El Salvador

Editor's note: The following article was sent to AGENDA in mid-March front San Salvador by a free-lance writer who travels extensively in Central America and must write under a false name or face harassment from the authorities for doing what most reporters are afraid to do-tell the truth. AGENDA has published Jon Reed' eyewitness accounts In the past and will continue to direct its editorial focus on the U.S. role in Central America in the future. With knowledge, we hope, people can begin to take responsibility and end the shameful role the U.S. now plays in the region.

"The so-called Salvadoran ' democratic process' could learn a lot from the capacity for self-criticism that the socialist nations are demonstrating. IfLech Walesa had been doing his organizing work in El Salvador, he would have already entered into the ranks of the disappeared-at the hands of 'heavily armed men dressed in civilian clothes'; or have been blown to pieces in a dynamite attack on his union headquarters. If Alexander Dubcek were a politician in our country, he would have been assassinated like Hector Oqueli. If Andrei Sakharov had worked here in favor of human rights, he would have met the same f ate as Herben Anaya. If Ota Sik or Vaclev Havel had been carrying out their intellectual work in El Salvador, they would have woken up one sinister morning, lying on the patio of a university campus with their heads destroyed by the bullets of an elite army battalion. " -From "Proceso," the weekly bulletin of the (Jesuit) University of Central America published in El Salvador (Feb. 14, 1990).

The music and lights go out as six powerful explosions - like a giant bass drum - rock the middle-class suburbs of northwestern San Salvador, the capital city. From their positions on the densely wooded slopes of the San Salvador Volcano, left-wing guerrillas of the Farabundo Marti Liberation Front (FMLN) are firing catapultas (homemade mortars) and tank weapons at the San Antonio Abad electrical power station, scattering a platoon of First Brigade infantrymen assigned to guard this facility.

In the distance are sounds of other skirmishes taking place, in what has become a nightly ritual in El Salvador. After 10 years of increasingly successful rural guerrilla warfare, in which they have gained either partial or complete control over one-third of the country, the FMLN have now established a strong presence in El Salvador's urban areas as well.

"Right now our not-so-brave First Brigade soldiers are shitting in their fatigues, " he explains. "Listen. You can tell from the sound of their 16s that they've panicked. They 're blindly firing off everything they can towards the volcano."

Since January of 1989 the FMLN and the above ground opposition in the country have mounted a strong political and diplomatic offensive as well, calling for a demilitarized truce and a negotiated end to the Civil War, which has left 75,000 dead (mostly killed by army and government Death Squads); several hundred thousand wounded; several million displaced internally or driven into exile; and a devastated economy with 50% unemployment or under employment and 80% living in poverty.

Up until the present time, the governing elite and the military have refused to negotiate seriously; instead they have unleashed murderous repression against the trade unions, churches, and the popular movement while calling for the FMLN (see EL SALVADOR, page 6)

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to lay down their arms and essentially surrender. Because of this intransigence, many people now believe that only an FMLN victory or near victory, coupled with a cutoff of U.S. aid, will force the ruling right-wing Arena Party and military high command to the bargaining table. In the meantime, war, not peace, is the order of the day.

More catapultas explode, followed by a thick barrage of M-16 rifle fire - with its distinctive "pop, pop, pop. . . " sound. My compañero, a longtime resident of San Salvador, provides me with a blow-by-blow commentary on tonight's fireworks.

"Right now our not-so-brave First Brigade soldiers are shitting in their fatigues," he explains. "Listen. You can tell from the sound of their M16s that they've panicked. They're blindly firing off everything they can towards the volcano." More mortars detonate.

For the next half hour, we stand outside in order to get a better view of the firefight in the distance. As we discuss the grim statistics released by the country's non-governmental Commission on Human Rights (COHES) of military and police terror over the past 30 days - 133 assassinations, 13 kidnappings, and 59 captures and tortures - the First Brigade infantrymen launch Bengalas, powerful night flares, high up into the sky, illuminating the entire mountainside. One Bengala flare drops short, like a falling star, into the underbrush on the lower slopes, igniting a bright fire.

