Duarte Presidency: 1984-1989
In 1984 elections, Christian Democrat José Napoleón Duarte won the presidency (with 54% of the votes) against Army Major Roberto d’Aubuisson, of the Nationalist Republican Alliance (ARENA). The elections were held under military rule, however, and candidates to the left of Duarte's brand of Christian Democrats were excluded from participating. Lord Chitnis, a spokesman for the British Parliamentary Human Rights Group which observed the elections said the elections were held in an "atmosphere of terror and despair, of macabre rumor and grisly reality."
Fearful of a d’Aubuisson presidency for public relations purposes, the CIA financed Duarte's campaign with some two million dollars. "Duarte is the man who has been able to open the coffers of the Congress, and the military realizes that," said a Salvadoran political analyst. "They wont get rid of the goose that is laying golden eggs. He's the democratic facade so everybody doesn't have to worry because there's a democratic president there." Similarly, the Christian Science Monitor reported that "the economic right — the extremely conservative Salvadoran private sector — are realizing that Duarte can deliver the goods. Strangely, for a populist politician, President Duarte brags, in full-page newspaper ads, not about what he has done for his poor supporters, but about what he has done for his arch enemies— the coffee growers." Although, Duarte's political rivals in the ARENA party often referred to him as a "Communist" or Communist sympathizer.
After President José Napoleon Duarte's election in 1984, human rights abuses at the hands of the army and security forces continued, but declined due to modifications made to the security structures. The policies of the Duarte government attempted to make the country's three security forces more accountable to the government by placing them under the direct supervision of a Vice Minister of Defense, but all three forces continued to be commanded individually by regular army officers, which, given the command structure within the government, served to effectively nullify any of the accountability provisions. The Duarte government also failed to decommission personnel within the security structures that had been involved in gross human rights abuses, instead simply dispersing them to posts in other regions of the country.
An Americas Watch report noted that the Atlacatl Battalion killed 80 unarmed civilians in Cabanas in July, 1984 and carried out another massacre one month later, killing 50 displaced people in the Chalatenango province. The woman were raped and then everyone was systematically executed.
In August, guerrilla spokesman said the Army killed 64 civilian masas in their hiding places. Dan Williams, a Los Angeles Times correspondent on the scene reported that he had found half a dozen skeletons in one of the hiding places. Civilian masas told reporters in the area that the army massacred the people. Williams also discovered fourteen spent machinegun cartridges not far from the skeletons. He said that among the bodies he could see the remains of young children. However, Los Angeles Times reporter Dan Williams concluded that, "It is difficult to know exactly what happened. Rebels charge that government planes routinely bomb civilian concentrations and that government troops slaughter civilians at random. U.S. officials here say this is not so, but at the same time they say that the people sometimes place themselves in harm's way."
A new strategy reported in January 1985, created 12 free-fire zones in the northern Chalatenango province. The program was designed to help deprive the guerrillas of support from the civilian population. Lieutenant Colonel Sigifredo Ochoa Perez, the military commander of Cabanas Department, acknowledged that indiscriminate bombing was being carried out these areas. Ochoa's forces were implicated in a massacre of about 40 civilians in an Army sweep through one of the free fire zones in August. Ochoa refused to permit the Red Cross to enter these areas to deliver humanitarian aid to the victims.
Although Ochoa's troops usually avoided combat with the guerrillas, he reportedly uprooted some 1,400 civilian rebel supporters with mortar fire between September and November 1984. Ochoa, a former acting director of the Treasury Policy and political ally of Major Roberto d'Aubuisson, had been convicted of mutiny and exiled to the U.S. Army War College until U.S. advisers appointed him commander of the Cabanas Department. Ochoa's tactics and accomplishments made him a favorite among many of his mentors.
The London Economist noted continued death squad threats against people at the University: "This is a reminder that the right- wing terror machine is still in running order. President Jose Napoleon Duarte has been in office for more than a year, but nobody has yet been convicted for the tens of thousands of murders committed since 1979 by military-manned death squads. He has noticeably shifted to the right, reassuring the army and the businessmen that his aims are really the same as theirs." The director of the National Association of Private Enterprise said, "the man has been politically educated." The army too "has come to apreciate the president's skill, both as a tactician who can use peace talks to outmanoeuvre the guerrillas and as a salesman in Washington," the Economist added.
In El Salvador's "Continuing Terror" in 1985, Americas Watch observes that "President Duarte's civilian government notwithstanding, the human rights situation in El Salvador remains terrible." War crimes by the military were reported to include: "aerial bombardments, strafing, mortaring and Army ground operations that kill, maim and terrorize the civilian population and that deprive them of the food they need to survive"; "a resurgence in death squad activity"; and the "continuing, selective use of torture by the security forces, including such methods as electronic shock, hangings by arms and legs, the capucha and beatings." The Council on Hemispheric Affairs designated Guatemala and El Salvador as the Western Hemisphere's worst human rights violators for the sixth year in a row in 1985.
The number of death squad victims declined significantly by 1985. The trade unions and mass political organizations had been wiped out, forcing most of the survivors to flee the country or join the rebels. Bodies continued to be dumped in Lake Ilopango and occasionally washed on to shore, reminding people that the repression continued. A national opinion poll conducted in 1986 by the Catholic University showed that 10% of the population believed that the country was advancing to democracy; 28% said conditions had improved but that repression continued; 45% thought there was no significant change; and 18% believed freedom and democracy were diminishing. In February 1986, tens of thousands of people put aside their fear and marched through the streets of San Salvador to protest Duarte's economic Austerity plan. The economic package included a currency devaluation, increases in gas prices, import taxes, import restrictions and a few price freezes on basic goods. The Austerity measures were designed by U.S. economic advisers who warned American aid might be withheld if the programs were not implemented.
