Overcoming the Doubts

By James Kelly

The Administration makes its pitch for aid to El Salvador

When Thomas Enders, Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs, appeared before the House Foreign Affairs Committee last week to present the case for continuing economic and military aid to El Salvador, he was in a difficult spot. Under a measure enacted late last year, the Administration must provide Congress formal certification every six months that El Salvador is improving its record on human rights and expanding economic benefits to the poor in order to maintain foreign aid to that strife-torn nation. But reports had reached members of the committee that human rights violations were still taking place. Enders thus made a careful pitch. Arguing that the Administration was by no means blind to the faults of the San Salvador government, he nonetheless insisted: "We believe the facts amply justify the certification required by law. . . Progress is marred but real."

The-48-page certification document offered no grounds for unalloyed optimism. The report admitted that the overall improvement "has not been as great as hoped" and that "serious problems remain." On the issue of human rights, the report claimed that the government of President Alvaro Alfredo Magana "is making a concerted and significant effort" to curb violations. The study presented statistics from five sources showing that the number of civilian deaths from political violence has dropped considerably. Said Enders: "All available evidence suggests that the most serious violations are on a slow, downward curve."

On the issue of land reform, the report danced over tricky political ground. Admitting that the country's newly elected Constituent Assembly, led by its right-wing president, Roberto d'Aubuisson, has tried to undermine the reform laws, the study nonetheless contended that 10,000 provisional land titles had been handed over to former renters and sharecroppers in the past six months. President Magana, moreover, has led a campaign to return the land to farmers illegally evicted from their new holdings: since June, according to the report, some 2,000 families have returned to their farms.

But some Congressmen remained skeptical. Democratic Senator Christopher Dodd of Connecticut blasted the certification report as "a sham," arguing that it would give a "green light" to Salvadorans to "do anything they damn well please." Democratic Representatives Tom Harkin of Iowa and Gerry Studds of Massachusetts announced plans to introduce a resolution in the House that would declare the Administration's report "null and void."

The Administration's case was not strengthened by the disclosure last week of the brutal torture of a Salvadoran volunteer for the Green Cross, an international relief agency. The worker had been arrested by Salvadoran security police on charges of providing supplies to the guerrillas. Imprisoned for several days in a secret, soundproof room at police headquarters in downtown San Salvador, he was stretched on a rotating wheel, beaten severely and forced to swallow lime. The victim was also strung up by his hands and feet while his genitals were squeezed in a wire vise.

After he was released, and after reports of the torture reached the U.S. mission in San Salvador, Ambassador Deane Hinton formally complained to the Magana government. Despite credible reports of other incidents involving torture, State Department officials nonetheless insisted that the excesses of Salvadoran security forces are not what they used to be. Indeed, there is statistical evidence that the human rights situation in El Salvador is improving. According to figures collected by the Jesuit-run University of Central America in San Salvador, the number of civilians killed both sides has dropped from 5,175 in the last half of 1981 to 2,658 in the first six months of this year.

The political picture in San Salvador has also brightened. After alternately backing and resisting the previous Christian Democratic government of Jose Napoleon Duarte, the Salvadoran army now seems to have lined up behind both the new coalition government and land reform. Equally encouraging to the Administration, the nation's three major political parties (the Nationalist Republican Alliance, the Christian Democrats and the National Conciliation Party) are working together in a pluralist government, rather than simply sniping at one another. For the latter achievement in particular, much of the credit appears to belong to Magana, a U.S.-educated economist who assumed the role of political broker when he was appointed to the presidency last April. "I spend hours and hours listening to the party leaders," says Magana. "I don't need the Nobel Prize for Peace. I already have the Nobel Prize for patience."

U.S. embassy officials in San Salvador, who publicly claim to find the certification hearings in Washington an annoyance, admit in private they are providing a measure of pressure on San Salvador to stay on the road to reform. For there is a carrot as well as a stick: with its latest certification, the Administration earns the right to dispatch the remainder of the $81 million in military aid earmarked by Congress for El Salvador this fiscal year and to press for the $61.3 million in aid requested for fiscal 1983. Meanwhile, El Salvador remains a country under siege; though the large turnout at the March election dealt a severe blow to the morale of the leftist guerrillas, the insurgents regrouped and launched a new offensive in June. The fighting now sputters along, with the Magana government and the Reagan Administration hoping that the gradual reforms will rob the guerrillas of the issues that helped feed the revolution in the first place. --By James Kelly. Reported by Johanna McGeary/Washington and James Willwerth/San Salvador

With reporting by Johanna McGeary, James Willwerth

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