Places of Origin: The Repopulation of Rural El Salvador 9781685851545

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PLACES OF ORIGIN

PLACES OF ORIGIN The Repopulation of Rural El Salvador Beatrice Edwards Gretta Tovar Siebentritt

Lynne Rienner Publishers • Boulder and London

Photos are by Gretta Tovar Siebentritt and Minor

Sinclair.

Published in the United States of America in 1991 by Lynne Rienner Publishers, Inc. 1800 30th Street, Boulder, Colorado 80301 and in the United Kingdom by Lynne Rienner Publishers, Inc. 3 Henrietta Street, Covent Garden, London WC2E 8LU © 1991 by Lynne Rienner Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Edwards, Beatrice E., 1950The repopulation of rural El Salvador / by Beatrice Edwards and Gretta Tovar Siebentritt. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 1-55587-241-7 1. Refugees—El Salvador. 2. El Salvador—Population, Rural. I. Tovar Siebentritt, Gretta. II. Title. IIV640.4.S2E39 1990 304.6'097284'091734—dc20 90-47205 CIP British Cataloguing in Publication Data A Cataloguing in Publication record for this book is available from the British Library.

Printed and bound in the United States of America The paper used in this publication meets the requirements of the American National Standard for Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials Z39.48-1984.

Contents Acknowledgments Map of El Salvador Part 1 1 2

INTRODUCTION

Background to War, Displacement, and Repopulation Military Operations, Displacement, and Exile

Part 2 3 4 5 6

vi x

3 17

LOS DESPLAZADOS: THE DISPLACED IN EL SALVADOR

The Repopulation of Tenancingo The National Coordinator of Repopulation United to Reconstruct Analysis of the Three Projects

29 47 61 77

Part 3 LOS REFUGIADOS: THE REFUGEES AT MESA GRANDE, HONDURAS 7 8 9

The Refugees' Proposal to Return: January 1987 Responses to the Repatriation Appeal: January to September 1987 The First Collective Repatriation: October 1987

85 95 103

Part 4 CONCLUSION 10

The Independent Repopulations Continue

127

Epilogue

137

Notes Glossary Bibliography Index About the Book and the Authors

139 145 149 151 158

v

Acknowledgments

In presenting the following study, we would like to thank the many people and institutions who, in a variety of ways, contributed to this project during three years of work in El Salvador: Margaret Popkin, assistant director of the Human Rights Institute of the Central American University (IDHUCA), mentor, traveling companion, and friend. The archdiocese of San Salvador, and particularly the staff of the Social Secretariat; the director and staff of Socorro Juridico Cristiano; DIACONIA and its member churches and associations; CRIPDES and the CNR; FUNDASAL. Jemera Rone, Americas Watch; Phil Anderson, Lutheran World Federation; Ricardo Stein, Victor, Roberto, Martha, Kathy, Rene, and Miguel. Roberto Rodriguez and the staff of the UNHCR in San Salvador. The late Segundo Montes, S.J., director of the IDHUCA (assassinated November 16,1989). Many other individuals and organizations gave of their time and expertise to support this research; some related their experiences at great personal risk. Given the situation in El Salvador, we cannot acknowledge our debt to each of them by name. Nevertheless, we trust that they see themselves here. In the United States there are also many people to whom we are deeply indebted for their contributions and support. We would like to acknowledge the valuable suggestions and comments we received from Margarita Studemeister, Sylvia Rosales, Robert Christiansen, Mauricio Silva, and Victor Valle as they reviewed our many drafts. For institutional support during the research period, we must recognize the role of the Central American Refugee Center in Washington, D.C., and of Colby College in Maine. For her editorial skill and phenomenal speed, we vi

Acknowledgmen is

vii

particularly want to thank Elizabeth McMeekin. And we owe a special debt of gratitude to Marie Grosso for her faith in this undertaking long before we knew where it would lead. We are deeply indebted to Minor Sinclair for his constant support, assistance, and many insightful contributions at every stage of this project. Finally, we would like to express our profound respect, appreciation, and admiration for the thousands of Salvadorans who have courageously returned to their places of origin in the face of a continuing war. Many have suffered mistreatment, some have been killed. But in spite of the hardships, their communities have grown and demonstrated to the world that true democracy and justice are still possible in El Salvador. Beatrice Edwards Gretta Tovar Siebentritt

