Daniel Sanchez, a Spanish priest now serving in El Salvador, in many ways embodies the spirit of the Salvadoran people. Like his adopted country, he appears small and frail at first glance. But a closer look reveals an immeasurable faith in God and an insatiable hunger for peace in that blood-stained country. Called "the atomic flea" by some for his undying energy, Fr. Daniel has spent the last five years turning a garbage dump in the capital city of San Salvador into a thriving faith community made up mostly of poor Salvadorans displaced by the war.
Father Daniel has been targeted before for his work with the poor and displaced in El Salvador. His "subversive" activities have included helping to build a day care center, a health clinic, sewage facilities, and homes for those in his parish community -- Mary Mother of the Poor. He's even received death threats. But when Sanchez was accused in April by the new vice president of the country, Francisco Merino, of participating in a bombing attack on his home, it was a disturbing signal of things to come.
The Nationalist Republican Alliance (ARENA), the party of the oligarchy and death squads, is now firmly in power after winning the March 19 presidential election. And the officially sanctioned intimidation and repression against the church and humanitarian organizations are already on the rise.
Tutela Legal, the internationally respected human rights office of the Catholic Church, was recently accused by the Salvadoran Armed Forces of a smear campaign against the military and ARENA. Tutela Legal has documented the rise in death squad activity in recent months and had recently condemned the Salvadoran military for a massacre at a rebel field hospital and for killing three journalists who were covering the March 19 election.
And the attacks are not just verbal. Just a few blocks from the U.S. Embassy sit the joint offices of two organizations that work with the displaced. Just before midnight on April 19, members of the Treasury Police -- known as the most brutal security force in El Salvador -- raided the Christian Committee for the Displaced of El Salvador (CRIPDES) and the National Coordination for Repopulation (CNR). They destroyed the offices and detained 75 people, including 20 children and five pregnant women. More "subversives."
Most were eventually released, but six of those detained were transferred to prisons and were still being held at press time. Witnesses report that they have been brutally tortured.
Earlier in April, Maria Cristina Gomez, a teacher at a Baptist Sunday school and an organizer for a teachers union, was abducted in broad daylight in front of her students by three armed men in civilian dress. They then tortured her, poured battery acid on her face and back, and shot her five times. There is already strong evidence linking members of the Salvadoran air force with the murder.
THE ESCALATING repression against Salvadoran civilians comes just weeks after ARENA won the presidential election. It defeated the Christian Democrats, who had fallen from grace, and the Democratic Convergence, which is still in the embryonic stage since its candidates returned from exile less than two years ago.
ARENA's victory was hailed by the Bush administration as another victory for democracy in El Salvador. But democracy requires more than just elections. And U.S. officials have simply looked the other way as the Salvadoran authorities have shown just what kind of brutal democracy they are capable of.
ARENA is doing its best to keep its "moderate" facade intact to ensure continuation of U.S. military aid, and so far it seems to have succeeded. But the disturbing signs of ARENA's shadow are there for anyone who wants to see. Roberto D'Aubuisson, ARENA's founder and the person widely believed to be responsible for the murder of Archbishop Oscar Romero, was the star of ARENA's election campaign, not Georgetown University-educated Alfredo Cristiani, who is now president.
For ARENA officials, violence against civilians is justified by recent violence against government officials. The president of the ARENA-controlled National Assembly stated that the murder of attorney general Roberto Garcia Alvarado in April "makes clear the necessity of eradicating violence" and pledged that the assembly would approve "drastic laws to detain the violence." ARENA has also announced that it plans to organize its own surveillance network to identify "rebel sympathizers," described by a local Catholic bishop as a move toward "a new Gestapo."
The Bush administration has put itself in the uncomfortable position of supporting a party that the United States has rejected up until now because of its sordid links to the death squads. Bush -- and Congress -- now seem content to "give ARENA a chance." But "giving ARENA a chance" appears to mean a continuation of military aid, which must end. At press time only 34 members of the House had cosponsored a piece of legislation introduced by Rep. Robert Kastenmeier (D-Wisc.) that would end all U.S. war-related aid to El Salvador.
Secretary of State James Baker recently admitted publicly that U. S. policy toward Nicaragua was "somewhat a failure" during the Reagan administration. What will it take before the Bush administration -- and Congress -- admits that U.S. policy in El Salvador has also been tragically wrong, and begins to support a negotiated settlement which the majority of Salvadorans so desperately want? How many death squad victims must be found along the roadsides? How many church workers or labor organizers detained, tortured, and killed?
The sad and tragic truth is that until there is a groundswell of opposition in this country to more U.S. military aid to El Salvador, the killings will continue, and the blood will continue to be on our hands.
Brian Jaudon was news editor of Sojourners when this article appeared.
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