The Salvadoran During The Civil War - Essay Example

THE SALVADORAN DURING THE CIVIL WAR The Central American country, El Salvador, whose borders are linked with Pacific Ocean, Guatemala and Honduras, has had a history of tensions amongst the ruling classes and the ruled. The factor of discrimination still exists between the rich and the poor citizens of El Salvador1. It is perhaps this discrimination that led the outbreak of a twelve year civil war between the government and militias that were left-wing in nature. On the outset, El Salvador was accorded only that much attention as is customarily awarded to smaller nations, picturesque in nature. The decade long civil war that erupted in El Salvador put it truly on the world map whereby the international community paid attention to this Central American country and its issues for the first time. The civil war allowed academics and researchers to come on in to the field and take up the case study of El Salvador for future research and analyses. The psychology and subsequent analysis of a war is necessary to provide various accounts to a war and the narratives that came out of the Salvadoran civil war are no different. Peter Davis, an American journalist, notes in his article the effects of US involvement in El Salvador. The promotion of US interests is what led the US government to support the right-wing El Salvadoran government in opposition of the left-wing military juntas. Leftist parties of El Salvador united with five major guerrilla groups in order to form Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN), which was supposed to harmonize and organize the efforts against the US backed Salvadoran government to protect the public rights. Davis also had the opportunity to talk to Maria Julia Hernandez, a Salvadoran female who has been at the forefront to protect human rights of the Salvadorans.  On being asked whether she had any hope in relation to the issues that El Salvador is facing after the Civil war, Hernandez had this to say: "I always have hope that enough people will come together to work for a just society. The United States could help by understanding that other people, not only Americans, are human beings too, and by paying attention to international agreements on the environment, global warming and human rights. I admire so much in the United States—the goodness and generosity of the people, and the values and rights you believe in—but your foreign policy is terrible.” 2 Such statements only touch upon the role of the United States during the civil war in El Salvador. The fact remains that even before US involvement in the civil war, the population of El Salvador was at odds with the government. Any discussion of political strife in the developing world envelopes the struggle between dictatorship and democracy; the same holds true for El Salvador. After the end of the civil war, a Truth Commission was established which received thousands of complaints. These complaints were based on personal testimonies as well as eyewitness accounts. Most of these complaints were registered against the atrocities piled up the Salvadoran government in power. Once the commission conducted its research and published the report the National Guard and other governmental military bodies were found to be guilty of indulging in war crimes. The report found out that the Salvadoran government under the auspices of the United States used torture and terror tactics to bring about the fall of the rebels. By the end of the 1980 El Salvador was in the midst of an open savagery and at the beginnings of the war that the FMLN was about to undertake. 3 El Salvador’s civil war officially began in 1980 in which the Salvadoran government openly provided support to the military death squads. El Salvador witnessed a brutal civil war fought mainly in rural areas. 4 The task of military death squad was to kill every such person who appeared to be a supporter of the revolution. The most usual victims of military death squads were middle class and lower middle class citizens. These included the unionists, farmers, clerks and several university officials. That civil war was also supported by the United States as military aid was being provided to the Salvadoran military by the United States of America in order to crush the civilians who were supporting the guerrilla groups. As a consequence of the war, at least 70,000 people lost their precious lives. The impact of the civil war on this tiny country almost defies analysis.5 The brutal civil war raged throughout the decade and claimed more than seventy-five thousand lives in all.6 This enormous amount of casualties resulted from target killings and heavy bombing from the US backed military death squads on the civilians of El Salvador throughout the countryside.7 The civil war not only resulted in a large number of casualties but also it brought a worse impact on the country’s infrastructure as all roads, bridges and buildings got destroyed due to heavy bombing. The situation in El Salvador was that of a stalemate. US government backed the Salvadoran government, however, that was not enough to claim victory. There are no winners or losers in a war, only survivors: and this proved true in the case of El Salvador as well. There are eye witnesses and journalists who gave their accounts of the state of affairs during the Salvadoran civil war. Cynthia Arnson, a commentator on the national and international affairs especially with concern to the United States and Latin America commented on the gruesome force used by the state government. The government appointed death squads to start systematic eradication of the Salvadoran opponents and not only mutilate their bodies but to use this as a means of wreaking havoc and terrorizing the general population. Such tactics would lead to permanent terror settling in to the minds of the public and would disallow them to engage in anti-state affairs and activities in the future. Mid 1980s was the era when state sponsored population killings were the most prominent. The civil war took a very long time despite of the efforts to bring an end to the war from both parties. FMLN refused to participate in the presidential elections because they felt that the results would be unfair (Whitfield 1995). Due to this reason they boycotted the presidential elections. And when the FMLN organized the peace talks in order to settle down the conflicting issues, the Salvadoran government also refused to participate. It is common belief today that the Salvadoran civil war would have ended a lot earlier if the United States had not interfered in the war between the Salvadoran government and the FMLN guerrilla groups. The United States kept on supporting the military death squads in their operation against the revolutionaries because El Salvador had exhausted its resources fighting itself and the only way for the el Salvadoran government was to take financial and military aid from the United States in order to carry on the operation. There came a time when the United States suspended providing financial and military aid to the Salvadoran government temporarily due to the rape and murder of four