After 15 October 1979 Salvadoran political actors became embroiled in a protracted confrontation which seems headed toward one of three outcomes: the consolidation of a reformist democratic regime, the restoration of authoritarianism, or the installation of a government committed to a socialist model. Militarily, the confrontation pitted the Salvadoran armed forces against five different guerrilla groups, while the paramilitary Right, assisted by the Treasury Police and ORDEN, waged a campaign against real or suspected adversaries. By late 1981, although neither side had managed to overcome the other, the civil war had taken about thirty-two thousand lives and left 10 percent of the population homeless.
The prospects for a political settlement looked very grim. The progressive coalition of Social Democrats, Christian Democrats, and Communists, which had banded together to contest the elections of 1972 and 1977 and which had been represented in the first junta of 1979, had split into two antagonistic camps. Efforts to reconcile these groups had failed both because of differences in their positions and because of their precarious relationships with their armed allies—the guerrillas for the opposition and the military for the Christian Democrats. These differences were exploited and deepened by the relentless violence of the Right.
While nominal control of the government remained in the hands of the PDC, there was widespread agreement among rightist and leftist Salvadorans and some foreign observers that that government remained in office only because of the support of the United States, which had its own view of the conflict and its own ideas as to how to resolve it. Finding itself unable to attract the support of the bourgeoisie, to control or discipline the armed forces, or to initiate a dialogue with the opposition, the Christian Democratic government issued a call for a constituent assembly election, through which it hoped to increase its legitimacy and neutralize some of its opponents. The crucial problem for the government, however, and the Achilles’ heel of the efforts of the Christian Democrats, was its continued inability to restore the rule of law to El Salvador.
Since the October 1979 coup the Salvadoran Right has been trying to regain control of the government. Under normal circumstances there is nothing inherently conspiratorial or subversive about a political group or faction trying to become the government. But, to say the least, circumstances in El Salvador have not been normal, even by that country’s standards. The term disloyal is applicable to groups and individuals who, in a process of transition, engage in obstructionist tactics seeking to prevent the inauguration and consolidation of a democratic regime. In the Salvadoran case, the term disloyal Right refers to the core elements of the deposed reactionary coalition who have been conspiring to derail the process begun in October 1979. By the most generous standards, one could say that the disloyal Right has played the spoiler role, contributing to the climate of anarchy and indiscriminate violence. Others might argue—with considerable evidence—that it neutralized the process of transition, put into question the whole program of reforms, and opened a huge chasm between potential allies who could have created the kind of broad coalition that could stabilize the transition and see it to a successful conclusion.
The conspiratorial activities of Major Roberto D’Aubuisson exemplify the tactics used by the disloyal Right and provide a look at the individuals and groups behind these initiatives, their external allies, and the impact that they have had on the Salvadoran process. D’Aubuisson began his activities when he was relieved of the command of ANSESAL, the military’s National Agency of Special Services. Between October 1979 and October 1981, D’Aubuisson’s trail would take him to Guatemala City, San Salvador, and Washington, D.C.; to late-night meetings at military barracks, surreptitious appearances at gatherings of rightist businessmen, impromptu conferences with journalists at safe houses, and inflammatory broadcasts from neighboring countries. This trail would link D’Aubuisson to at least two major military conspiracies and to the assassinations of several prominent figures of the government as well as its opposition.
Shortly after Ambassador Robert White presented his credentials, on 11 March 1980, the Carter administration sent an unequivocal warning to D’Aubuisson and Chele Medrano to refrain from conspiratorial activities, since the United States would not tolerate a rightist coup. In April the major surfaced in Washington, D.C., accompanied by Alfredo Mena Lagos, a wealthy Salvadoran businessman connected with the Frente Amplio Nacional (FAN). It appears that both men were trying to create support for a right-wing government in El Salvador. Their trip was sponsored by the American Security Council, which organized their appearance before a gathering of the American Legion, as well as private meetings with conservative senators and members of Congress. D’Aubuisson used the opportunity to try to discredit members of the Salvadoran government, arguing that Morales Ehrlich had “known links” with the armed Left—technically true, since Morales had two sons who were guerrillas—and that Colonel Majano, a personal enemy of the major, was a member of the Communist Party of Mexico.
Upon his return to El Salvador, D’Aubuisson repeated his charges against Majano in a videotape distributed to most military garrisons. In late April, assisted by former deputy defense minister Eduardo “Chivo” Iraheta and by hard-line officers based in the garrisons of Usulatán, Gotera, and Sonsonate, he tried to launch a coup. On 2 May an eleventh-hour appeal during a tour of the barracks by Duarte and Majano persuaded the soldiers to remain loyal.
On the night of 7 May troops loyal to Majano surrounded an isolated farmhouse near Santa Tecla and captured D’Aubuisson as he was trying to destroy the contents of a briefcase which included documents describing the blueprint for the conspiracy. About a dozen officers in active service and some prominent members of the FAN were linked to the cabal and were detained for questioning.
A serious split developed within the military about what to do with the conspirators. Younger officers supporting Majano wanted D’Aubuisson shot for treason or sentenced to life imprisonment by a court martial. Others were content to strip him of his rank and send him into exile. A third group protested that D’Aubuisson’s treatment could not be harsher than that meted out to former government officials who had made common cause with the Left and were trying to overthrow the government. For their part the Christian Democrats threatened to leave the government if D’Aubuisson and his coconspirators went unpunished.
