, ONUSAL director, January 14, 2005. “El Salvador,” Military Technology World Defence Almanac, Bonn: Wehr & Wissen, 60: 2005. “Research on El Salvador,” Standard & Poor’s, New York: April 11, 2002.

Epilogue 1.

2. 3.

4. 5.

6. 7.

8. 9.

10. 11. 12.

Globally, 18 nations, for which data is available, show a Gini index of 52 or higher. 11 are found in sub-Saharan Africa, seven are found in Latin America. See “Inequality in Latin America and the Caribbean: Breaking with History?” World Bank, Washington, D.C. (2006). “Cultura política, capital social e inseguridad ciudadana,” Las Instituciones Democráticas, FUSADES, San Salvador, August 2009, p. 63. Interview with Juana de Jesus Rivas, March 4, 2008. Juana’s husband emigrated in 1996, leaving her with two young daughters. He never reappeared or sent money home. She was left with debts on their house and car. Emotionally and physically distraught, she was hospitalized and upon recovery had to raise $1,800 to keep her home. She only had $100. With the help of loans from a micro-credit agency, she began a small enterprise cooking food for the workers on local construction sites. With these loans she succeeded in paying off her debt and supporting two daughters, both of whom completed Secondary School. FUSADES survey of business leaders, May 2010, reported in La Prensa Grafica. www.laprensagrafica.com Since 2006, the Fiscalía General de la Republica reports that over 16,000 extortion cases have been reported, representing 8.3 cases per day. El Nuevo Diario, April 25, 2011. www.end.com.ni/internacionales Centro de investigación sobre opinión pública Salvadoreña (CIOPS) public opinion poll conducted April 16–18, 2010. http://ciops.utec.edu.sv Mara is the Central American slang for “gang” derived from marabunta, a Spanish word for a fierce army of ants. Leaders of Salvadoran youth gangs operating in Los Angeles in the 1980s assumed the slang mara, as well as identification of particular gangs. http://www.rree.gob.sv/ May 10, 2010. Judge Carlos Castrasena conference at the Brookings Institution, May 20, 2011. The number of 25,000 is far less than the 50,000 maras given by Juan José Dalton in the Salvadoran newspaper, El País, in September 10, 2009. See also Diaz, No Boundaries: (2009). Fear of the maras is concentrated principally in San Salvador and large municipal towns, leaving the countryside relatively peaceful. Instituciones Democráticas, pp. 62–67. Author’s interview with Lic. Jorge Zablah-Touche, member of the Board of Trustees, FUSDADES, March 5, 2008. CIOPS, April 2010.

Notes

13.

14.

15. 16. 17. 18. 19.

20. 21. 22.

23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28.

29.

30. 31. 32. 33. 34.

35. 36.

37. 38.

223

The World Bank Governance indicators demonstrated that citizens in El Salvador show a negative trust in the police by ⫺7.39 percent. This contrasts with negative trust of ⫺19.74 percent in Guatemala, but positive trust of 0.2 percent in Honduras. www.worldbank.org/wbi/governance “Human Development Report for Central America 2009–1010: Opening Spaces to Citizen Security and Human Development.” UNDP, June 2010. www.idhacabrirespaciosalaseguridad.org.co CIOPS survey, February 8, 2011. Author’s interview with the late Oscar Edmundo Bonilla, President of the Consejo Nacional de Seguridad Pública, San Salvador, March 5, 2008. www.laprensagrafica.com April 10, 2010. Instituciones Democráticas, p. 65. “Las conquistas alcanzadas hay que cuidarlas y consolidarlas” Salvador Sánchez-Ceren speech to the 19th International Book Fair, University of Havana, Cuba, February 17, 2010. www.sanchezceren.com/index.php?option=com Author’s interview with Salvadoran Ambassador Francisco Altschul, the Brookings Institution, May 20, 2011. Meeting with Alejandro Segovia, Secretario Técnico del Presidente Funes, InterAmerican Dialogue, Washington, D.C., April 23, 2010. Funes was a TV personality with a national following. He shared the FMLN’s philosophy, but was not a party member until the last few months of the presidential campaign. In August 2011, Funes held 65 percent popularity approval. See Economist Intelligence Unit, Country Report, El Salvador, August 9, 2011. Author’s interview with Foreign Minister Hugo Martinez Bonilla, Washington, D.C.: May 11, 2011. Ibid. Instituciones Democráticas, p. 38. Ibid. p. 39. Ibid. Criticism of the National Council exists regarding its compliance to special interests in the Executive Branch, the legislative branch, and the business sector. Its capacity to be considered independent has not yet been established. Human Development Report for Central America 2009—1010: Opening Spaces to Citizen Security and Human Development. UNDP, June 2010. www.idhacabrirespaciosalaseguridad.org.co CIOPS survey, February 2011. U.S. Department of State, 2011 Human Rights Report for El Salvador. www.state. gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2011 Comisión Nacional para la Consolidación de la Paz created in 1991, as part of the several peace accords. Archbishop José Luis Escobar Alas, Los Angeles Times, June 24, 2010. Out of a population of 7.3 million in 2010, 2.3 million Salvadorans lived in the United States. See President Funes Speech to the Council of the Americas Annual Meeting, Washington, D.C.: May 11, 2011. www.counciloftheamericas.org/publications UNDP Report, June 2010. The U.S. government has extended the Temporary Protective Status for El Salvador on a regular basis in recognition of the government’s close ties to the U.S. It is expected that TPS will be extended further in September 2010. CIOPS survey, February 2011. Interamerican Development Bank’s compilation of data on democratic systems. www.iadb.org/datagob