During the Central American Peace Accords in 1987, the FMLN demanded that all death squads be disbanded and the members be held accountable. The Duarte government responded by granting amnesty to hundreds of guerrillas as well as all death squad members. The Amnesty law also required the release of all prisoners suspected of being guerrillas and guerrilla sympathizers. Duarte was reported to have deliberately undermined the process at the behest of the United States and the military. He cemented preconditions for peace talks that he knew the guerrillas would never accept, such as laying down their arms. Washington's overall strategy was for Duarte "to give the appearance of scrupulously adhering to the plan while simultaneously taking positions that will allow them to blame the rebels for the plan's failure." Unlike Nicaragua's National Reconciliation Commission, which consisted of a government appointed principal opponent, as required by the peace plan, the Salvadoran commission was exclusively filled with political allies of the military-oligarchy. Moreover, the government's continued arrests and disappearances of trade unionists and members of other opposition groups made national reconciliation impossible. Meanwhile, the guerrillas were able to carry out successful attacks against military outposts in the countryside after gaining the support from the town's mostly conservative residents. In the 1988 elections, the Salvadoran Army intimidated the voters and the ARENA party fixed the results.
In late 1987 and throughout 1988 following the signing of the Central American Peace Agreement, state repression began to escalate dramatically. As had occurred in the 1970s, the 1988 elections were followed by escalated government violence, as part of a deliberate campaign to terrorize voters. An Amnesty International report published in October 1988 titled, El Salvador Death Squads: A Government Strategy, concluded that "Forces involved include all branches of the Salvadorian security apparatus, including the navy, air force and army and the security services, --- including the National Guard, the National Police and the Treasury Police. Personnel from these units have carried out torture and extrajudicial execution and have been responsible for "disappearances" - both while in uniform and in plain clothes. The death squad style is to operate in secret but to leave mutilated bodies of victims as a means of terrifying the population. Victims are customarily found mutilated, decapitated, dismembered, strangled or showing marks of torture or rape." The report also concluded that clandestine paramilitary units were used so the government wouldn't take the heat for state terrorism. According to Maria Julia Hernandez, director of the Roman Catholic Church's human rights office, death squad killings always escalated when opposition activity increased and the government couldn't control it.
Angered by the results of the 1988 elections and the military's use of terror tactics and voter intimidation, the FMLN launched a major offensive with the aim of unseating the Christiani government on November 11, 1989. This offensive brought the epicenter of fighting into the wealthy suburbs of San Salvador for essentially the first time in the history of the conflict, as the FMLN began a campaign of selective assassinations against political and military officials, civil officials, and upper-class private citizens. The government retaliated with a renewed campaign of repression, primarily against activists in the democratic sector. The non-governmental Salvadoran Human Rights Commission (CDHES) counted 2,868 killings by the armed forces between May 1989 and May 1990. In addition, the CDHES stated that government paramilitary organizations illegally detained 1,916 persons and disappeared 250 during the same period. As in the early 1980s, the University of Central America fell under attack from the army and death squads. On 16 November 1989, five days after the beginning of the FMLN offensive, the Atlacatl Battalion entered the campus of the University of Central America in uniform and summarily executed six Jesuit priests—Ignacio Ellacuria, Segundo Montes, Ignacio Martin-Baro, Joaquín López y López, Juan Ramón Moreno, and Amando López—and their housekeepers (a mother and daughter, Elba Ramos and Celia Marisela Ramos). In the middle of the night, the six priests were dragged from their beds on the campus, machine gunned to death and their corpses mutilated. The mother and daughter were found shot to death in the bed they shared. The Atlacatl Battalion was reportedly under the tutelage of U.S. special forces just 48 hours before the killings. The liberation theology bishops were declared an enemy of the state for speaking out against state terror and working for the "preferential option of the poor."
By the late 1980s, 75% of the population lived in poverty. The living standards of most Salvadorans declined by 30% since 1983. Unemployment or underemployment increased to 50%. Most people, moreover, still didn't have access to clean water or healthcare. The armed forces were feared, inflation rose almost 40%, capital flight reached an estimated $1 billion, and the economic elite avoided paying taxes. Despite nearly $3 billion in American economic assistance, per capita income declined by one third. American aid was distributed to urban businesses although the impoverished majority received almost none of it. The Congressional Research Service said the "ESF in Central America is basically a security/military program undertaken to prop up the existing regimes and the elites who support them.." The United States had been providing most of the country's budget and underwriting almost all government policies. The concentration of wealth was even higher than before the U.S.-administered land reform program. The agrarian law generated windfall profits for the economic elite and buried the cooperatives in debts that left them incapable of competing in the capital markets. The oligarchs often took back the land from bankrupt peasants who couldn't obtain the credit necessary to pay for seeds and fertilizer. Although, "few of the poor would dream of seeking legal redress against a landlord because virtually no judge would favor a poor man." By 1989, 1% of the landowners owned 41% of the tillable land, while 60% of the rural population owned 0%.
Read more about this topic: Salvadoran Civil War