The major was incarcerated at a time when it appeared that the Right was gaining momentum. Former President Romero had visited the country. A campaign was afoot to force Majano out of the junta. The COPEFA had been neutralized as a vehicle for concerted action by progressive officers, and Majano was rapidly losing his base within the armed forces—which at one time had included the First Infantry Brigade, the Signal Instruction Center, the Second Infantry Brigade, and the Frontier Detachment of Chalatenango.
These impressions were apparently confirmed when, on 10 May, the senior officers spoke through the defense minister, Colonel Guillermo García, to announce that the command of the Armed Force, previously shared by Majano and Colonel Jaime Abdul Gutiérrez, would go to the latter. Colonel Gutiérrez described this as a “purely administrative matter,” but the move was interpreted as a victory for the Right. The senior officers justified the decision to demote Majano on the grounds that this was the consensus of opinion within the COPEFA.
On 10 May a crowd of FAN demonstrators led by Ricardo Jiménez Castillo, a founder of the organization, laid siege to the residence of Ambassador White in San Salvador. The demonstrators were demanding the release of D’Aubuisson and, apparently, trying to link the incarceration of the Major to the ambassador’s denunciations of rightist agitation and terrorism. On 28 March, during a speech to a luncheon gathering of the American Chamber of Commerce of El Salvador, White had accused some Salvadoran businessmen of financing hit squads to kill leftist activists. José Eduardo Palomo, president of the chamber, had taken exception to the speech, claiming that he had now become a possible target for assassination. The FAN demonstrators vowed to harass White until D’Aubuisson was freed, and they passed their time chanting, “White is Red,” “Viva Reagan!” “Viva Senator Helms!” On 12 May U.S. marines dispersed the group, but the FAN was not to be denied.
Late on Tuesday, 13 May, Major Miguel Angel Méndez, the officer in charge of the investigation, released D’Aubuisson. Defense Minister García claimed that no one could be held without charges for more than seventy-two hours, certainly a practice which, if it had been applied systematically by the military during the 1970s, would have helped to forestall the turmoil of the 1980s. On 15 May the junta filed an appeal for the military tribunal to reverse itself and bring back the twenty-three officers and civilians arrested on 7 May, but to no avail.1
Meanwhile, D’Aubuisson remained unrepentant. Several journalists were picked up by armed men driving military jeeps, blindfolded, and taken to a secret destination for an interview with the major. Flanked by Alfredo Mena and other militant businessmen associated with the FAN, D’Aubuisson denied that he was conspiring, insisted that he was fighting Communism, and accused Ambassador White of threatening to support a government in exile if Majano were forced out of the junta. D’Aubuisson called his posture “nationalist,” and claimed that Argentina, Chile, Paraguay, and Uruguay had given his group “ideological and logistical support.” Shortly thereafter, the former intelligence boss left for exile in Guatemala.2
The D’Aubuisson episode illustrates several aspects of the Salvadoran situation. First, it marked the second occasion in which the aperturistas lost out in a confrontation with hard-liners. A number of face-saving tactics were employed to maintain a certain circumspection and dignity, but in the end both Majano and D’Aubuisson were punished. The former was demoted for his continued insistence on building bridges to the Left and the popular organizations—a matter of survival for the aperturistas. The latter was punished for “overreacting” to Majano’s “softness” with subversives. Second, if we are to take García at his word and accept that the “administrative action” involving Majano was the consensus within the COPEFA, then we must conclude that by April 1980 the senior officers had managed to reinstate the Right at the center of military opinion.
Finally, the light treatment meted out to D’Aubuisson and his coconspirators suggests that some of the postulates of the doctrine of national security continued to linger on in the thinking of the military. To be sure, it was now confronted by an increasingly unified Left bent on following the via armada, and it had to meet this challenge, but its lenient treatment of a violent conspirator like D’Aubuisson suggests that it perceived the need for a continued “dirty war” against subversion. Little evidence of any revision of these firmly held convictions was evident during the first year of the junta.
Looking at recent cases of transition in Ecuador, Peru, and Portugal, it is possible to identify moments at which the advocates of democratization looked defeated. In the Salvadoran case, however, one can only interpret the demotion of Colonel Majano as a very serious setback for the cause of democratic transition. Even if one interprets the demotion as a corrective measure on the part of the military to neutralize an officer faction perceived to be “too close” to the civilians in the government, the evenhandedness with which Majano and D’Aubuisson were treated could only bode ill for the prospects of democratic transition.
The disloyral Right saw D’Aubuisson as a crusader for the restoration of the reactionary despotism in El Salvador. The restoration would require resolute action in the style of Maximiliano Hernández (Martínez). This implied the elimination of the adversary in all its different forms: priests, nuns, labor and peasant leaders, moderate politicians, teachers and university professors, and the guerrillas themselves. The inability or unwillingness of members of the Right to distinguish between their adversaries underlined their fanaticism and their selfish intransigence, which was matched only by that of the more hardened guerrillas.
At the time of the demotion of Majano disloyal rightists had a firm grip on the Treasury of Police and the national guard and complete control of the supposedly disbanded ORDEN and the UGB. They had numerous sympathizers among junior military officers, jefes civiles (mayors), and local comandantes paid by the Defense Ministry to head small local reserve forces. While this did not give them sufficient power to take control of the state directly, it did afford them considerable operational autonomy, as well as enable the leaders of organizations like the FAN to boast of “popular support” for their cause.
The events surrounding the conspiracy of May 1980 showed that the links between the paramilitary Right and conservative segments of the private sector were not a matter of academic speculation. Instead, the public association between these two confirmed their institutional links, their readiness to offer themselves as an alternative, and the possibility that they could put together the pieces of a fascist formula of political domination, or at least one very similar to the Guatemalan regime from which D’Aubuisson seemed to receive much encouragement and inspiration. More ominously, the leaders of this reactionary coalition were looking forward to a change of administration in Washington to create a more favorable domestic and international climate for the execution of their blueprint.
