Blood of Paradise (55 page)

In short, there was American influence, money, and manipulation throughout the process, putting the lie to the whole notion the elections were “free”—though Mr. Cheney was arguably correct when he stated that “we” held them. Unfortunately, all that effort came to naught, as what America wanted from the elections lay in shambles. Even when, in the following year's election, a great deal more money and arm-twisting resulted in Washington's candidate being elected president, he remained powerless to reform the military, curtail the death squads, or revive the economy, measures Washington knew to be crucial to its counter-insurgency strategy. By 1987, the Reaganites decided to abandon the decimated Christian Democrats for ARENA—the party it had spent five years and millions of dollars trying to keep from power.

As for Mr. Rumsfeld's remarks, he made them in the course of a brief stopover in El Salvador to thank the government for its support in the Iraq war. The defense secretary trumpeted the just nature of the cause in Iraq, noting that the Middle Eastern country had once been ruled by “a dictatorship that killed tens of thousands of human beings … A regime that cut off the heads and hands of people. A regime that threw people off the tops of six-story buildings with their hands and legs tied.”

The irony of these remarks, which bordered on the macabre, was not lost on the locals: The Salvadoran military—which we funded, trained, and expanded tenfold—achieved a similar body count, employing similar if not identical methods in its bloody suppression of the internal opposition. The Salvadoran air force, for example, typically threw its bound captives not off rooftops but out of helicopters and airplanes (the so-called “night free-fall training”), and the practice of cutting off the head and hands of death squad victims was so common it earned the sobriquet “a haircut and a manicure.”

These mischaracterizations, however, are merely part of a much larger deceit. In truth, America's claim to victory in El Salvador is delusional. As late as 1988, military and policy analysts of every political stripe were admitting that despite huge infusions of American cash, the government was in a stalemate with the Marxist guerrillas. Although six strike brigades were arguably up to the task of actually engaging the guerrillas, Salvadoran field tactics were often derided by Green Beret advisors as “search and avoid,” and the government's propensity to slaughter its critics desisted only when it felt unthreatened.

Then, in 1989, the Soviet Union collapsed, and the Salvadoran oligarchy's main bargaining chip with Washington, its staunch opposition to a Communist takeover, became moot—but not before the guerrillas staged one final offensive, in response to which the military reverted to form, strafing and bombing whole neighborhoods, reviving the death squads, and murdering six Jesuit priests, their housekeeper, and her fifteen-year-old daughter.

International outrage over the murdered Jesuits finally brought matters to a head. The time had come to consider a truce, which the UN, not the Americans, stepped in to broker. In 1992, the final Peace Accords were signed.

Thus, after over a billion dollars in military aid and three billion in non-lethal aid (most of it spent rebuilding infrastructure destroyed by the fighting) plus more than seventy thousand Salvadorans killed, over forty thousand of them civilians (and more than 90 percent of them murdered by their own government), the U.S. obtained a result it could have achieved over ten years earlier, in 1981, when the guerrillas first proposed a negotiated settlement—a prospect that the Reagan hard-liners, many of whom now serve in the Bush Administration, flatly and repeatedly rejected. Only victory would do for them, a victory that proved utterly elusive until the distortions of political memory took over.

Mischaracterizing the Present

But even if the Reaganites didn't “win” El Salvador, isn't it true the situation there has improved dramatically? With peace and stability, internationally monitored free elections, and a demilitarized judicial apparatus, cannot El Salvador be credibly described as “a whale of a lot better” now?

Consider the following:

The old political system was based on corruption, privilege, and brutality, and such things do not just evaporate, even in the welcome light of peace and free elections. As we know from worldwide example—Serbia, Ulster, Palestine, Thailand, Somalia, Afghanistan, and, yes, El Salvador and Iraq—today's paramilitary force is tomorrow's Mafia. And so-called free elections can often mask extreme imbalances of power, which voters feel helpless to change.

Meanwhile, almost a third of the population of El Salvador has emigrated to other countries, primarily the United States. The migration wave continues today, estimated by some observers at seven hundred persons per day. These expatriates now send back to their less fortunate family members remittances
(remesas)
of nearly three billion dollars per year. If the country were reliably secure and prosperous, with wealth distributed reasonably among its people, it would no longer need this foreign cash machine. But the most significant form of voting in El Salvador is done with one's feet: If one can leave, one does.

Those who have stayed behind have become increasingly frustrated. The unwavering grip that ARENA has on power—with conspicuous assistance from Washington—reminds many of the oligarchy's brutal control prior to the civil war. Organized protests have turned increasingly violent, and many fear the country is once again coming apart at the seams.

On July 5, 2006, student protests against bus fare increases resulted in gunfire, with two police officers killed and ten wounded. President Tony Saca blamed the FMLN before any credible evidence was available (and subsequently retreated from this position). The FMLN responded by condemning the violence. As it turned out, a gunman caught on tape was identified as an expelled party member, now belonging to a splinter group calling itself the Limon Brigade.

Beatrice Alamanni de Carillo, the Human Rights Ombudsman, remarked, “We have to admit that a new revolutionary fringe is forming. It's an open secret.”

