Soldiers of ‘reform’ are tearing the heart out of El Salvador people

Press, 27 January 1983, Page 17

Soldiers of ‘reform’ are tearing the heart out of El Salvador people

I he soldiers came quietly on foot, at night, to the isolated peasants’ farm. From the first house they stopped at they took a 65-year-old man. tied his fingers together with string, told his wife to remain in the house and wait for her husband to return. He never came back. Then the column, more than 100 strong, moved down the track, across a stream, through the cornfields and to the primitive huts where six other families lived. The process was repeated. "They broke into our home and told my husband to put on his clothes because ‘We have come to take you away'." says one woman, now a widow with five children.

“They told my 14-year-old son that he was also going to be taken but I pleaded with him not to do it because he was ill. I was told to go to bed and put out the light, otherwise they would come for me. So we did what we were told. Around midnight we could hear our husbands’ voices and screams pleading not to be killed.”

all seven dead; their throats slit and their bodies slashed. They even sliced out one man’s heart. There were no coffins handy. The men were wrapped in blankets and buried in a communal grave amid the corn and grazing oxen. You would not even notice the small mound unless someone pointed it out. There is not even a cross on the grave, for this cooperative farm was part of a brave effort by the Anglican church in El Salvador to give the peasants not only spiritual but also practical help. The church, with aid from the Netherlands, bought La Florida farm in 1979 and settled 62 families there. Basic education, medical attention, and agricultural advice were available, as well as electricity and materials to build crude homes. The peasants celebrated their good fortune annually and even invited some local soldiers to the festivities. But now the farm is in a precarious state. Thirty-five families have fled. The rest remain — very frightened — balancing their fear that the soldiers might return against the fact that the farm is the best chance that life will ever give them.

The pleas were useless, for when the soldiers departed the next afternoon they left

What makes them even more nervous is that one of the widows says that she recognised one killer as a local peasant. But the chances of anyone being arrested are almost non-exis-tent. There have been at least 30,000 people murdered in the past three years, but fewer than 200 have been convicted of the killings. In the grim roll-call of deaths in El Salvador seven peasant farmers count for very little. If an American is killed here, the powerful United States Embassy ensures that there is an investi'gation although the embassy’s clout has yet to produce one convicted murderer. Indeed the man who organised the killings of two American land reform experts in the Sheraton hotel two years, ago has been released before trial. An

From WILL ELLSWORTH-JONES in El Salvador, reporting on what seems to have been an endless massacre of innocent people.

American official says: "We are still trying to figure out a way to get his arse locked up again." For the peasants in La Florida, the embassy is "disturbed and concerned” — but no more. An American bishop was here this month investigating the killings, which happened at the end of November, and his report will be sent to the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Robert Runcie. One visit to the farm was made by the national police who said the men were guerrillas and that was the end of it. However, a church worker in San Salvador says: “We do not know why this happened. It was a community dedicated entirely to work. They were not involved in any illegal activities. The murdered men were among those who distinguished themselves; they were well-mean-ing and they worked very hard.”

He speculates that ironically it might have been the church’s care in setting up the project which sowed the seeds for the murders. The church carried out a special survey of 300 families in the area but only 62 were chosen. It is quite possible that grudges were being repaid by peasants who were left out.

“We live in a society where anyone can get fingered,” says one Christian Democrat politician. “Any reason is good enough for you to get killed." The only time that killings in places like La Florida prove to be a political embarrassment is during the six-monthly ritual when President Reagan certifies to Congress — in order to keep military aid flowing into El Salvador — that progress is being made in the key areas of human rights and land reform.

The President has already let it be known that he will certify the required progress at the end of this month. But progress depends on your perspective. One American involved in the land-reform programme says: 5 “Of course the killings are coming down.” But his

friend adds: "That’s because there is no-one left to kill.”

The Catholic archbishop's legal aid office says 5399 civilians were murdered last year by the death squads or various branches of the armed forces. The United States Embassy disputes these figures but both organisations agree that there has been some decline in the number of deaths.

Two months ago the American Ambassador, in a speech which was not appreciated by the White House, said: “By no stretch of the imagination could current levels (of murder) be considered acceptable by any civilised person.” There has, however, been progress on land reform, although as in every other part of the Salvadoran life —

under the Right-wing president Roberto d’Aubuisson — there is still a fierce battle between those who believe in reform, or at least accept it as a political necessity, and those on the Right who are trying to sabotage it by increasingly sophisticated means.

The facts are that of the large farms, 328 have been turned into co-operatives but only 22 have been given full title to the land. On small farms 38,837 tenants have so far won their land, but only 408 have been given full title.

“It still remains an unfulfilled promise,” says one American expert. “There should be 210.000 families benefiting and right now it stands at about 90,000. It has to go up to at least 150,000 or else the reform will be easy to roll back.”

Amid the mass of disputed facts and figures which El Salvador generates, the killings at La Florida seem unreal. Only when one stands in the remnants of the peasants’ homes, amid the abandoned shoes, the exercise book, the old clothes, the crude cross, the tin of soyabean oil “furnished by the People of the United States of America” and imagines the family listening to the cries of their husbands, do the figures become real.

What the United States Congress has to decide is how much longer they can continue to subsidise such repression in the hope that the reforms which are always being promised will one day bring results.