During the summer of 1980 the disloyal Right demonstrated that it could count on the support of certain sectors of North American opinion. On 30 June D’Aubuisson arrived by private aircraft in Key West from Guatemala. Although his U.S. visa had been revoked, he was allowed entry, and he flew immediately to Washington. The visit was arranged by the American Legion and the American Security Council, and, once again, the major was trying to rally support for an FAN government that would be installed in power by a coup. In a press conference attended by several members of Congress, D’Aubuisson depicted Ambassador Robert White as a guerrilla sympathizer. More important, those members of Congress did not dispute D’Aubuisson’s assertion that they had told him to hang on until November and that an electoral victory by Ronald Reagan would turn things around. As he left the press conference, the visitor told a National Public Radio reporter that a Reagan victory “es lo que estamos esperando [is what we are waiting for].”
D’Aubuisson’s second visit made the Carter administration extremely uncomfortable, since it represented an attempt by ultraconservatives in the United States to force the hand of the administration in El Salvador. They misquoted several CIA and DIA intelligence reports to charge that the Carter administration was not getting the job done.3 The Department of State provided official reaction through spokesman John Trattner, who characterized the visit as “not in the best interests of the United States,” since the FAN was suspected of violent activities in El Salvador. A few days later, Ambassador White expressed apprehension that the Salvadoran Right was anticipating a Reagan victory and making extensive preparations to overthrow the government.
D’Aubuisson left Washington under the custody of INS agents, but he remained upbeat, claiming that he had accomplished the objective of his visit, which was to link his cause to the Reagan campaign. He claimed that he had talked to several U.S. senators and repeated his conviction that with a new (Reagan) government “our luck will change.”4 He maintained this in a series of tape-recorded messages that circulated widely among right-wingers in El Salvador.
If during the summer of 1980 the disloyal Right had to content itself with symbolic victories in the battle for sympathy and legitimacy in official circles in Washington, it had more reason to be encouraged by the continued erosion of Colonel Majano’s remaining base of support. During the summer, Majano continued to lose ground, in part owing to his own indecision and to his inability to prevent the removal of his associates and supporters from sensitive positions within the military. A decisive blow came on 1 September when Colonel Guillermo García, the defense minister, using his powers under the state of siege, signed a battle order removing virtually all of Majano’s remaining supporters from their posts.5 Majano tried to hang on and to cut his losses; he continued his contacts with opposition leaders, but his influence had been effectively neutralized. In spite of this the Right did not let up; on 3 November it tried to assassinate Majano while the colonel was at ISTA headquarters.
Majano saw a coup unfolding, since the Salvadoran Right felt all powerful with Reagan’s victory and was anticipating a victory of its own.6 This charge came following a meeting of 19 November, during which Majano was abused verbally by senior military officers. “The Right,” he said, “has certainly increased its battering to get me out. [They] have been waiting for this moment to define the situation in their favor.”7 Majano felt the need for urgent action. On 6 December, while he was in Panama seeking the support of General Torrijos—himself a graduate of the Salvadoran military academy and a frequent mediator between Salvadoran military factions after the coup of October 1979—and discussing the possibilities of new conversations with the Left, the military removed Majano from the junta. Defense Ministry sources claimed that the COPEFA had voted 300 to 4 against Majano, who, after sending his family to the United States, returned to El Salvador to try to resist the decision. He toured a number of garrisons in an attempt to explain his position and to rally support, but it was too late. On 10 December government figures announced an imminent reorganization, and the colonel was out for good.
Majano’s demise came at a moment in the Salvadoran transition when a series of events in that country combined with the victory of Ronald Reagan in the U.S. presidential election to precipitate a very serious confrontation. This confrontation led to the creation of the fourth junta, and to a new and precarious balance between the military and Christian Democrats, which persisted through 1981. The events showed that the disloyal Right remained the greatest threat to the Junta Revolucionaria de Gobierno, even though the guerrillas were increasing their leverage in the Salvadoran transition.
Of course the disloyral Right did not focus its efforts exclusively on progressive military figures like Colonel Adolfo Majano. From the very moment of the coup the Right had embarked on a program to eliminate important figures in both the government and the opposition camps. These efforts were intended to frustrate and demoralize the government, to make it more difficult for the PDC to remain in the junta, and further to alienate the opposition from the government. More and more frequently, the tactic that the Right chose was the assassination of prominent figures. Although relatively successful in creating a climate of fear and uncertainty, this program fell short of its most important objective, which was to drive the moderates out of the junta. For example, the Right was unable to force José Antonio Morales Ehrlich out of the government. Unlike Majano, Morales Ehrlich had the support of a party behind him, but many of his coreligionists in the PDC and many opposition leaders were not so fortunate.
One of the first to fall was Dr. Martín Espinosa Altamirano, shot on 5 February 1980 in his office by three suspected right-wing terrorists. Espinosa was a leader of the MNR, which had just moved into opposition. Shortly thereafter, on 25 February, Attorney General Mario Zamora was murdered at his home in front of his family. One of the most popular Christian Democrats, Zamora had been accused by D’Aubuisson very recently of being a member of the FPL The party immediately charged that D’Aubuisson was behind the assassination, but the damage was done.