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Newspaper Articles Aronson, Bernard, “Peace in El Salvador” Editorial Page, Washington Post, October 12, 1990. “Guerillas Call End to Offensive in El Salvador” The Washington Post, December 30, 1990. “Salvador: Doing the Right Thing,” Editorial, Boston Globe, April 3, 1990. Alan White, Richard, “El Salvador Between Two Fires,” America, New York, November 1, 1980. Brackley Dean, SJ, “Beyond Elections in El Salvador,” America, Vol. 171, Issue 7, September 17, 1994.

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G. Weakland, Rembert, Archbishop of Milwaukee, “El Salvador Revisited” America, Vol. 170, Issue 5, February 1994. Hockstader, Lee, “Our Man in El Salvador, Upbeat Amid the Crisis: Ambassador William Walker Defending U.S. Policy in an Anguished Time,” Washington Post, December 19, 1989. ———, “Talking Points,” The Boston Phoenix, May 31–June 7, 2001. Hovey, Graham,“U.S. Calls Coup Leaders Moderate and New Direction ‘Encouraging’,” The New York Times, October 20, 1979, A10. Kramer, Michael, “Anger, Bluff—and Cooperation,” Time Inc., June 4, 1990. “Pouring Money down a Bad Hole,” Newsweek, November 19, 1990. L. Connor, James, SJ, “El Salvador’s Agony and U.S. Policies,” America, April 26, 1980. LeMoyne, James, “Out of the Jungle: In El Salvador, Rebels with a New Cause,” New York Times Magazine, February 9, 1992. Millman, Joel, “El Salvador’s Army: a Force Unto Itself,” The New York Times Magazine, December 10, 1989. Moran, Ted, “Land of Massacres,” America, November 3, 1979, 246 and “Hoping Past Hope” America March 22, 1980. Palumbo, Gene, “The Right Wins Big: ARENA at the Controls, for Now,” Commonweal, Vol. 121. Issue 12, June 17, 1994. ———, “Threats, Attack El Salvador Arouse Fears that the Death Squads are Back,” National Catholic Reporter, 30:33, July 1, 1994. Proceso, No. 565 September, 1987 Mexico City, Mexico. Proceso, No. 681, November 20, 1989. Proceso, No. 647 October 23, 1989. Proceso, No. 692, February 5, 1990. S. Toolan, David, “Life after Death in El Salvador: an interview with John Guiliano,” America, Vol. 169. Issue 18, December 4, 1993. ———, “El Salvador: the More it Change” editorial, America, Vol. 166, Issue 11, April 4, 1992. Salvador Military Deposes President to “Restore Order,” The New York Times, October 16, 1979, A1. Santiago, Daniel, SJ, “The Peace Process in El Salvador: (A Hermeneutic of Suspicion)” America, Vol. 166, Issue 1, January 4, 1992. Schulz, William F. “Joe Moakley’s Legacy is Global Justice,” The Boston Herald, December 22, 2008. ———, “No Other Event Has Affected My Life as the Jesuit Murders Have,” Boston Herald, December 22, 2008. “Senator Dodd asks Conditions on Salvador Aid” San Francisco Chronicle, February 9, 1990. Smolowe, Jill, “Conversations with Two Foes,” Time Inc. October 2, 1989. Ventura, Miguel, “El Salvador: the Church of the Poor and the Revolution,” Challenge, Vol. 1:2 (1990). U.S. Foreign Broadcasting Information Service

FBIS–SOV–89, April 4 and April 5, 1989. FBIS (Latin America) January 13, 1993. Gorbachev speech to the Cuban National Assembly, April 4, 1989. FBIS–SOV, April 5, 1989. Moscow Radio, January 3, 1990, FBIS–SOV, Jan. 4, 1990.