Military checkpoint at entrance to repopulated Canton Ichanqueso, May 1987

The civilian population, as such, shall not be the target of attack. Acts or threats of violence which are principally intended to terrorize the civilian population are prohibited. Civilians shall not be subjected to hunger as a means of combat. Therefore, attacking, destroying or rendering useless the goods indispensable to the survival of the civilian population is prohibited. Civilians shall not be compelled to abandon their own territory for reasons related to the conflict. Protocol II Additional to the Geneva Conventions of1949, Articles 13,14, and 17

PARTI Introduction All of them are the masas of the terrorists. Many of the women are married to the terrorists. They are told that it is dangerous to accompany the guerrillas, so they stay behind to grow the crops with which to supply them. The army must therefore destroy their crops, and we have done this in the region a number of times in past years. They are hungry and sick, but we must wage war on all levels and isolate the people from the guerrillas, so that the guerrillas will desert. In order to do this, you understand, we must sometimes burn crops, destroy homes, and move the people out. Colonel Ramón Barrera, Zacatecoluca, La Paz, El Salvador; August 1986

1 Background to War, Displacement, and Repopulation With the advent of the 1990s, the civil war in El Salvador enters its second decade. The most immediate causes, in rural areas, of this protracted war can be traced to the particular type of agricultural modernization that began in the 1950s and the political conditions that developed to sustain it. Modernization of the countryside in El Salvador meant an acceleration of the concentration of land and wealth, along with the growing misery and dislocation of the rural population. Because industrialization in urban areas was not dynamic enough to absorb this population as more capitalintensive commercial agriculture replaced subsistence cultivation, the state and the landowning oligarchy constructed an increasingly pervasive apparatus of repression to contain and control popular unrest. In response, an armed opposition began to emerge that by early 1980 had unified into a single force—the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN)—and the generalized conflict began. From Economic Migration to Forced Displacement Although agricultural modernization and its attendant repression expelled growing numbers of peasants from the countryside and depressed the living standards of those who remained, it was the war itself that transformed a process of dislocating rural people into one of forcibly displacing them. In its determination to extinguish the insurgency during the early 1980s, the army mounted large-scale ground sweeps through areas in the northern and eastern parts of the country. Residents of these areas were viewed as potential supporters of the insurgents and were therefore treated as the enemy: Thousands were executed during a period of unrestrained activity by death squads and the military, their property was confiscated, their homes and crops torched. Civilians began to flee military operations in these areas, so that by 1982 there were more than 15,000 Salvadorans across the Honduran border in refugee camps, and urban areas inside El Salvador were crowded with growing numbers of displaced persons. 3

4

Introduction

Despite the ferocity of the counterinsurgency campaign, in 1983 the FMLN held approximately 25 percent of national territory. Moreover, during that year, insurgent forces executed a military offensive, seizing and partially destroying the barracks of the Fourth Infantry Brigade at El Paraiso in the northern department of Chalatenango. They also successfully dynamited the logistically crucial Cuscatlan Bridge over the Rio Lempa. The success of these actions caused the government, the armed forces, and their ally, the United States, to redouble efforts to secure territory, control populations, and put an end to the insurgency. The Salvadoran armed forces began to talk in terms of "total war," and an explicit policy designed to depopulate targeted areas of the country where the FMLN was active was developed.1 The military goal was to debilitate the armed opposition by severing its supply lines and by forcibly removing civilians from designated zones. As a consequence of this strategy, by 1986 the armed forces had created a displaced population within the country and a refugee population abroad of more than one million persons.2 The continued effectiveness of FMLN military operations, however, caused the government and the armed forces, in consultation with the U.S. State Department, to intensify and diversify the counterinsurgency program. Military and civil authorities embarked on a program of "nationbuilding," a process of "civilianizing the government at the national level, while militarizing civilian life at the grassroots."3 The program, known as the National Plan, was a clear example of the growing sophistication of counterinsurgency operations in the context of low-intensity conflict. Among other things, the National Plan included efforts to repopulate abandoned rural areas with families loyal to the armed forces, rebuild infrastructure, reestablish prewar socioeconomic structures, and implement a comprehensive development program that would place much of the rural population directly or indirectly under the control of the military.4 This process was based on the principle that the civilian population in contested areas was the real objective of the war. The counterinsurgency strategy that emerged, then, was designed for the purpose of controlling people, consequently making it possible to secure territory. As the conflict in El Salvador developed, however, another type of nation-building was in progress. In contrast to the more visible official National Plan, grassroots efforts emerged that were administered by popular organizations representing the right of refugees and the displaced to live and work in their places of origin. These programs have not simply developed independently of each other, but instead represent competing objectives. The official repopulation and resettlement program has been designed to reconstruct the countryside exactly as it was before the war— to rebuild the same socioeconomic structures that created a violent class