Events like these not only generated divisions within the party, but prompted calls from other sectors that the PDC leave the government. For example, in February 1980, Monsignor Romero asked the Christian Democrats not to participate in the government so that their presence would not contribute to the masking of repression. On 24 March, Romero himself was murdered, plunging the party once again into a deep crisis. On 27 March three members of the PDC resigned their portfolios in protest over the government’s inability to prevent rightist violence.8
PDC leaders tried to maintain their composure and denounced the oligarchy for complicity in subversion and indiscriminate killings, but they exonerated the armed forces.9 Outrage inside the party prompted junta members Morales Ehrlich and Duarte to pressure the military to police itself. In his letter to the party explaining his resignation, however, Héctor Dada claimed that “the party has not been able to earn the respect of its ‘partners’; on the contrary, the repeated presentation of demands which are not even rejected formally [by the military], and that are then forgotten by the [PDC] leadership has strengthened the position of those who from their leadership roles in the Armed Forces maintain attitudes contrary to the covenant.”10 Shortly before their split from the PDC, Dada and members of the “popular tendency” claimed that the 31 December 1979 covenant between the party and the armed forces was a futile attempt to govern by itself. Thus isolated, the party had few resources with which to try to control the fascist element within the army.11
In short, the inability to control the military led dissident Christian Democrats to demand that the party abandon the government. Meanwhile, party activists were subjected to such a rightist onslaught that in June 1980 PDCSecretary General Juan Ramírez Rauda would state that more of its members had been killed during that year than during the Molina and Romero governments combined. This merely reflected what was happening in the Salvadoran population as a whole. According to Socorro Jurídico, 2,065 persons had died that year through the end of May.
The Christian Democrats wanted to utilize D’Aubuisson’s complicity in the May 1980 conspiracy to neutralize him for good. Yet it is apparent that they were unable to do so. Party members remained convinced that the major was responsible for the assassination of Mario Zamora. Duarte himself was quoted as being “absolutely certain” that D’Aubuisson was responsible for the assassination of Monsignor Romero—“Estoy absolutamente seguro.”12 More important, the PDC had had the support of the American embassy in its attempt to remove the major from the scene and to neutralize the actions of the rightist military. But the embassy had little influence on the rightists, and this evaporated during the period following the election of Ronald Reagan. The Salvadoran Right was convinced that the new administration’s decision to de-emphasize human rights implied an endorsement of its tactics. An alarmed Ambassador White flew to Washington in mid-November to urge the Reagan transition team to clarify its position and to restrain the Right.
A group of Salvadoran businessmen associated with the Alianza Productiva, a recently formed organization which offered qualified support to the junta, met with Reagan advisers Jeane Kirkpatrick, James Theberge, and Constantine Menges on 28 November. The visitors were assured of continued military aid, but were warned that this would not be forthcoming in the event of a rightist coup. Apparently, the Salvadoran Right was not listening, or else the rightist conspirators could not believe that they would be denied.
On 27 November a large group of about two hundred men raided the Externado San José, a Jesuit high school in San Salvador, taking twenty-five persons captive. The detainees had been holding a meeting of the Frente Democrático Revolucionario (FDR), an umbrella organization formed on 4 April to coordinate leftist opposition to the junta. The mutilated bodies of four FDR leaders were found the next day; a fifth was found the day after. Those killed included FDR president and former secretary of agriculture in the first junta Enrique Alvarez; Juan Chacón, secretary general of the BPR; Manuel Franco of the UDN; Enrique Barrera of the MNR; and Doroteo Hernández.
The killing of the FDR leaders followed closely on a 25 November note from the PDC to the junta in which the party analyzed the problem of rightist violence and demanded immediate action. Party leaders were convinced that the initiative to assassinate these opposition leaders had come from the military hierarchy itself, although they would not say so in public. The Christian Democrats felt that a new coup was in the offing, and they were demanding the removal of officers implicated in efforts to destroy the government.
The outcry and the violence generated by this incident had not died down when four American women were reported missing on 3 December. The women—Maryknoll sisters Ita Ford, 40, and Maura Clarke, 46; Ursuline sister Dorothy Kazel, 40; and lay worker Jean Donovan, 27—were last seen driving a 1978 Toyota van from the San Salvador International Airport on the evening of their disappearance. Sister Ita and Sister Maura were arriving from Managua, Nicaragua, where they had attended a regional meeting of their order. The women were headed toward the city of La Libertad. Their burned-out van was discovered the next day. On the afternoon of 4 December, Ambassador White and the U.S. consul general in San Salvador arrived at a site, some fifteen miles northeast of the airport, beside a back road some way out of the village of Santiago Nonualco. The ambassador had been notified by the vicar of the diocese of San Vicente that the four women were buried there in a shallow grave. Father Paul Schindler from La Libertad parish met the American diplomats at the site. The bodies of the women were dug out by local villagers. At three o’clock that afternoon, the secretary to the local justice of the peace arrived and authorized the removal of the bodies. All four women had been shot in the head. The face of one had been destroyed; the underwear of three was found separately. All had been shot repeatedly with high caliber bullets, and their bodies were bruised badly.13
On 5 December the Carter administration suspended all new military aid to El Salvador pending clarification of the murder of the four women. The administration also announced that a fact-finding mission headed by former under secretary of state William D. Rogers and William G. Bowdler, assistant secretary of state for inter-American affairs, would leave immediately for El Salvador.14
On 6 December Salvadoran foreign minister Fidel Chávez Mena was in Panama briefing General Omar Torrijos on the details of a forty-eight hour ultimatum that Christian Democratic junta members Duarte and Morales Ehrlich had served on the military, threatening to resign. Taking advantage of the uncertainty and turmoil surrounding these events, D’Aubuisson—who was boasting openly of having masterminded the killings of the FDR leaders—had offered the leadership of a new junta to national guard chief Colonel Eugenio Vides Casanova and to Colonel Nicolás Carranza, the deputy minister of defense. D’Aubuisson was acting through his associates, majors Mauricio Staben, Joaquín Zacapa, and José R. Blanco and captains José R. Pozo Duran and René A. Majano Araujo. The conspirators believed that they could count on the national guard, the Treasury Police, and the Third Infantry Brigade if they could find a suitable senior officer to lead the movement, and they anticipated that other units would follow.