Gregorio Rosa Chávez, the auxiliary bishop of San Salvador, stated, “We signed the treaty but we never lived the peace. Reconciliation is not just based on healing wounds, but healing them well.… People are losing faith in the institutions.”

The “Salvador Option”

If we described honestly the real state of affairs in El Salvador, would ordinary Iraqis truly wish that for their future? Would Americans consider the cost in human life, not to mention billions of dollars per day, worthwhile? Forget all the blunders along the way (or the more jaundiced view that democracy was never the issue)—is this truly a sane model for a stable state?

It's too late to pose the question, of course. The New Right's distorted understanding of the past and present in El Salvador has created an almost eerie simulacrum in Iraq, with even ghastlier results. Taking one particularly ominous example: In the summer of 2004, as American efforts to stem the Iraqi insurgency foundered, U.S. officials decided to employ what came to be known as “the Salvador Option.” American advisers oversaw the establishment of commando units composed of former Baathists. The commandos began to exert themselves in the field, enjoying successes the Americans envied, but also employing methods American troops shunned, especially in the aftermath of the Abu Ghraib scandal. The American advisers overseeing the commandos—who had extensive backgrounds in Latin America and specifically El Salvador—adamantly stated they in no way gave a green light to death squads, torture, or other human rights violations; they may well have been sincere. But matters spiraled murderously out of control when Shiites dominated the elections of January 2005 and took over for the Interim Government: Shiite death squads, linked to the Badr militia but acting under the aegis of the Ministry of Interior, soon began systematically hunting and killing Sunni men, creating a sectarian bloodbath that continues to tear the country apart. American calls for transparent investigations of the murders have netted little in the way of results.

Regardless of what the future holds for Iraq, these commandos, along with the paramilitary units and the other sectarian militias operating in Iraq, will not melt away into nothingness. Many of their members are tomorrow's gangsters (whose rackets will predictably fund terrorist organizations).

Meanwhile, the escalating bloodshed has caused, among countless other troubles, the dislocation of millions of refugees, and the flight from the country of large portions of Iraq's professional class, who like ordinary Salvadorans realize the future lies elsewhere.

Given all this, it's difficult not to revisit the notion of a curse. In achieving sole superpower status, we have relied on false notions of ourselves and others, excused atrocity under the guise of expedience, sought our own national interest over all other considerations (with at times a cavalier appreciation of whether short-term successes might in fact poison long-term ones)—all the while proclaiming, not without some merit, all the best intentions in the world. To think this wouldn't come back to haunt us is to believe in notions of power and innocence too fatuous for an adult mind to entertain.

One last example should make the case conclusive. Consider our support for the Contras, a makeshift band of mercenaries assembled for the sole purpose of causing as much havoc as possible for the Sandinista government in Nicaragua, whom we accused of supporting the Salvadoran guerrillas. While President Reagan steadfastly proclaimed the Contras to be the “moral equivalent of our Founding Fathers,” an adviser to the Joint Chiefs of Staff called them “just a bunch of killers.” By 1985, the Contras had murdered at least four thousand civilians, wounded an equal number, and kidnapped perhaps five thousand more. Even the CIA admitted the Contras steadfastly refused to engage the Sandinista military and instead preferred to execute civic officials, heads of cooperatives, nurses, judges, and doctors, while showing a stubborn propensity for abducting and raping teenage girls. The strategy: not to seize power or even prevail militarily, but simply to terrorize average Nicaraguans, and demonstrate that their government could not protect them or provide even basic services.

And who has steadfastly imitated this strategy?

The jihadists and insurgents in Iraq.

Like the victims of, yes, a curse, we find ourselves trapped in the exact same position in which we put our previous enemies. Not even Sophocles could have devised it more neatly.

The Murder of Gilberto Soto

The historically suspect pronouncements of Messrs. Cheney and Rumsfeld and their camp followers were not the only topical incidents of relevance to occur during the writing of this book. Another, far more chilling event also took place, an event that not only underscored the deterioration of civil society in El Salvador, but eerily echoed elements of the novel's plot: the murder of an American—a Teamster named Gilberto Soto.

He was visiting family in El Salvador—and also hoped to meet with port drivers to discuss possible plans to unionize—when gunmen shot him dead outside his mother's house in Usulután. Many of the trucking companies that would have been affected by unionization are run by ex-military officers, but the police investigation never pursued this. Instead, two gang members were pressed and possibly tortured into confessing that the victim's mother-in-law, who had less than a hundred dollars to her name, hired them to kill Soto out of some vague, illogical family rancor.

Two of the three defendants, Soto's mother-in-law and the alleged triggerman, were acquitted in February 2006. The man alleged to have supplied the murder weapon was convicted, despite the fact the Human Rights Ombudsman, in her scathing critique of the investigation—an investigation which was not conducted by the local prosecutor, but the PNC's notoriously corrupt Directorate for Investigating Organized Crime—specifically noted that no chain of evidence existed concerning the gun and bullets.

This murder took place during the American debate over ratification of the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA), and only by considerable arm-twisting was the Bush administration able to secure the necessary votes for passage. (CAFTA passed the House by a mere two votes.) How can there be free trade, opponents argued, if men and women seeking a just wage can be murdered with impunity? But such arguments did not prevail.