Background to War, Displacement, and Repopulation

5

conflict and allowed the abuses of rural people that resulted in depopulation in the first place. In contrast, the grassroots repopulation movement has evolved as an effort to transform rural society in such a way as to respond to the needs of rural people for the first time. Centuries of exploitation, exclusion, and repression resulted in a protracted civil war and a counterinsurgency campaign that deprived rural people not only of their right to subsist but also of their right to survive. As the war continued, the struggle for survival moved to a new plane, with a large-scale popular movement of displaced families and refugees claiming the right to return to their places of origin and remain there, free from attack and repression, regardless of their political sympathies. Thus, within the context of the conflict, the repopulation of the countryside took on a special importance. While the government and the army sought to reconstruct rural areas as part of an effort to win the war and reimpose traditional class structures, refugees and the displaced struggled for the right to repopulate in an effort to survive the war and, by their very survival, transform the structure. The collective movement back to conflictive zones in El Salvador by the internally and externally displaced is an unprecedented initiative on the part of refugees and displaced persons. In other parts of the world, such as Africa and Asia, refugees frequently display a reluctance to return home, even after peace has been restored, for fear of reprisal or deprivation. This reluctance is often unaffected by the confined and constrained conditions in which many find themselves in the country to which they initially flee. As a result, large-scale refugee movements historically result in the eventual assimilation of the refugees by countries of first destination or in their ultimate resettlement in third countries. Thus, the return movement to rural El Salvador through the masivas, or collective repopulations and repatriations, was a development unanticipated by either relief agencies or the government of El Salvador. It constitutes the autonomous assumption by an historically oppressed civilian population of a leadership role in the search for a solution to a protracted generalized conflict. The return of communities of displaced persons and refugees to rural El Salvador through popular organizations therefore represents a unique and complex development in the history of the war, as well as in the transformation of Salvadoran society. It is not known precisely what elements precipitated this return movement, although it is clear that the success of the internally displaced in repopulating places of origin in 1985 and 1986 encouraged the first repatriation of refugees from the Mesa Grande camp in Honduras in 1987. Once the possibility of successful return had been demonstrated, the volume of this return migration grew significantly. Throughout the process, it is important to emphasize, the refugees at Mesa Grande repeatedly demonstrated a high level of political

6

Introduction

awareness concerning the situation across the border in El Salvador. In the repopulation and repatriation cases examined here, in fact, refugees in Honduras frequently reported that they had family members among the displaced in the internal repopulation movement who kept them abreast of developments in their places of origin. The refugee organization at Mesa Grande studied each collective repopulation by the internally displaced carefully for the explicit purpose of analyzing the steps that were taken and evaluating their utility in securing a safe return. Interviews conducted in the independently organized repopulation case examined here also suggest that the condition of being "a community within a community" (as many internally displaced settlements were defined in the areas to which people fled following military operations) contributed to the development among these people of autonomous social structures, social cohesion, and a positive sense of being able to solve their own problems, claim their own civil and human rights, and defend their own interests. The circumstance of being confined, as communities, to a refugee camp in hostile territory seems to have had this same effect at Mesa Grande. Significantly, the intensity of conflict in the designated repopulation areas did not seem to be a determinant factor in these early returns. Repatriation from Honduras, a country housing refugees from Guatemala, Nicaragua, and El Salvador, has occurred collectively only among Salvadorans, although their country is the most conflictive in the region and they are returning to contested zones. Moreover, the displaced and the refugees explicitly recognized that the decision to return collectively rather than individually would raise the probability of a confrontation with the armed forces of El Salvador. In returning collectively, however, the refugees and the displaced risked confrontation in order to appropriate certain human rights that had never been granted them by the army. This was, in itself, a significant change at the grassroots level of Salvadoran society. What follows, then, is a chronicle of the masivas—from their inception among the internally displaced of a single town, Tenancingo, to their development among a population in exile. The experiences of the first independent repopulations served as the initial test, defining the maneuvering room for subsequent collective returns and providing a practical view of the types of measures most effective in guaranteeing the security of the returnees. An examination of the independent return movement also illuminates the problems the official counterinsurgency campaign has encountered in implementing its nation-building program through government-sponsored repopulation projects. Among the members of popular organizations for the displaced, and among the refugees at Mesa Grande in