A U.S.-supplied Huey helicopter approaches from the south, flying very high in the nearly cloudless night sky. The Huey cruises in a wide are above the volcano, firing its Bengalas and looking for traces of the now silent FMLN commandos.

"It certainly took the Air Force a while to get here," my friend remarks, looking at his watch. "And the pilot's flying too high to be able to see anything. Since la ofensiva (the rebel offensive of Nov. 1989) the Air Force are afraid of the FMLN's SAMs (surface-to-air missles)."

Whether the guerrillas bought these anti-aircraft missies on the international black market, or whether they were donated by the Sandinistas or the Cubans, the SAMs are a new and formidable weapon in the hands of the rebel militias. With enough SAMs and enough practice, many people believe the FMLN will be able to organize new liberated territories and successfully defend these zones from air attacks.

The helicopter begins firing its 50mm machine guns. Using tracer bullets to mark the intended target, the copter fires one rocket, then another - which explode a moment later in a spectacular burst on the mountainside.

"The compás are already halfway around the volcano, making their retreat. The helicopter gunner is just wasting his rockets."

Massacre at Corral de Piedra

Six days earlier in Chalatenango the Air Force gunners were more successful, carrying out their specialty - daylight attacks on unarmed civilians. In the small repopulated village of Corral de Piedra, five helicopters and two A-37 fighter bombers rocketed and machine-gunned 500 Salvadoran refugees who had recently returned to Chalatenango after eight years of exile in the Honduran refugee camp of Mesa Grande.

In a direct hit on one of the houses in the hamlet, a U.S. -made rocket killed four children and one adult: José Dolores Serrano, age 11; Isabel López, age 10; Anabel Beatriz López, age two; and Blanca Lidia Guardada, age two and one half. Blanca Lidia's shrapnel-pierced and partially dismembered corpse was found in the arms of her 28-year-old father, José Aníbal Guardado, who was also killed. Seventeen other villagers were also seriously wounded, 1 1 of whom were children and babies. As near hysterical villagers tried to rescue some of the wounded during a lull in the attack, they were stopped at gunpoint by Salvadoran troops, who told them to stay away because the victims "were dead guerrillas." The troops meanwhile were looting and destroying every house in sight.

As Red Cross and civilian vehicles tried to evacuate the wounded, a C-47 "Dakota" airplane attacked the area, firing its machine guns indiscriminately. Shortly thereafter the unarmed but enraged villagers managed to drive the Salvadoran infantrymen out of the hamlet, screaming at them that they were assassins and robbers of the poor. In the midst of the screams and cries of the wounded, some of the government soldiers began crying. After examining the bloody carnage, a number of infantrymen from the First Military Detachment in Chalatenango told village residents that they were going to desert from the army.

After initially trying to blame the FMLN guerrillas for the massacre (contradicting hundreds of eyewitnesses including church observers), the military high command and President Cristiani were forced to admit that this so-called "tragic mistake" had been perpetrated by the Air Force. Opposition spokespersons and church officials in the capital were quick to point out the similarities between the slaughter of Corral de Piedra and the systematic Air Force attacks on heavily populated urban barrios during the November offensive, when over 1000 non-combatants were killed and several thousand were wounded.

Despite daily bombings of re-populated zones in the rural one-third of the country controlled by the FMLN, thousands of highly politicized Salvadorans have recently returned from Honduran refugee camps to their former homes in Chalatenango, Cabanas, Morazán, and Usulután. The military high command is enraged by this repopulation movement, believing that every returning refugee is an actual or potential fighter for the FMLN. In Corral de Piedra, for example, villagers reponed after the massacre that soldiers told them that they had to move away from the FMLN controlled zones if they wanted to avoid future