A LANDSLIDE FOR THE DEATH SQUADS
The last thing El Salvador needed was electoral success for Arena,
writes Ambrose Evans-Pritchard
The assassin was chosen by drawing straws at a meeting held by Major Roberto D'Aubuisson, according to Robert White, the American ambassador at the time. The - story may be embellished but a stack of evidence implicates the lean, cruel, sensual icon of the Salvadoran Right. D'Aubuisson would probably consider it to have been an effective murder since it silenced the church hierachy for years afterwards. Simi- larly, the mass extermination of leftists by his terror machine in the early 1980s served its purpose by decapitating the urban resistance of the guerrillas and preventing an uprising in the cities where the army was most vulnerable.
I believe that most Salvadorans know
the past of this maniac, even if they only pick up gossip at village markets. Yet D'Aubuisson is greeted effusively as he goes from rally to rally in his black jacket, cursing, spitting, and shaking his clenched fist. It seems that a large chunk of the population thinks he has a satisfactory answer to communism and is not only prepared to forgive him, but to reward him and to empower him further. In last Sunday's elections a majority of 54 per cent (provisional) voted for the falangist Arena party, which he founded in 1981. Arena is the political wing of the death squads, and it is no secret that D'Aubuisson is godfather-for-life. In 1984 he was Arena's presidential candidate but was narrowly defeated when the American 'blond heads' — as he calls them with loathing — secretly funded Napoleon Duarte's Christian Democrats. This time D'Aubuisson has enlisted an amiable frontman called Fred- dy Cristiani, a millionaire cafetalero (coffee planter) who was educated at Georgetown University and knows how to bamboozle blond heads.
Arena already controls the supreme court and the legislature of El Salvador. Now the party of organised violence has so mastered the democracy imposed by the United States that it is about to take the presidency as well. Inevitably, there will be a battle between the Bush administration and the liberal Congress over whether to 'This could be your Mr Right.' continue the massive aid programme worth $633 million this year. The Democrats were able to swallow President Napoleon Duarte, tainted though he was by his role in the junta of the early 1980s when dozens of mutilated bodies were appearing on the streets every day. But Arena is beyond the pale.
For the time being Congress is stuck with the result. 'You can't cut off an elected government just because it's right-wing,' says Ambassador White, who once called Arena a Nazi party. But pressure is already building up from the grassroots organisa- tions of the American Left — among which I include Episcopalians, Presbyterians 'and Methodists — and many Democrats are likely to dump Arena at the first sign of an atrocity. To speed this along the guerrillas are deliberately provoking an over- reaction by the army. They have assassin- ated the Governor of Usulutan and nine elected mayors over the last year. They have taken to bombing cinemas and shop- ping malls and recently tossed a hand- grenade into the house of the mother of the defence minister.
A majority of the planned political murders, as opposed to killings by undisci- plined and jumpy troops, are now being committed by the Communist FMLN, the bright-eyed muchachos who have prided themselves on their chivalry. Their bombs have made a lot of noise in the sleepy capital and excited the chattering journal- ists at the Camino Real Hotel, who now warn American readers of the forthcoming insurrection. 'It's ludicrous. The guerrillas constitute no greater challenge to the army than they did 12 months ago; and their political position has never been worse.' says Elliot Abrams, assistant-secretary for Latin America in the Reagan Administra- ton. The civilian wing of the rebel coalition broke off to participate in the elections, despite the FMLN's call for a boycott. It failed to break into double figures.
I am never sure what people mean when they say the American policy in El Salva- dor has been a failure. It prevented a communist takeover in 1983. The FMLN can still put up a stiff fight, largely because it has the best commanders in Central America, but its ideology is hopelessly out of fashion. While the guerrillas scurry about in the desolate hills of northern El Salvador writing surrealist poems, interna- tional communism has been collapsing. Even the Soviet Union is now telling the rebel leaders to negotiate the best deal they can. Meanwhile, the rest of El Salva- dor has moved on. One elected president is about to cede power to another elected president from a rival party, establishing a convention that becomes increasingly diffi- cult to break. If it happens two or three more times El Salvador will find itself with a functioning democracy. The price Salvadorans have had to pay for American aid is statism. Collective farms, bank nationalisations, state control
of coffee marketing, etc were the kind of reforms forced on El Salvador by well- intentioned US embassy officials — and the Democratic Congress — who thought they had found the way to undercut the armed Left. There was much talk of stamping out feudalism. But all that got stamped on was the productive economy. The fact is that El Salvador is not remotely feudal: it is mercantilist. As in most coun- tries in Latin America its legal system fails to protect the property rights of the poor. and the elite maintain their power through state licences and monopolies. The last thing El Salvador needed was more statism and more patronage in the hands of a corrupt regime. The Arena party. which Would be fascist if it were not for its one redeeming quality of supporting the free market, has vowed to undo the foolish meddling of the blond heads.
Economies, however, is the last thing on the minds of those who question US policy. Liberal America is tortured by the moral compromise of upholding a political arrangement in which the assassins of an archbishop are among the beneficiaries. It is an ugly dilemma, but I do not think that anything would have been gained by leav- ing the country to its fate. American Pressure slowly reined in the Salvadoran armed forces, whereas in Guatemala whole Villages were systematically slaughtered after the US cut off aid and lost its leverage. Quite apart from the strategic interest in defeating the FMLN, there is still a moral case for supporting El Salva- dor after Arena takes power. Only the army can stop D'Aubuisson waging what he calls 'total war' against the Left. The officer corps has the last say in El Salvador. and fortunately it does not have the same interests as Arena. Swollen and enriched by American aid, it has come to see the advantages of fighting war the gringo way. Just so long as Washington keeps paying for it. If Congress cuts aid the army will soon he tempted by D'Aubuisson's "Guate- malan solution'. That should give liberal Democrats something to chew on.
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