Background to War, Displacement, and Repopulation

7

Honduras, there existed a profound distrust of government resettlement programs and, more generally, of all programs and plans for them that they did not participate in formulating. The counterinsurgency strategy itself, with its double-edged "beans and bullets" character, contributed to this high level of suspicion. Many popular organizations and their members had learned through experience that when the government or the army offered them beans, the bullets would probably be forthcoming as well. The depopulation of rural El Salvador has been a bloody ten-year campaign; repopulation will also be a long, slow process. Beginning in 1985, with the return of 187 internally displaced persons to the ghost town of Tenancingo, the movement grew to include more than 20,000 internally and externally displaced in two years, even as displacement operations continued. The strength of the popular return movement is evident not only in its growing size, but also in the fact that by 1990 not one of the towns collectively repopulated under its auspices was reabandoned despite the ongoing conflict. In other words, whether the war ends soon, or whether it continues into the next millennium, the displaced are going home. Political Economy of Agricultural Production Historically, land has been the most important natural resource in El Salvador, for access to land means access to productive work and an adequate standard of living. Conversely, for the rural population, landlessness often means poverty and deprivation. Since the arrival of the Spanish conquerors in 1524, national development has been based on a process of agricultural transformation that has caused the increasing dispossession of the rural population. More than four centuries after the Spanish conquest, agriculture remains the single most important sector of the economy. Of El Salvador's 2,139,000 hectares, nearly 70 percent were dedicated to farming in 1971.5 In the 1980s, over 25 percent of El Salvador's gross national product (GNP) was attributable to agricultural production, and over 50 percent of the economically active population made a living by farming. Agriculture also remained one of the country's most important foreign exchange earners, accounting for 90 percent of extraregional exports. The distribution of land, however, became increasingly skewed as agricultural production shifted from subsistence cultivation to cash crops such as coffee and cotton. By 1971, 70 percent of all landholdings accounted for 10 percent of cultivated land, while less than 1 percent of landholdings covered nearly 30 percent of all cultivated area.7 Moreover,

Table 1.1 Number and Area of Farms by Size, 1971 (in hectares) Percent of Farms

Total Area

Percent of Land

Farm Size

Number

Up to .99 1-1.99 2-4.99 5-9.99

132,464 59,063 43,414 15,598

48.9 21.8 16.8 5.8

70,214 81,039 131,985 110,472

4.8 5.6 9.1 7.6

Subtotal

250,539

92.5

393,710

27.1

10-19.9 20-49.9

9,164 6,986

3.4 2.6

126,974 215,455

8.7 14.8

Subtotal

16,150

6.0

342,429

23.5

50-99.9 100-199.9 200-499.9

2,238 1,103 636

0.8 0.4 0.2

154,164 152,068 190,882

10.6 10.6 13.2

Subtotal

3,977

1.4

497,114

34.3

500-999.9 Over 1,000

139 63

0.05 0.02

95,061 123,580

6.6 8.5

Subtotal

202

0.07

218,641

15.1

270,868

99.97

1,451,894

100.0

Total

Source: Roy Prosterman, "Aspectos Demograficos de la Reforma Agraria en E1 Salvador," Polemica, no. 17/18 (1985), p. 91.

between 1960 and 1980, landlessness grew from 12 percent of the rural population to an estimated 60 percent, and rural unemployment seasonally affected increasing proportions of the rural labor force.8 The concentration of land into a few large holdings contrasts with the proliferation of small plots of land occupying a relatively limited area. As shown in Table 1.1., 92.5 percent of all farms in 1971 measured less than 10 hectares and occupied only 27.1 percent of all farmland. Conversely, only 2 percent of all holdings were larger than SO hectares, but these farms incorporated nearly 50 percent of arable land. It was in the mid-1960s that strong tendencies toward commercialization and agricultural diversification definitively penetrated the countryside, and landlords became increasingly aware of the profitmaking potential of cash crops as national markets became more accessible. Consequently, large landowners began promoting the more extensive cultivation of cash crops at the expense of the subsistence economy and introducing more advanced agricultural technology, which displaced labor. The transformation of the subsistence economy coincided

9

Background to War, Displacement, and Repopulation Table 1.2 Number of Fann Units and Area by Land Tenure, 1961 and 1971 (in hectares) 1961 Land Tenure

Ownership Rental Ownership and rental Colonato Other Total

Number

(%)

89,918 (39.6) 43,457 (19.2) 29,805 (13.1) 55,769 (24.6) 7,947 (3.5) 226,896

1971 Area

(%)

1,225,221 (77.5) 78,887 (5.0) 123319 (7.8) 44,076 (2.8) 109,935 (6.9) 1,581,438

Number

(%) 108,014 (39.9) 76,256 (28.1) 36,345 (13.4) 17,018 (6.3) 33,235 (12.3) 270,868