The members of the PDC realized that a confrontation was imminent and that they had to move or be exterminated. They were aware of the conspiracy and of the fact that fourteen of their leaders had been targeted for assassination. Supported by Ambassador White, who was himself in a very precarious position, they had taken their case to Torrijos. They demanded the removal of D’Aubuisson’s military associates and the demotion of Colonel Carranza and Colonel Morán, the head of the Treasury Police, which had one of the worst records of indiscriminate violence.
The presence of the presidential commission of inquiry may have helped the Christian Democrats’ cause. It is also likely that General Torrijos played a role in the confrontation. On 8 December the commission met with the junta. The commission had already established that a military patrol had probably intercepted the four women and that they had been buried in a remote area under the supervision of local civilian and military authorities, even though these officials would have known that the four bodies matched the description of the missing American churchwomen. This suggested to the commission an attempt to conceal the deaths, since the embassy had not learned of the whereabouts of the bodies from official sources.15
Any possibility of a dialogue between the Christian Democrats and the moderate Left had been ended by the assassination of the FDR leaders; the intentions of a new administration in Washington did not augur well; the PDC’S closest collaborators in the military were gone; and the Right had once again humiliated the party with impunity while it waged an aggressive campaign to destroy the government. In these ominous circumstances the Christian Democrats were trying to play their only card, the threat of resigning from the government. They asked the military to live up to its pact with the PDC and remove the officers involved in the conspiracy.
Until the crisis of December 1980 the military had shown little enthusiasm for the removal of any officers accused or suspected of political murders. It had viewed their actions as a necessary component of the “dirty war” against subversion. For whatever reasons, Duarte and his collaborators had not been forceful enough on this matter before. But now they had little choice.
The “government reorganization” that produced the fourth junta was, at best, a modest victory for the Christian Democrats. The reorganization was announced on 13 December. Duarte and Colonel Gutiérrez disclosed at a press conference that they would become president and vice-president of the junta, respectively. Duarte would assume legislative functions, and Gutiérrez would remain as commander in chief of the Armed Force. Therefore, the question of civilian supremacy remained unsolved, even on paper, since the civilian president of the junta had no authority over the military. Yet the reorganization did produce a neutralization of the new D’Aubuisson conspiracy, as both Vides Casanova and Carranza disassociated themselves from his initiative. In addition, Carranza was demoted, which earned Colonel García the wrath of the more conservative officers, who considered this a “sell out.” More important, a battle order of 31 December 1981 removed the nucleus of hard-core supporters of D’Aubuisson from active service. In summary, this resolution of the crisis gave the Christian Democratic members of the government some breathing room, but it did not put an end to rightist attempts to destroy their government. The views of the incoming Reagan administration toward authoritarianism and the Salvadoran situation in particular continued to send a signal to the Salvadoran right wing that conditions were ripe for a power grab.
This crisis had barely subsided when the junta had to make a difficult and perilous adjustment to a new emphasis in the policies of the United States toward El Salvador. This had begun to emerge in the last few days of the Carter administration, perhaps in anticipation of changes that the new administration would make but also in response to the “final offensive” that the guerrillas launched on 10 January 1981.
Since November 1980 the Department of State had been in possession of a cache of documents, purportedly captured from the guerrillas by the Salvadoran armed forces, which seemed to indicate that the former were receiving weapons from abroad. Secretary of State Edmund Muskie had cabled the embassy to this effect. On 14 January the Carter administration announced that it would give $5 million in “nonlethal” military aid to the Salvadoran armed forces. Ambassador White defended the measure on the grounds that the United States was “under obligation” to counter the guerrilla threat.16 At a press conference in San Salvador, White suggested that the nature of the struggle had changed because of the quantity and sophistication of the weapons that the guerrillas were receiving from Nicaragua. He added that during the guerrilla offensive about one hundred well-armed guerrillas had come across the Gulf of Fonseca from Nicaragua. On 18 January, President Carter authorized an additional $5 million in combat equipment and supplies.17
Carter’s action renewed the flow of aid that had been suspended as a result of the assassination of the four American women in December. Ironically, this military aid represented the first direct shipment of such aid to El Salvador since 1977, and it was approved after the Salvadoran army had defeated the guerrilla offensive. This change in policy was met with skepticism by some members of the government. An unidentified member of the cabinet told reporters wryly that the only change that had taken place was that in the United States, since the weapons had been coming to the guerrillas for over a year.18 The Christian Democrats were concerned that the new emphasis on a military solution or on the military aspect of the crisis would help to strengthen the position of the hard-liners in the army and of the rightist element in general. White shared this view, which he aired frequently throughout 1981.