US churchwomen in 1980, the successful Nicaragua revolution compelled President Reagan to undo the decision of suspending military and financial aid to El Salvador. So the aid continued to support the El Salvadoran government in continuing fight against the FMLN revolutionaries till 1990. It was a very heavy aid provided by the United States as nearly 1.5 million dollars a day were being spent during the peak time of the war. Two years before the end of the civil war, the United States finally decided to suspend the military aid and transform it into the construction aid. It happened due to the involvement of United Nations in the conflict in 1990 when Congressman Moakley confirmed the reports regarding human rights violations by the United States and the military death squads. This experience under a military leadership bore consequences for the future Salvadoran governments. Amendments were sought within the constitution to determine the role of the military in state affairs in future. The abolishment of the National Guard and the Treasury Police is indicative of the severe negative consequences of the involvement of military backed government in the Salvadoran civil war. The terror stories, as mentioned by the survivors were further corroborated by international peacekeepers as well as journalists and diplomats. Among them is Maria Teresa Tula, a human rights activist who worked during the civil war in El Salvador,8 Koos Koster, a Dutch reporter who was killed during the Salvadoran civil war, and Cesar Vielman Joya Martinez, who served as a soldier in the Salvadoran army. All these testimonies implicate the suspicious role of the US military with the government’s backing in relation to their support of the military regime in El Salvador. El Salvador has always had to struggle with issues of dictatorship and the same issue was brought to fore with the civil war experience. With the civil war rampaging across Salvadoran towns and cities it became incumbent to address survival and get the international community to pull some strings to stop the war. The guerilla efforts only strengthened against a dictatorship, which enjoyed support from the United States. United States decided to intervene in the war as a means of looking out for its self interests as well as in retaliation of the murder of two of its citizens on Salvadoran land. Unity amongst the guerilla factions was necessary to coordinate their efforts against the government and this is exactly what was done. It should also be noted that the timeline where the Salvadoran civil war falls on is the same when the world was being led on two fronts: the Communist USSR and the Capitalist USA. Communism had always been a big threat for the USA, and it has been observed that the United States would not back down from committing itself to any policy; no matter how unsound it is, if it was meant to curb Communism. The election of President Regan in the United States saw the increase in military aid to the dictatorship in El Salvador – against the wishes of the Salvadoran population. There has been much debate about the role of the United States and how it affected the civil war. Where some commentators such as Stokes9, believe in adopting a retrospective look at the United States’ role in the civil war, especially since it was seen as countering the threat of communism, others believe this to be the wrong approach. Critics such as Tina Rosenberg10 have blasted at the performance of the USA army in El Salvador and have recently compared it to the presence of US army in Iraq. Certain high profile Salvadoran army members appeared on the international front and testified to the activities that were being conducted by ‘death’ or terror squads. These squads were faced with the job of not only terrorizing and murdering the opponents but ensuring an air of terror over the Salvadoran towns. The most important confessional details that came out of these testimonies were regarding the role of the CIA operatives in assembling the aforementioned death squads. In fact, it was the CIA operatives who would teach the Salvadoran army tricks and methods of torturing possible guerilla fighters.11 Evidence that was stacked under the work carried out by the United Nation’s Truth Commission were cognizant of the fact that suppressive elements within the Salvadoran state were functioning on a larger scale than was previously understood. ORDEAN was working on a larger scale and was quite in power by the time the civil war drew to a bloody close. Susan Ram, a journalist based in Madras collected information on the role of the USA in guiding the military government towards a more terror focused approach. Her research is conclusive of the fact that the military government was only in possession of formal power, because as such it invited next to no confidence from the population.12 Rather the presence of the military government that enjoyed support for the United States was basically to safeguard the power enjoyed by “fourteen” powerful families in El Salvador at the expense of the rest of the population. The United States’ role becomes controversial in this area because the mere excuse of containing Communism is not the sole appropriate justification for its role in the civil war. The White House was aware of the bloody effects of the civil war even before the international community came to realize the gravity of the Salvadoran situation in the 1980s. Reinaldo Figueredo, spokesperson for the UN Truth Commission had this to say about the research conducted into the war crimes committed during the civil war: “In examining the staggering breadth of the violence that occurred in El Salvador, the commission was moved by the senselessness of the killings, the brutality with which they were committed, the terror that they created in the people, in other words, the madness, or locura, of the war.” Since the civil war, a struggle has been seen in the state of El Salvador to redefine itself and what it stands for. Unfortunately a close to the civil war does not automatically ensure a return to the previous administrative setup that was indicative of a happier and more peaceful time. The consequences of the civil war have pushed El Salvador into more poverty that ever before. The environment of the Salvadoran land has deteriorated with the raging of civil war. Economic and social inequality that figured prominently before the start of the civil war is still very much there. As such, the role of the USA was detrimental to the Salvadoran population on the whole rather than in helping them achieve a solid ground where they could elect their own representatives and try to come up with solutions leading to a healthier and economically sound life style. The complexity of day to day living is mirrored in the testimonies of the previously detailed eye witnesses and academics. It was Moakley’s Report that triggered hue and cry from the international community towards a safer El Salvador. Sponsored talks by the United Nations did help in allowing both the involved parties in reaching a common ground but could not give back the seventy thousand people who lost their lives. Read More