Area

(%) 1,105,394 (76.2) 104,662 (7.2) 133,588 (9.2) 10,290 (0.7) 97,960 (6.8) 1,451,894

Source: Segundo Montes, El Agro Salvadoreño (1973-1980), San Salvador: Universidad Centro Americana, 1980, p. 127.

with the transition from quasi-feudal relations of production to wage relations. At the same time, the increasing integration of the colono (sharecropper) and minifundista (small holder) into the growing commercial economy led to an accelerating concentration of land ownership, on the one hand, and increasing landlessness on the other. The categories of land tenure and economic status employed in the agricultural census of El Salvador do not show this process in a straightforward manner. It should be emphasized that statistics describing land tenure do not relate directly to ownership, but rather to the way in which units of land are organized for agricultural production. For example, a single large hacienda may be represented in the census as a unit that is privately owned (land area cultivated by its owner), a colonato (land area allocated to resident workers on the hacienda for subsistence production), and a number of units occupied by tenant farmers (rented land area). This method of presentation, based on land use rather than land ownership, thus obscures the accumulation of large tracts of land among a small group of owners. Nevertheless, an analysis of the statistics representing the changes in land tenure that have occurred since 1960 reveals certain critical factors underlying the development of acute social conflict in El Salvador. Table 1.2 illustrates the main forms of land tenure in the countryside and the changes affecting them that occurred between 1961 and 1971. In 1961, the colonato represented the second most predominant form of land tenure (24.6 percent) after ownership (39.6 percent). By 1971, the colonato

10

Introduction

was nearly extinct; rental relations had replaced it, with an increase of approximately 75 percent in the number of holdings but a gain of only 32 percent in land area. Over the course of this decade, then, the subsistence farming of the colonato was largely replaced by rental units with an average size of less than one hectare. It was during this period that the seeds of rebellion were planted in many rural areas experiencing rapid transformation from subsistence to commercial farming. Conflict became particularly acute in the struggle of tenants to retain fertile land for the cultivation of basic grains for subsistence in the face of the landowners' determination to use these lands for commercial production. In the struggle, subsistence production was significantly reduced, and many of the colonos and minifundistas were transformed into tenants producing commercial crops in order to pay rent in cash and purchase basic goods. Others went to work as wage laborers on the haciendas of the larger landowners. Under these circumstances, neither their wages nor the remunerated value of what they were able to produce enabled them to satisfy basic needs. The problem of land tenure became a prominent public issue as rural workers protested that without access to land, they could not feed themselves or their families adequately. In 1976, this deprivation was quantified in a study by the National Commission for Community Development, which showed that significant income disparities among rural families were clearly correlated with access to land (see Table 1.3). Although the study does not include the incomes of families with landholdings of more than 50 hectares, thus restricting the spectrum of income distribution, it does show that the income of landless families was approximately 12.5 percent of the income Table 1.3 Median Family Income by Size of Landholding: 1974

Landholding Landless Less than 1 hectare 1-1.99 hectares 2-4.99 hectares 5-9.99 hectares 10-50 hectares Median rural income

Annual Median Family Income (in 1974 U.S. dollars) 316 400 554 1,030 1,596 2,536 702

Source: La Transformación del Campo y la Situación Economica y Social de las Familias Rurales en El Salvador, Comision Nacional de Desarrollo Comunal. Series: Realidad Campesina y Desarrollo Nacional, no. 7, March 1976.

11

Background to War, Displacement, and Repopulation Table 1.4 Consumer Price Index, 1961-1975 Year

Index

1961 1962 1963 1964 1965 1966 1967 1968 1969 1970 1971 1972 1973 1974 1975

60.4 60.5 61.4 62.4 62.9 62.0 63.0 64.6 64.5 66.3 66.5 67.6 71.9 84.1 100.0

Source: La Transformación del Campo y la Situación Economica y Social de las Familias Rurales en El Salvador, Comision Nacional de Desarrollo Comunal, Series: Realidad Campesina y Desarrollo Nacional, no. 7, March 1976.

of families with holdings of 10 to 50 hectares. The table also demonstrates that the median income of families with holdings of less than 2 hectares fell below the median for all rural families in 1974. At the same time, the number of families with holdings of less than 2 hectares was increasing as larger numbers of households suffered economic ruin on smaller and smaller plots of poor land. For those who had managed to retain their farms, economic conditions also deteriorated: Estimates made in 1977 revealed that more than half of the farms in the country were leased or rented plots less than 2 hectares in size. During the same period, the cost of living systematically increased (see Table 1.4), and growing numbers of rural families found themselves without either the land to produce their own food or sufficient income to buy it. The dramatic increase in consumer prices during the early 1970s had a particularly adverse effect on the standard of living of families with the smallest landholdings, resulting in a significant decrease in their buying power. Subsequent estimates indicate that by the late 1970s, the average rural household needed access to at least 7 hectares of land in order to produce sufficient agricultural goods and income to subsist.9 Additional data show that rural families with the smallest holdings (less than 1 hectare) lost ground economically, not only in relative but also in absolute terms. During the period between 1961 and 1975, the value of their