The issue of the resumption of military aid was joined to the issue of human rights in El Salvador, making the latter a source of considerable embarrassment to the PDC, since the United States Congress would insist on a certification of progress on this front as a condition for aid. On this occasion, the murders of the nuns had stood in the way, and the Department of State had issued a statement on 17 January, while Carter was still in office, to the effect that the Salvadoran government had taken “positive steps” in the investigation of the killing. Ambassador White disputed this contention and argued that while the aid had been justified, there was no need to obscure the fact that the junta had done very little to investigate the murders.19 This public disagreement precipitated the removal of White, who had been targeted for removal by conservatives in the U.S. Senate anyway. The issue was joined, however, and American public opinion was invited to look at El Salvador through either the distorted lenses of a new group of policymakers bent on showing the world that America would not be pushed around anymore, or those of the horrified opponents of this new group, who saw a familiar scenario unfolding.
The early weeks of the Reagan administration were marked by a hardening attitude toward the Soviet Union, and the administration also set out to demonstrate that El Salvador was a “textbook case of Communist aggression.” The case was to be made by the secretary of state, who perceived his role as the president’s “Vicar” for foreign policy.
On 10 January 1981, less than a week after American Institute for Free Labor Development (AIFLD) officials Michael R Hammer and Mark D. Pearlman and José Rodolfo Viera, president of the ISTA, were gunned down by rightist terrorists in the coffee shop of the Sheraton Hotel in San Salvador, General Alexander M. Haig, Jr., in testimony before a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on his nomination as secretary of state, complained that recent American pressures on El Salvador over human rights violations might be said to diverge from the spirit of the OAS charter.20 On 1 February Haig fired Ambassador White. Although spokesmen for the Department of State hastened to declare that this did not necessarily imply a change in U.S. policy toward El Salvador, they did indicate that a policy review was under way. More important, White’s removal produced consternation within Christian Democratic circles in the junta and rejoicing among those who had characterized him as a “guerrilla sympathizer” and as a man “sending the wrong signals to a troubled nation.”21
White may have anticipated his downfall, which may explain his indiscretion, but given the ideological bent of the new administration and of its supporters in the Congress, the outgoing ambassador may have wanted to do his part to counter what several observers were seeing as a drastic change in policy. Conservative supporters of Reagan, in particular Republican Senator Jesse Helms of North Carolina, the new chairman of the Subcommittee on Latin American Affairs of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, were determined to put their own people in sensitive positions within the foreign policy apparatus. This brought about considerable delays and negotiations over ambassadorial appointments, as well as over assignments to top policy positions at the Department of State.22 In the summer of 1981 most senior positions at the department’s Bureau of American Republics were still vacant, and, needless to say, morale was low and the design and conduct of policy very uncertain and contradictory.23 In the meantime, the embassy in San Salvador, temporarily headed by Frederic L. Chapin, a career foreign service officer who was appointed to the post on 23 February, appeared to be under cross-pressures from human rights activists and die-hard conservatives.
The guerrilla documents captured the previous November became an important part of the case assembled by the team reviewing the Salvadoran situation. This evidence fit well into Haig’s attempt to redefine the situation. Jon D. Glassman, an American diplomat stationed in Mexico City, was dispatched to San Salvador to retrieve a second batch of documents captured during the January offensive. Together, these documents provided the essential ingredients of a report that the review team was preparing to bolster the secretary’s view of the conflict. As one official familiar with the circumstances in which the report was prepared would state later, this was “a hasty job, under a lot of pressure, and it was sloppy in some ways.”24
Segments of the report were leaked to the press in early February. On 14 February the administration announced that Lawrence S. Eagleburger, assistant secretary of state for European affairs, and General Vernon A. Walters would be sent to Europe and Latin America, respectively, to present the administration’s case. The Special Report was released on 23 February in two installments: an 8-page summary presenting the conclusions drawn from the evidence and a 180-page book of documents of more limited circulation.25 The summary concluded that “over the past year the insurgency in El Salvador has been progressively transformed into another case of indirect armed aggression against a small Third World country by communist powers acting through Cuba.”26
This conclusion was grounded on five major inferences:
1.that Fidel Castro and the Cuban government had played a direct role in late 1979 and early 1980 in bringing together the diverse Salvadoran guerrilla factions into a united front;
2.that outside assistance and advice was given to the guerrillas in planning their military operations;
3.that Salvadoran Communist leaders and key officials of several Communist states had had a series of contacts that had resulted in commitments to supply the insurgents with nearly 800 tons of the most modern weapons and equipment;
4.that a covert delivery to El Salvador of nearly 200 tons of those arms had been made, mostly through Cuba and Nicaragua, in preparation for the guerrillas’ failed “general offensive” of January 1981; and
5.that the Communists had made a major effort to “cover” their involvement by providing mostly arms of Western manufacture.27
Reaction to the Special Report was predictable. On 6 February, anticipating its release and responding to early commentary by the media, Shafik Jorge Handal, secretary general of the Communist Party of El Salvador (PCS), issued a rebuttal from Mexico City. Handal made the following points:
1.it was false that an agreement had been reached between Soviet Bloc governments and the pes to deliver weapons to the guerrillas;
2.the allegation was really a maneuver by the United States to justify the growing supply of U.S. arms and military personnel to the junta;
3.the Salvadoran people had been pushed toward a war of survival and national liberation by government massacres and repression;
4.the pes did not want future hostile relations with the United States; and
5.the fact that the Department of State, and not the Salvadoran junta, had assumed responsibility for the publication of the report provided further evidence of the blatant way in which the United States government was intervening in the internal affairs of El Salvador.28
After the Special Report was published, Dr. Rubén Zamora, an FDR leader and also secretary of the presidency under the first junta and the brother of the slain attorney general, Mario Zamora, countered that the U.S. charges were based on false documents; that the guerrillas were getting their weapons from sources in Costa Rica, Honduras, and Nicaragua, but without any involvement on the part of the governments of those countries; and that the United States had presented the documents as a cover-up for continued backing of the Salvadoran junta.29
Although more detailed and devastating criticism of the Special Report would not surface until the summer, the political offensive mounted by the Reagan administration got relatively little mileage out of the report. In addition, adverse reaction in the United States to the tone and messages that the administration sought to sustain with the report forced Reagan to abandon the campaign almost as suddenly as it had been started.