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INDEX Abrams, Elliot, 65, 68 “Ad hoc” commission, 126–127, 132, 138–143, 146, 154–156, 214, 219 Alarcón, Ricardo (Cuban Permanent Representative to the UN), 77 Alianza Republicana Nacional (ARENA), 3, 10–12, 19, 29, 47, 53–58, 69, 94, 105, 120, 123, 125–126, 140–142, 146–147, 151–159, 163, 166–167, 171, 175, 188–189, 195, 207, 211, 217, 220 Antonini, Blanca, 127, 209, 211 Arcos, Cresencio, 67–68, 74, 182, 193, 196, 199 Arias Peace Plan, 102 Aronson, Bernard W., 6, 9–10, 64–78, 117, 121–125, 139–140, 175–176, 192–196, 199, 207, 210, 214, 218 Arria, Diego, 5, 174, 203, 207, 210 Atlacatl batallón, 12, 67, 70, 73, 133, 193 Ayaguelo church mediation, 50, 184 Baena Soares, Joao Clemente (OAS Secretary General), 3, 101–103, 111 Baker, James, 9–10, 13, 61–70, 73–77, 88, 90, 95, 104, 124, 129, 191–193, 196, 199, 211 Barrios, General Gerardo (President of El Salvador), 17, 179 Belevan, Harry, 101–102 Bessmertnykh, Aleksandr A., 75–77, 124, 196 BIRIS (rapid deployment infantry battalions), 129, 133–134, 151 Boutros Boutros-Ghali (UN Secretary General), 128, 141, 150, 175, 197, 211, 218

Bush, President George H. W., 24, 27, 51, 61–69, 72, 74, 79, 85, 87, 93, 104, 109, 190–192, 196, 200–201, 210 Canas, Robert, 35, 76, 179–182, 196, 209 Castro, Fidel, 35–36, 40–42, 65, 80–93, 124, 158, 182–183, 192, 198–201, 210, 221 Cayetano Carpio, Salvador, 20, 31, 33, 182 Cerezo, Vinicio (President of Guatemala), 5, 25, 180 Chapultepec Accords, 78, 95, 129–139, 143–149, 153–154, 159–164, 203, 211–218, 221 Chávez Mena, Fidel, 76, 124, 196 COMADRES, 3, 37 Comisión Nacional para la Consolidación de la Paz (COPAZ), 30, 51, 127, 131–132, 136, 143, 146, 153–154, 157, 159, 169, 187, 211, 219 Contadora Group, 2–6, 9, 49, 92, 97–103, 113, 173–174, 202–203 CONTRAS, 5, 61–69, 80, 82, 86–87, 92, 194, 199 COPAZ, 30, 51, 127, 131–132, 136, 143, 146, 153–154, 157, 159, 169, 187, 211, 219–220 Cristiani Burkard, Alfredo (President of El Salvador), 3, 6, 8, 10, 13, 19, 22, 46, 49, 53, 57, 59, 67–82, 89–91, 94–98, 104–110, 113–114, 117–129, 133–142, 147, 149, 152–160, 170–171, 175–181, 189, 192–196, 204–205, 208–214, 219–220

242

Index

D’Aubuisson, Roberto, 3, 12, 15, 50, 53–57, 69, 94, 186–189, 193–194 De Sepúlveda, Bernardo (Mexican Foreign Minister), 92–93 De Soto, Alvaro, 3, 6–7, 13, 41–45, 74, 77, 89, 95, 100–129, 138, 141, 147–148, 153, 168, 173, 175, 181, 185, 196–197, 202–213, 216, 219 Declaraciónde San Isidro de Coronado, December 1989, 74, 89, 100, 110, 112, 114, 199, 202, 206 Del Castillo, Graciana, 149–153, 211, 216–219, 221 DeMoss, Deborah, 68–69, 193 Dockery, Robert, 69 Dodd, Christopher (U.S. Senator), 69, 74, 114, 196, 205 Duarte, José Napoleón (President of El Salvador), 5–6, 19–24, 27, 33, 37–40, 48–58, 62–63, 67, 72–73, 80, 92, 94, 103–105, 126, 170, 174, 179–181, 186–189, 192, 194, 200, 205, 209 Dubinin, Yuriy (Soviet Ambassador to the U.S.), 66, 192 Ellacuria, Ignacio S.J., 10, 51–54, 155, 176, 187–188, 194 Escobar Galindo, David, 51, 123, 175, 179, 188, 190, 204, 211 Esquipulas I and II Accords, 6, 88–99, 104, 111–112, 180, 196, 202, 203, 206 Frente Democratica Revolucionaria (FDR), 1, 3, 5–6, 12, 29–30, 34–36, 39–44, 52–54, 58, 74–81, 91–97, 104–105, 109–110, 125, 132, 136–137, 143, 147, 174, 176, 182, 184, 189, 200–201, 205, 210, 225 Frente Farabundo Martí de Liberacion Nacional (FMLN), 1, 2–16, 19, 29–54, 57–82, 85–138, 141–158, 163, 166–171, 174–179, 182–186, 189, 194–197, 200–213, 217–220, 223 Fundación Salvadoreña para el Desarrollo Económico y Social (FUSADES), 39, 47, 49, 58–60, 169, 184, 186, 190, 222