12

Introduction Table 1J Comparison of Families' Median Income«, 1961 and 1975 Category of Family Landless Less than 1 hectare 1-10 hectares 10-50 hectares

1961 Median Income 1974 Value

1975 Median Income

Difference in Value

226

376

316

-60

302 422 1,452

500 700 2,404

400 914 2,536

-100 214 132

Source: La Transformación del Campo y la Situación Economica y Social de las Familias Rurales en El Salvador, Comision Nacional de Desarrollo Comunal, Series: Realidad Campesina y Desarrollo Nacional, no. 7, March 1976.

incomes actually declined (see Table 1.5). Moreover, census data show that in 1971, approximately SO percent of all holdings were less than 1 hectare in size, and therefore this erosion of income was widespread.10 The unequal increases in income indicate that through the 1960s and 1970s, income disparities grew in correlation with the size of a family's landholding. The type of agrarian transformation that occurred in El Salvador during the period had the effect of aggravating the differences between the rich and the poor. Tables 1.3 and 1.S in fact understate these differences because calculations are based on median rather than average incomes, and the sample was restricted to families with holdings of SO hectares or less. Thus, the effect of the incomes of El Salvador's largest landholders and richest families has been virtually excluded from all calculations. As the commercialization of agricultural production spread, there emerged in many rural areas strong sympathies for the Christian Democratic party (PDC), founded in 1960. Its reformist platform and religious orientation appealed strongly to the devoutly Catholic peasantry. The platform of the PDC advocated freedom of association for agricultural workers and economic development based on full employment of the labor force.11 The party began to help organize peasants and farmworkers into the associations that later became the constituency of rural labor organizations. These hopes for reform were finally dashed when fraudulent elections resulted in continued military dictatorships upholding the traditional socioeconomic structure. In 1965, the military government founded the paramilitary group ORDEN (National Democratic Organization) to confront growing rural unrest. ORDEN, an instrument of ideological and military control created to neutralize the resistance, recruited farmworkers and peasants to act as

Background to War, Displacement, and Repopulation

13

informants in their villages and to provide security forces with information about popular organizations and opposition to the government.12 The members of ORDEN were also to promote support for the military government by creating social groups parallel to emergent grassroots organizations. In exchange, ORDEN members received access to government services, preference for available jobs, and permission to carry arms. Initially, ORDEN had little impact on the situation of unrest, but its significance grew. At the same time, military personnel and patrols in targeted rural areas increased.13 By the 1970s, ORDEN had established a comprehensive network of informers throughout the countryside, and it is estimated that between 60,000 and 100,000 persons were sometime collaborators or spies. When family members of collaborators are taken into account, approximately 10 to 20 percent of the rural population had at least intermittent ties to ORDEN through one connection or another. Because the organization was linked directly to the National Guard and the president, and because of the petty bribery that was used to recruit informers, the government was able to take advantage of the very poverty it promoted to suppress opposition among the rural population. At the same time, the government was promoting its own rural labor union, the Salvadoran Peasants Union (UCS), with financial assistance from the American Institute for Free Labor Development (AIFLD) and the Israeli labor organization Histadrut. Through seminars for peasant leaders and promotional campaigns orchestrated by AIFLD, the UCS gained approximately 4,000 members and was awarded legal status in 1970 as a community development organization. "The UCS was seen by the government and the U.S. Embassy as a vehicle for co-opting a significant number of peasants into the system through the creation of a privileged class of campesinos. The object was to head off any 'radical' or 'communist' agitation in the countryside."14 Despite these developments, an independent organization called the Christian Federation of Salvadoran Peasants (FECCAS) was able to organize and by 1970 included among its members 1 , 0 0 0 m i n i f u n d i s t a s and tenant farmers, concentrated mainly in the central and northern departments of the country. The organization asserted both the economic and political rights of peasants, advocating integral agrarian reform, popular participation in the process of national development, and unity with independent labor and cooperative movements. At an economic level, FECCAS declared the right of the peasant to land, to subsidized seeds, fertilizer, and pesticides, and to credit. Its membership expanded rapidly through the early 1970s, and its strategy of building coalitions with other popular organizations was highly successful. As economic conditions in the countryside worsened and the membership of FECCAS grew, rural dissent became increasingly vocal.

