>wounded several times, jailed twice, and spent a good part of the '80s >in exile. He speaks passionately about what the United States should and >should not do after funding a 12-year war that took 70,000 lives. > >"We don't like the [air base] proposal," Chicas said. "The problem is >that the U.S. has no clear policy for combating drug trafficking. There >is no limit on where fighting drug trafficking ends and militarization >begins." And, he noted, "there is very little effort to diminish the use >of drugs in the U.S., and the base they want to set up in El Salvador >appears to be more of a military base than to fight drugs." > >He argues that it is former members of the clandestine death squads and >security police, who worked closely with U.S. military and intelligence >officials in the '80s, who are involved in major organized crime in El >Salvador, including drug running. The United States, he says, "should >declassify its information about the death squads relating to drug >trafficking." > >That is not likely given governmental and press reports that the Reagan >administration worked closely with drug runners among the Contras in >Nicaragua; that Salvadoran death squads were under the control of >U.S.-trained military officers; and that the U.S. government knew far >more about disappeared Salvadorans than it ever publicly admitted. > >Ironically, the U.S. ambassador invites the former guerrillas to give >their support to fighting drugs so that American streets won't be >flooded with crack cocaine. The former guerrillas respond by asking the >United States to stem El Salvador's crack cocaine epidemic by ending >deportations of gang members back to the streets of San Salvador. > >Yet neither side talks about what is just under the surface: 8,000 >Salvadorans disappeared during the war, and the U.S. government knew it >was happening and supported those who were involved. It is below the >surface because that is how most Salvadorans and all Americans want it. >The Salvadorans want peace after 70 years of massacres and repression. >And Americans have forgotten about El Salvador. > >FMLN assembly member Jose Manuel Melgar summed it up to me a few moments >before blistering ambassador Patterson, who has since been named U.S. >Ambassador to Colombia, with a lecture about the sovereignty of his tiny >country. > >The 1992 peace agreement between the repressive military regime and the >overmatched guerrilla army has worked in El Salvador because "both >parties wanted it to work," Melgar explained to me. "And they both >wanted it to work because they realized there were no winners or >losers." More important, said Melgar, there is no interest in returning >to war because "it is not guaranteed that either side could win." > >--- The Other Guns >Throughout postwar El Salvador crime is rampant. The newspapers of San >Salvador are filled with lurid stories of police being arrested >throughout the country for running kidnapping, truck hijacking, and >robbery rings. > >You only have to enter a neighborhood sandwich shop in San Salvador to >get the hint: An armed guard with a pistol-grip shotgun stands at the >door. In the doorway of almost every store with a cash drawer stand >these private, shotgun-toting guards. It's as though all the kids in >government fatigues who toted guns in 1981 grew up and traded in their >American M-16s for shotguns and sharply pressed powder blue and black >security guard uniforms. > >The central reason for today's crime wave and gang buildup is the >country's stubborn, deep poverty. La Chacra, a poor and marginalized >suburb of San Salvador, is a prime example. La Chacra residents have >found that they are often passed over for jobs because the town has such >a bad reputation. > >La Chacra grew dramatically during the war, as peasants were forced from >the countryside into the cities by the government's "dry up the sea" >anti-insurgency programs. Walk down the narrow streets and you see >graffiti right out of East Los Angeles. The L.A. gangs are here, and >many of their members are deportees from southern California. > >Mary Frances Ross, an American pharmacist who volunteers at a >neighborhood health clinic, hears the gunshots at night and the >occasional explosion. "They throw grenades at each other ... they come >into our clinic for post-trauma care. But one of our biggest problems is >drug addiction." > >Ross attributes many of the problems of her poor neighborhood to the >globalization of the economy. As El Salvador's economy is more closely >tied to the world economy, prices for its exports decline, while prices >of formerly subsidized basics are allowed to rise. Men leave for >higher-paying wages to the north, and the criminals among them are >deported back to the south. > >According to the Salvadoran Central Bank, Salvadorans in the United >States will this year send back $1.6 billion, up from $1 billion last >year. In an economy that only exports $6 billion in goods -- mostly >coffee, sugar, and assembled maquila clothes and electronics -- the >Salvadoran workforce in the United States is a huge economic crutch. > >The economic conditions in la Chacra explain why crime is rampant in El >Salvador. Most people in this community are only marginally employed. If >they are the luckiest of the lucky, they get a job in one of the >maquilas making clothes for American boutiques, earning about $110 a >month. Most who work here are street vendors in the capital, making even >less. The rent on a house in the neighborhood is about $70 a month, and >electricity and basic food prices are being raised as part of the >rightist government's "neo-liberal" economic policies. > >One la Chacra family is preparing to send off its main breadwinner to >the United States. He will pay a coyote, or smuggler, $3,000 for a >journey that will take him across Guatemala, the vast and inhospitable >Mexican peninsula, and then the fatal deserts of the Southwest U.S. > >If he makes it to Pasadena, or South San Francisco, or even as far away >as Chicago, he will join a growing population of Salvadorans who will >prop up what would otherwise be a bankrupt nation. And if he gets snared >by American authorities, he will return on one of those midnight flights >out of LAX. > >George Thurlow is the publisher of the Santa Barbara Independent. >Research assistance was provided by the Centro de Intercambio y >Solidaridad in San Salvador. Interview translations were provided by >Kendra Casey. _______________________________________________________ KOMINFORM P.O. Box 66 00841 Helsinki - Finland +358-40-7177941, fax +358-9-7591081 e-mail [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.kominf.pp.fi _______________________________________________________ Kominform list for general information. Subscribe/unsubscribe messages to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Anti-Imperialism list for anti-imperialist news. Subscribe/unsubscribe messages: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] _______________________________________________________
