CLINTON ST. QUARTERLY EL SALVADOR THECAULDRON BEYONDTHE MELTINGPOINT BY DAVID MILHOLLAND Author’s note: For many readers, the language in this article might seem rhetorical. Yet the same phrase which in our insulated society appears overstated takes on a deeper significance when applied to a “Third W orld” setting. Chilean Nobel laureate Pablo Neruda put it well to a European friend. “I f you lived in a country like mine, you too would be a communist. "And he was killedfor his beliefs. Most travelers to Central America and the Caribbean Basin don’t visit El Salvador. Though it has fine beaches and an outgoing, friendly populace, it lacks the folkloric and picturesque elements that distinguish Guatemala, the comparative sophistication of Costa Rica, or the highly developed tourist facilities of many of its island neighbors. Until recently the careful reader only rarely saw El Salvador mentioned, usually on the back pages of the daily press when insurgents captured and held the Metropolitan Cathedral in downtown San Salvador, or because “ someone” murdered the nation’s Archbishop. With the murder of three American nuns, El Salvador has been catapulted onto center stage. It has been described as possibly our next Vietnam. Though the U.S. has been deeply involved in El Salvador’s economy, and thus its politics, since the early 1900’s, few Americans have a sense of its history. So before the national media begins its campaign of exposes on the Castro menace in Central America, and the threats and sabre rattling that inevitably precede our military adventurism, the Clinton Street Quarterly will examine what has happened, and might develop in that region and country. A COUNTRY THAT’S NEVER BEEN LEFT ALONE The territory of present day El Salvador was conquered by Spain in 1525. As no precious metals were found, the country was left to pay tribute from its small agricultural production. Administered from then distant Antigua Guatemala, its indigenous peoples maintained the pre-conquest system of communal landholding, though some large estates absorbed their land and labor to grow such export crops as cocoa and indigo. By the time of Central American independence from Spain in 1821, the Indian population was one half its pre-conquest size. Over the next 20 years, there were a series of attempts to consolidate the ex-colonies of Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica into a Central American Republic. It was a dream which never quite took hold, local interests and a duchy mentality consistently winning out over the greater vision. As the century progressed, only once did the neighbor states unite to oppose a common enemy. In the period immediately prior to our Civil War, most sectors of the U.S. population saw expansionism as both the legitimate destiny of a country which had reached its geographic frontiers and a means to avoid the conflict already visible on the horizon. Acting on this premise, the filibusters staged a series of sorties into Baja California and Central America. It was a strange coalition. Led by Southerners looking for a less threatened, fertile terrain to continue their “ way of life,” they were joined by vagabond 49ers who had begun to fill California’s cities as gold prospects declined and recent European arrivals who were finding less opportunity in the New World than they’d been led to expect. A Tennessean, William Walker, led several expeditions and was finally successful in holding Nicaragua for close to a year in 1856- finally successful in holding Nicaragua for close to a year in 1856-7. He declared himself the Regenerator, and unmindful of his shaky hold on Nicaragua, proclaimed his imperial ambitions regarding the rest of Central America. He hoped to establish slavery, and eliminate the mestizo pariahs, who he blamed as the “ cause of the disorder which has reigned in the country since Independence.” This genocidal threat pulled the Central American’s out of their disarray, and he soon found himself under attack from both north and south. Killed by Honduran forces when he tried another invasion in 1860, his legacy is the rightful suspicion most Central Americans harbor toward their northern “ amigos.” Though further such blatant U.S. imperialism in the area wouldn’t occur until the turn of the century, a pattern had emerged. In the late 19th century, the Indian’s communal lands were abolished in El Salvador and the country opened to foreign investment, primarily British. Coffee had become king. Unable to carry on century’s old agricultural practices, and increasingly dependent on and impoverished by the large estates, the peasant Indians began to rebel. In 1912, the National Guard was formed to preserve order and protect landholder and capitalist investments. By the early 1920’s, U.S. financiers had almost completely replaced their British counterparts. The terms of their loans included the stipulation that the U.S. have jurisdiction over the Salvadorean Collector General of Customs. It was the era of the big stick, and on the heels of the French failure, the Panamanians werq pushed to secede from Colombia and the canal that cemented Yankee maritime power was completed. Rebellions in Nicaragua were suppressed repeatedly by the Marines, who for several years served as an occupying army until the Somoza dynasty was IN EL SALVADOR IT BEGINS AND ENDS WITH COFFEE. firmly implanted. The tiny republics became known as the banana belt, suppliers to an increasingly affluent northern neighbor’s breakfast habits, and the butt of bad jokes which masked our imperial interventions. The 1930’s depression had a dramatic impact on America’s working people But its reverberations were more deeply felt in those countries whose economies were built upon exports. As coffee consumption fell, El Salvador’s coffee revenues dropped by 54%, which led to a 50% reduction of wages and massive unemployment. Local efforts to organize workers and peasants had been in the works since the early 1920’s, and in 1930 a workers’ Party was founded by Farabundo Marti. So resistance among the popular sectors was coordinated and relatively successful. Land was reoccupied and in some cases communal control was reinstituted. But the response was extreme repression, and finally a nation-wide insurrection was met with the “ matanza,” a bloodbath massacre of 30,000 — 4% of El Salvador’s population. The General who has risen to power as the coffee oligarchy sought an effective response to the uprising, Maximiliano Hernandez Martinez, had this to say of the deaths. “ It is a greater crime to kill an ant than a man, because a man is born again at death, while the ant dies forever.” Marti and many in the popular leadership were executed, and others were forced into exile or underground. Military governments have held power ever since. The 1940’s and 50’s saw cotton become a major crop, forcing further concentration of land and displacing many peasants to urban centers or to the little settled western forests of less populated Honduras. The lid of repression was clamped even firmer. After WWII, Guatemala saw the end of the notorious 14 year Ubico dictatorship, replaced by democratically elected Juan Jose Arevalo, a leftist. Though he laid a groundwork of reform, his successor, Jacobo Arbenz, promised to be much more effective in carrying out desperately needed land redistribution and guaranteeing such basic democratic principles as freedom of speech and assembly. That promise was dismissed one evening in 1954 when a CIA-orchestrated coup led by Carlos Castillo Armas invaded Guatemala from Honduras and forced Arbenz into exile. This was the Eisenhower era CIA, led by Allen Dulles, who with his brother, Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, had a long-term history as legal counsels and stockholders, with the Boston-based 26 Photo courtesy of NACLA
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