14

Introduction

Agricultural laborers staged protests over their work loads, argued with supervisors or managers, and demanded respect for such laws as protected them. 15 In response, in 1972, the government of Arturo Armando Molina added a timid reform program to its more standard policy of pervasive repression. Subsequently, in 1974, legislation regulating the rental of land was passed as a measure to force the large landowners to substitute the colonato for commercial land rentals. The law also established minimum wage levels for agricultural workers. Landowners responded by evicting large numbers of their longtime tenant farmers and flagrantly violating the new minimum wage law.16 In many rural areas, the political climate was one of tension and fear as social conflict inevitably escalated. A bloodless coup on October 15, 1979, by more moderate military officers paved the way for a military/civilian junta that recruited progressive civilians from a broad coalition of popular organizations and urban middle-class sectors opposed to the military dictatorship. The program of the coalition provided for free elections, an end to human rights violations, freedom to organize and the right to strike, political pluralism, economic reforms, and popular participation in a process of democratization for El Salvador. The junta, however, was inexperienced and ultimately incapable of dismantling the entrenched economic and political power structures of the private sector and the traditional military.17 Human rights violations escalated, and the promised reforms did not materialize; it became increasingly clear that the junta did not control either the government or the armed forces. After the fall of the first junta, a second was formed that incorporated members of the P D C in a negotiated alliance with the military. Through this political vehicle, the traditional military regained state power and used it to further the established interests of hard-line members of the armed forces, the private sector, and the landowning class, despite the attempt by the junta to redistribute land through yet another agrarian reform. Peasants and rural workers then began to feel the brunt of the recuperation of power by traditionally dominant social groups. From January 1 to March 13,1980, there were 689 political murders; of those killed, at least 341 were peasants. 18 The government was, at the time, implementing the Agrarian Reform Law of 1980. Its first decrees were accompanied by the imposition of a state of siege and armed incursions into the countryside. These were met with rudimentary resistance by the Salvadoran peasantry, and the civil war dates from this period. Although formally committed to the redistribution of agricultural land through membership in the junta, the military was in fact engaged in a campaign of repression in the countryside at the behest of the larger landowners. 19 The efforts of the landowning elite to undermine agrarian reform reached extreme levels in 1980 during the phase under which the largest

Background

to War, Displacement,

and Repopulation

15

Table 1.6 Peasants Assassinated by Government Forces, 1978-1980 1978 1979 83

552

1980 Jan Feb Mar A p r May Jun Jul A u g Sept Oct 129 126 203 198 200 393 524 236 378 338 ( J a n - O c t 1980) 2,725

Source: Gabriel A. Gonzales, "Genocidio y Guerra de Esterminio en El Salvador," Estudios Centroamericanos, 3 5 , 3 8 4 - 3 8 5 , pp. 9 8 6 - 9 8 7 .

haciendas could be subdivided and redistributed. Between March and October of that year, at least 184 cooperative members were killed, most by security forces.20 Table 1.6 indicates the degree of violence that accompanied the reform of 1980; figures for 1978 and 1979 serve as a comparison, to show the escalation of repression during the period. During the 1970s, then, pressure for reforms had grown, but the landowning class reacted as it had in the past: with increasing repression rather than progressive change. After a decade marked by fraudulent elections, deteriorating living standards for the majority of people in rural areas, and increasing state terror, social conflict erupted in a full-scale civil war. The next chapters discuss the process of massive displacement of civilians and the consequences that followed upon the escalation of the conflict. As measured in quantitative terms, the war in El Salvador escalated dramatically in 1981. The assassination in 1980 of Archbishop Oscar Romero and the murders of four North American churchwomen resulted in a temporary aid cutoff from the United States to the Salvadoran government in the winter of 1980, but military and economic support were subsequently restored and increased early in 1981 as the FMLN prepared to launch a major offensive. In that year, both the army and the FMLN consolidated and increased the size of their respective forces, and the number of armed encounters grew. For 1981, Americas Watch and the archbishopric of San Salvador both reported over 13,000 political killings, with more than 90 percent of them attributed to the armed forces and the paramilitary death squads.21 In part, the death toll for noncombatants reached this level because of the intensive combat that began with the FMLN offensive in January. In addition, armed encounters frequently took place in populated areas where, as spokesmen for the armed forces later made clear, civilians still present were considered masas, or "collaborators with the terrorists."22 As such, they were viewed from a military perspective as legitimate targets of attack, despite stipulations of international law to the contrary. The repression in the countryside particularly singled out grassroots and community organizations as well as popular leaders who vocally advocated reforms.