Eagleburger’s contacts with and representations to Western European governments generated only mild support. Britain, France, Italy, and West Germany were “convinced” and condemned Communist support for the guerrillas as “unacceptable interference.” EEC countries even agreed to delay granting humanitarian aid to the victims of the fighting, under pressure from the Reagan administration, who insisted that most of the aid wound up in the hands of the guerrillas. However, most European governments continued to oppose a military solution to the Salvadoran conflict.30
General Walters’s mission to Latin America produced responses that varied from skepticism and annoyance to outright opposition and dismay. Argentina and Venezuela, whose governments approved of United States support for the junta, expressed disagreement with the idea of an inter-American peace force. The Brazilians received their old friend warmly, but they repeated their opposition to any type of intervention in El Salvador. Finally, Mexican President José López Portillo, who had already met with President Reagan, provided the most stinging response, declaring that Cuba was the Latin American country dearest to Mexico, warning against “unscrupulous arrogance of military power,” lamenting the elevation of Central America to the undesirable rank of strategic frontier, and condemning as “unnatural and unreasonable” the foreign powers’ espousal of Latin American conflicts as though they were theirs.31
Many observers shared the impression that El Salvador was being used by the Reagan administration as a test case to show American determination to fight Communist subversion. Congressional sources believed that the administration had evolved a short-term strategy toward El Salvador consisting of four different desiderata: (i) build up the military capabilities of the junta, (2) reduce international support for the guerrillas, (3) rally support in Latin America and Europe for the U.S. position, and, most important of all, (4) stem the flow of weapons reaching the guerrillas.32 The administration was relatively successful on the last score, at least temporarily, but part of this success was owing to the fact that the actual tonnage of weapons reaching the guerrillas had been overestimated greatly.33 The second and third goals were simply not met.
The administration’s drive to secure congressional approval of increased military aid to the junta was probably not dependent on the acceptance of the Special Report. Although the report may have been instrumental in switching a few votes in the key committees of Congress, President Reagan’s personal powers of persuasion would have probably sufficed, for the president seemed capable of achieving victories in Congress on even the most hopeless issues during his first year in office. Congress, however, remained skeptical and committed to the principle of linking the aid to the performance of the junta on human rights.
On 24 March, exactly one year to the day after Monsignor Romero was assassinated, the Foreign Operations Subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee approved the additional $5 million in “lethal” aid initially proposed by Carter. This approval did not come easy, however, as ex officio members Jamie Whitten (D.-Miss.) and Silvio Conte (R.-Mass.), respectively, the chairman and ranking minority member of the committee, had to take the relatively infrequent action of joining in a subcommittee vote to produce a majority for the administration. Most of the subcommittee members who voted in favor of the measure justified their action on the grounds that it was necessary to support the president so that he would not look weak.34
The month lapse between publication of the Special Report and the subcommittee vote had witnessed an increasingly adverse public reaction to any military involvement in El Salvador and considerable media scrutiny of the situation. These put the administration on the defensive. The Foreign Operations Subcommittee became a forum for constant discussion of the situation. On 25 February former ambassador White testified before the subcommittee. He disclosed that during the last days of the Carter administration he was under constant pressure from his military attaché, Colonel Eldon Cummings, to request additional military aid and advisers. Cummings confided to the ambassador that the Pentagon wanted these in place before the Reagan inauguration. White added that social reform and political reconciliation were the best means to defeat the guerrillas, who, in his view, lacked popular support, and that the new equipment would be used to assassinate and kill in uncontrolled ways. In a dramatic gesture, White turned to the Republican members of the subcommittee and asked them, “Do you want to associate yourselves with this kind of killing?”35 The ousted diplomat may have been trying to defend his actions and his views, but his testimony managed to raise the central question for United States policy in El Salvador. In addition, White’s testimony occasioned much editorial comment questioning the wisdom of the administration’s blueprint.36
Public opinion was also reacting to stern warnings delivered by Presidential Adviser Edwin Meese and Secretary Haig to the effect that the administration did not rule out any action to halt the flow of arms. The president tried to allay the mounting concern over his apparent desire to “win one in El Salvador.” On 24 February he declared that he had no intention of involving U.S. troops in the fighting, although on 26 February he protested that the “Vietnam syndrome” should not deter the United States from helping countries endangered by a Communist insurrection. The weekend of 28 February-1 March witnessed extensive coverage and commentary on El Salvador by most major newspapers.37 On 3 March, Reagan realized how deep the concern ran when retiring CBS news anchorman Walter Cronkite opened an interview with the president with seven consecutive questions about El Salvador. Reagan was forced to repeat that he did not plan to send U.S. troops to El Salvador and that Haig’s statement about “going to the source” of the weapons did not imply that Cuba would be assaulted.
In summary, reaction to the tough administration rhetoric pushed the Salvadoran crisis to the forefront, confronting Reagan with an issue that, he now concluded, was taking too much time and overshadowing his domestic economic program. Shortly thereafter, the administration began to downplay the issue.
