Bishop portrays bleak future

Press, 10 January 1984, Page 8

Bishop portrays bleak future

NZPA-Reuter San Salvador An El Salvadorean Catholic leader has painted a gloomy picture of the future for his country, where guerrillas have scored important victories and the Right is torn by United States pressure for an end to death squads. “Will 1984 be the year of peace,” Auxiliary Bishop Gregorio Rosa Chavez asked in his Sunday homily in the Metropolitan Cathedral. “If we continue along

this route it won’t be.” Bishop Rosa Chavez said that two recent guerrilla victories could spark fresh violence in the nation’s four-year-old civil war.

On December 30 Leftist guerrillas mortared El Paraiso military garrison, 50km north of the capital, forcing 500 defenders of the 4th Infantry Brigade to flee. Two days later the rebels destroyed the Cuscatlan suspension bridge over the Lempa River, cutting a

crucial road link between central and eastern El Salvador.

He said that an estimated 100 soldiers and 250 guerrillas had died in the two attacks and dozens of families were searching for relatives missing in action.

The attacks could make the nation’s rulers seek a purely military solution to the civil strife instead of a solution through dialogue, as advocated by Pope John Paul II during a visit to El

Salvador last year, he said.

The attacks could lead to an upsurge in activity by Right-wing death squads, he said. “It is essential that we win peace and you will tell me that it is impossible ... that this is utopian,” Bishop Rosa Chavez said.

“If we think that, we might as well prepare our tombs, make out our wills and confess, because this country will be nothing but rubble.”