Gonzalez, Felipe (Spanish Prime Minister), 127 Gorbachev, Mikhail, 41, 61–66, 74, 79–91, 95, 104, 117, 184, 191, 198–200, 207 Goulding, Sir Marrack, 121, 128, 141, 148–149, 183, 209–217, 219 Gutierrez Castro, Mauricio (Chief Justice of the Supreme Court), 158, 221 Hampson, Fen Osler, 4, 7, 173, 175 Handal, Schafik, 6, 20–21, 30–36, 43–46, 51, 80–81, 88–90, 110–113, 118, 125–126, 135–138, 148–151, 157, 175, 181, 184–185, 197–202, 205–213, 218 Helms, Jesse (U.S. Senator), 68–69, 140, 193 Hernández, General Maximiliano (President of El Salvador), 18, 23, 178 immigration, 91–92, 164, 166–167, 172, 196 Instituto Universitario de Opinion Público (IUDOP), 152, 160, 216, 222 Jesuit Community, 1, 10, 47–54, 119, 137–138, 188 Jovel, Francisco, 136–137 Kerry, John (U.S. Senator), 72, 74 Lajous, Roberta, 201 Las Palmas church mediation, 40, 50 Lederach, John Paul, 12, 47, 174, 176, 186, 212 Mara gangs, 165–172, 222 Martin Baro, Ignacio S. J., 51, 180–181, 186–187 Martinez Menéndez, Ana Guadalupe, 31–32, 181 McAward, John, 27 McCall, Richard, 76 McGovern, Jim (U.S. Congressman), 54 Mexican government, 81, 90–95, 107 Moakley, Joseph “Joe” (U.S. Congressman), 53–54, 61, 75–76, 119, 188, 196

Index

Montano, Jorge (Mexican Ambassador), 91–94, 173, 182, 200–201, 225 Moreno, Padre Rafael (FMLN Observer at the UN), 111, 114 Montgomery, Tommie Sue, 18, 178–182, 186–189, 204–213 New York meetings, September 1991–94, 95, 116, 124–127, 131, 148–149, 185, 211–214 Nikken, Pedro, 107, 204 O’Connell, Janice, 69 O’Donovan, Leo S. J., 72 Oficina de las Naciones Unidas en Centro America (ONUCA), 97, 99, 103–104 Oficina de la Naciones Unidas en El Salvador (ONUSAL), 7, 100, 104, 120, 133–135, 141, 143, 149–153, 159–161, 185, 202, 204, 208, 213, 217–222 Ombudsman for Human Rights in El Salvador, 8, 116, 121, 151, 153, 158–159, 221 ORDEN, 21–23, 26, 37, 39, 153, 188 Organization of American States (OAS), 2, 3, 9, 98–106, 111–112, 206, 217 Ortega, Daniel (Nicaraguan President), 41, 83, 86–90, 103, 199 Paige, Jeffrey, 18–19, 178, 186 Partido de Conciliación Nacional (PCN), 20, 22 Partido Demócrata Cristiana (PDC), 20–24, 30, 33–34, 48, 55, 73, 76, 137–139, 195–196, 204 Pavlov, Yuri, 65, 84–85, 192, 198–200 Perez de Cuellar, Javier (UN Secretary General), 13, 75–78, 93, 95, 97, 100–104, 109, 112–115, 122, 124, 127–128, 181, 197, 203–207, 211 Pickering, Thomas R. (U.S. Permanent Representative to the UN), 69, 75–78, 94, 114, 117, 122, 124, 127, 196, 207, 209–210 Policía Nacional Civil (PNC), 125, 133, 135, 153, 212–213 Ponce, René Emilio, General, 54, 133–135, 139–142, 155–157, 194–195, 212, 214, 220

