Death squads get green light from Salvador gov't

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A new campaign of brutality, directed against trade unions and the mass movements, has been launched in El Salvador. This puts the lie to the portrayal of new president Alfredo Cristiani as a "moderate." He has already hinted at invoking a state of emergency, giving legality to the army's continued murders, torture, and disappearances.

Cristiani, a leader of the ARENA party, visited Washington during May. He had quite a public relations task before him. The Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN) has changed the political landscape with its peace proposals, and Cristiani faces increased scrutiny. The U.S. government is finding it more difficult to justify aid to El Salvador. [See March 1989 and April 1989 Socialist Action.] Cristiani has been "warned" by Vice President Quayle and Democratic congressional leaders about human rights abuses. Washington is afraid of a backlash here if ARENA and the army, aided by U.S. dollars, unleash further repression. El Salvador faces a potential bloodbath, with an army which looks at the ARENA victory as a green light to finish off the FMLN.

The Christian Science euphemistically in its May 14 issue, noting that "Cristiani has been fighting ... to persuade Congress to give him the benefit of the doubt and not impose conditions on the United States' massive subsidy to his country."

But Sigifredo Ochoa, ARENA vice president of the Salvadoran Legislative Assembly, gave a clue recently to his party's real agenda. "The methods of political solution are exhausted. Only violent means remain. Let us not kid ourselves. That's what the Armed Forces are there for.... In 1945 the decision was taken to end a war by dropping atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki."

Meanwhile, the FMLN has stepped up its military operations, while calling on Cristiani to declare his government transitional. The FMILN is still pushing for ceasefire negotiations and new elections in which they would participate.

The latest round of repression represents a tactical shift. The Salvadoran army and death squads are targeting mid-level activists in the unions and mass movement, avoiding the international outcry that would come with better-known targets.

One example is the case of Cristina Gomez, a first-grade teacher in Santa Lucia who was recentiy murdered. Gomez was an SOCIALIST. activist and organizer with the militant teachers' union, ANDES, but was not nationally known. One observer described the effect to the Monitor. "She was taken from in front of her school on a busy street in the middle of the day. With her murder [her killers] were sending a message-that they van get anybody they want, any time they Meanwhile, harassment of the unions has increased. The National Union of Salvadoran Workers (UNTS) charges that the army has been capturing and torturing more workers since the elections. Troops surrounded the UNTS headquarters in San Salvador on election day, and now harass visitors to the union office on a regular basis, checking their bags and identities.

Over 100 people were arrested on the evening of April 19, in raids on human rights, labor, and women's organizations offices in the capital. At the Christian Committee for the Displaced of El Salvador (CRIPDES) and the National Repopulation Coordinating Committee (CNR), soldiers and police ransacked the offices, clubbed those inside, and arrested 75 people-including five pregnant women, 30 children, and even a three-day-old baby.

This latest repression is probably just the beginning of an all-out offensive by the Salvadoran government to smash the opposition. And both the Bush administration and Democratic Congress are working hard to figure out how to assure ARENA and their henchman of U.S. dollars to finance their death-squad government.

ACTION JUNE 1989 11 CTION JUNE