The debate on El Salvador did not die down, however. The press continued to scrutinize the situation and ask embarrassing questions,38 officials and critics of the administration continued to defend their views on the situation,39 and administration officials continued to issue hard-line statements, although less frequently. In addition, Congressional committees kept the issue alive. Meanwhile, the situation in El Salvador followed a logic of its own which had little to do with the content or the tone of the ongoing debate in the United States.
The Salvadoran Right, for one, remained convinced that the situation had turned to its advantage and that the time had come for a decisive challenge to the hapless junta, whose already low legitimacy had been eroded further by the geopolitical machinations of the Reagan administration. Salvadoran rightists had been encouraged by the tough talk coming out of Washington, and they were emboldened by the apprehension reigning among the Christian Democrats. Washington had ignored Duarte’s protestations that the most pressing problem was the economic one and had issued the Special Report, which had interpreted the civil war going on in El Salvador as “Communist aggression”—an interpretation challenged by Salvadoran Foreign Minister Fidel Chávez, who insisted that the conflict was, first and foremost, domestic. White had been fired, and the new administration did not seem to care much about human rights. Finally, more military aid seemed to be on the way. All this only confirmed the impression long held by Salvadoran rightists that Reagan was one of theirs.
On 3 March, Roberto D’Aubuisson resurfaced in El Salvador, calling for the removal of the junta and stating that a “totally military” government would be acceptable to Reagan. D’Aubuisson claimed that talks he had conducted with two members of the Reagan transition team, Roger Fontaine, formerly of Georgetown’s Center for Strategic and International Studies, and Lt. General Robert Graham, had given him the impression that Reagan would support such a government in El Salvador.40 Fontaine confirmed that he had spoken to the major the year before, but he characterized D’Aubuisson’s conclusion as “pure fiction.”
Fact or fiction, D’Aubuisson was conducting this new attempt to destabilize the junta at a time when Duarte seemed to be entertaining an offer made by West Germany to bring together the democratic forces on both sides of the Salvadoran conflict. Duarte was desperate to recover some of the ground lost by the civilians in the government. The major was trying to exploit what was perhaps the most divisive issue separating the military and the Christian Democrats, as he accused Duarte of setting the stage for negotiations with the Left.
News of another rightist cabal in El Salvador failed to produce much reaction from the Reagan administration at first, since this was happening just as Reagan had decided to try to move El Salvador off of the front page. On 4 March White House press secretary James Brady announced that Reagan had no views on the coup, while Department of State spokesman William J. Dyess refused to comment on internal Salvadoran politics. That same day, however, Chargé d’Affaires Chapin, who was much closer to the action, and Secretary of State Haig, who had been chastised for his failure to react strongly to news of an unfolding coup d’état in Spain in February, warned that a military coup would have “serious consequences” for United States aid. Two days later, answering one of five questions on El Salvador at a White House press conference, Reagan said that a rightist coup would be a matter of grave concern to his administration,41 and Dyess declared that the United States supported President Duarte’s attempt to solve the crisis through elections.
On 4 March occupants of a passing truck fired on the American embassy, prompting Chapin to link the shooting to the conspiracy. Apparently, the Salvadoran Right had served notice of its disillusionment with the Reagan administration in characteristic fashion. On 6 March the junta put out word that D’Aubuisson was being sought for his complicity in the abortive coup but, to no one’s surprise, the major was not apprehended. On 17 March two gunmen repeated the attack one half-hour after Representative Clarence Long (D.-Md.) had ended a press conference at the embassy building expressing opposition to United States military involvement in El Salvador.
To the chagrin of the administration El Salvador remained very much in the news through the year. The civil war, which most senior members of the administration continued to view as a case of Communist insurgency, lingered on. Critics remained unconvinced and dismayed by the new emphasis displayed by officials. Duarte and his associates survived the Reagan transition, but it remained to be seen whether their ineffectual government could find the means to turn the process of transition toward a political settlement; if anything, this looked more and more remote. Their precarious situation was made worse by the instincts and personal convictions of the formal allies of the Christian Democrats. These seemed ready to end the conflict with a military victory, but that victory had so far failed to materialize.
It is too early to give a full appraisal of what difference, if any, the Reagan administration made on the Salvadoran situation. For our purpose, which is to determine whether the actions undertaken by the United States helped or hindered the Salvadoran process of transition, the Reagan policy seemed to strengthen the position of the obstructionists. To be sure, the wilder right-wingers did not get their wish, but they did get away with murder, literally. The more moderate rightists, on the other hand, were encouraged by what they saw and heard, and they felt little need to cooperate with the Christian Democrats, who appeared to be out of favor with the new team in Washington.
The role of United States conservatives like Helms deserves brief mention, in that they consciously or unwittingly helped to legitimize the actions and programs of the more violent rightist element in El Salvador. These conservatives wanted not only to “draw a line” in El Salvador but to dictate a geopolitical approach to the problem, which could only result in a regionalization of the conflict. These elements did not appear as interested in a peaceful solution to the problem as they did in the use of this “textbook case” as a pretext for “getting tough” with Nicaragua and Cuba.
President Reagan sensed the depth of opposition to his initial approach and adopted a more cautious one. Therefore, he failed to live up to the direr predictions of his opponents. He had come to office with a reputation as a hawkish anti-Communist, and many had anticipated that his actions would result in a complete neutralization of the chances for peaceful transition in El Salvador. After the first year of Reagan’s term in office the United States was more deeply involved in the crisis, but not primarily because of Reagan’s anti-Communism. Our deepening involvement was the result of his continued commitment to two basic goals set by Carter: the prevention of a “leftist” victory and the creation of a political center.