243

Quayle, Dan (U.S. Vice President), 27, 69, 193, 209 Rangel, Beatrice, 183 Radio Venceremos, 34, 115, 174, 185 Remittances, 164, 170 Rivera Damas, Arturo, Archbishop of El Salvador, 50, 151 Riza, Iqbal (Director of ONUSAL), 7, 104, 141, 175, 185, 204, 219, 222 Rodríguez, Abraham (Head of “ad hoc” commission), 139, 188 Rodríguez, Oscar, Archbishop of Honduras, 52 Romero, Peter (U.S. Charge d’affaires), 73, 76, 127, 139–142, 150–151, 194–196, 211–215, 220 Romero y Galdamez, Oscar, Archbishop of El Salvador, 15, 32, 50 Rosa Chávez, Gregorio, AuxiliaryBishop of San Salvador, 51, 76, 196 Samayoa, Salvador, 33, 36, 41–46, 79, 90–91, 109–114, 125, 171, 183–186, 197, 200–201, 205–211, 216 Sánchez Ceren, Salvador (alias Leonel González) (El Salvador’s Vice President, 2009–present), 31, 35–37, 167, 181–182, 211 Sancho Castañeda, Eduardo (alias Ferman Cienfuegos), 31, 35, 45 San Jose Agreement, July 1990, 45–46, 100, 116–119, 154, 219 Santamaria, Oscar, 123, 211 Scowcroft, Brent (U.S. National Security Director), 63–64, 87, 192, 199 Shevardnadze, Eduard, 64, 66, 87–90, 192, 199 Shultz, George, 5, 62, 65, 174, 191 Socorro Jurídico (Human Rights office), 24 Solana, Fernando (Mexican Foreign Minister), 93 Tandona, 24, 47, 123, 139–142, 180, 189, 195 Temporary Protective Status (TPS), 171, 223 Texier, Philippe, 7 Tutwiler, Margaret, 67–68

244

Index

United Nations (UN), 2–13, 30, 35–37, 41–46, 54, 61–64, 70–77, 86, 89–138, 141–143, 146–161, 168, 173–190, 193–222 UN Commission on the Truth in El Salvador (UN Truth Commission), 7–8, 45, 54, 72, 131–132, 138, 142–143, 146–147, 154–158, 161, 175, 177, 185, 188, 212–215, 219–220 UN Commission for Refugees (UNHCR), 37 UN Security Council Resolution 637, July 1989, 8, 99–100, 112, 114, 175, 193, 202 Ungo, Guillermo Manuel, 20, 35, 91, 109, 180, 184, 200, 205 University of Central America (UCA), 9–10, 18, 51–54, 70, 73, 75, 152, 176, 180, 186–187 Universidad Nacional de El Salvador, 21, 30, 33 Valladares, María (alias Nidia Díaz), 31 Vargas, Mauricio, 53, 106, 123, 204, 207–211 Vendrell, Francesc, 109, 205, 207 Vides Casanova, General, 50 Villalobos, Joaquín, 10, 31, 34–36, 40, 42, 44–47, 50–53, 90, 97, 108, 121, 148, 154, 157, 174, 182–188, 211, 213 Walker, William (U.S. Ambassador to El Salvador), 71–78, 122, 137, 176, 188–190, 193–196, 209

Walters, Vernon (U.S. Permanent Representative to the UN), 102 Watson, Alexander (Deputy Permanent Representative to the UN), 72, 114, 117, 197, 207 White, Richard, 27 Zamora, Rubén, 35, 118, 121, 132, 137, 156, 159, 175, 180, 184, 187, 197, 207, 209, 212, 216–217 Political Parties within the FMLN: Bloque Popular Revolucionario (BPR), 34 Ejército Revolucionario del Pueblo (ERP), 32–40, 44–45, 50, 90, 137, 142, 154, 182–183 Fuerzas populares de liberación (FPL), 20, 31–38, 44, 109, 182 Partido Comunista de El Salvador (PCS), 20–21, 30–36, 80–81 Partido Revolucionario del los Trabajadores (PRTC), 35 Resistencia Nacional (RN), 34–35, 45, 76, 137, 196 MexicanPresidents: De la Madrid, Miguel, 91, 200 López Portillo, José, 91, 174 Salinas de Gortari, Carlos, 91, 93, 128, 200 El Salvador’sPresidents(chronologically): Calderón, Armando (1994–1999), 123 Flores, Francisco (1999–2004), 166 Saca, Antonio (2004–2009), 166 Funes, Mauricio (2009–Present), 163, 166–167, 171, 223