Military Operations, Displacement, and Exile The agricultural transformation of the 1960s had impoverished the peasantry and created the conditions for rebellion, but the war was responsible for the killings and the massive displacement of the rural population after 1980. The growing strength of the FMLN elicited the counterinsurgency campaign in the countryside in 1980 and 1981, and these years were therefore the bloodiest ones for the civilian population. The exodus from contested rural areas in the northern and eastern parts of the country began at that time, as military operations resulted in massacres of civilians. One such operation took place at the Sumpul River, on the border between El Salvador and Honduras. There, from opposite sides of the border, the armed forces of El Salvador and of Honduras fired on civilians fleeing Santa Marta, Cabanas, and seeking refuge across the river in Honduras. Approximately 600 people were killed. The following year a similar hammer-and-anvil operation took place at the Lempa River, where hundreds of civilians fleeing Las Vueltas, Chalatenango, into Honduras were killed by the cooperating armies. After these two incidents, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) was requested to supervise the treatment of Salvadoran refugees in Honduras, and the refugio of Mesa Grande, a refugee camp near the border, was established. At the same time, the Salvadoran government, heavily engaged in military operations causing massive displacement, created a governmental institution called the National Commission for Assistance to the Displaced of El Salvador (CONADES). By the end of 1982, estimates indicated that the number of displaced persons inside the country had reached 225,000.' Despite this intensive counterinsurgency campaign, the FMLN continued to gain strength as well as to hold significant proportions of national territory. In 1983, the insurgents carried out a military offensive that inflicted serious damage on the armed forces and the strategic infrastructure of the country, illustrating the inability of the military to control national territory. As a result, the government and military strategists began to map out 17

18

Introduction

a plan designed to incorporate not only more effective guerrilla warfare techniques but also a more efficient means of controlling populations.2 The strategy, known as the National Plan, called for intensive military action followed by a coordinated effort to reconstruct selected areas depopulated and destroyed in the fighting, once the FMLN had been eliminated. As part of the plan, the National Commission for the Restoration of Areas (CONARA) was created to administer the reconstruction. During the National Plan period, large-scale displacement operations began using aerial firepower. By 1984, the army's arsenal of combat aircraft had risen from twenty-two (1981) to thirty-eight, and the number of helicopter gunships increased from thirteen to thirty-two.3 An early target of the aerial war was the town of Berlin in the department of Usulutan; it was heavily damaged in an air attack in 1983 that left 120 civilians dead and 20 percent of the buildings in ruins. Later that year, the town of Tenancingo, Cuscatlan, was also bombed and subsequently abandoned. After these attacks, the government's bombardment of civilian population centers in territory held by the FMLN rapidly escalated. By June 1984, the number of internally displaced persons had risen to over 400,000, out of a total population of approximately five million.4 The number of civilian deaths in military operations also increased, with 3,027 persons reported killed in aerial bombardments and military actions in 1984.5 The next year, press releases of the armed forces disclosed that twelve of El Salvador's fourteen departments had been strafed and bombed. By January 1986, the country had achieved the dubious distinction of being the most heavily bombarded nation in the history of Latin America. According to an analysis by the University of Central America (UCA) in 1985, the armed forces had detonated 300 pounds of TNT for every combatant in the insurgent forces. In a densely populated country, with 244 persons per square kilometer, the effects on the civilian population were disastrous. The most comprehensive estimates available in 1986 indicated that approximately 500,000 people were internally displaced, while nearly one million people had fled the country. These figures represent a war-induced level of displacement unprecedented in the hemisphere. Given that the population of El Salvador at the time was just over five million people, nearly 30 percent of the population had been displaced. In comparison, at the height of the Vietnam War, roughly 8 to 10 percent of the population was displaced. The detonation by the military of more than 1.8 million pounds of explosives annually was only one aspect of the intensified war. Air attacks were accompanied by scorched-earth operations during which soldiers burned the homes, crops, and possessions of noncombatants in conflictive areas. Nothing that could support human life was spared.

Military Operations, Displacement, and Exile

19

For the people living in these areas, life became a continuing cycle of deprivation and forced relocation. With very little cash income, they would plant what they could, hoping to escape the notice of military patrols and be able to harvest. They reported that they frequently slept in the woods outside their villages during these periods for fear of the government's night patrols. When a ground sweep occurred, they would flee before it, either to a safer rural area or to a nearby town, where they would remain, with very little means of subsistence, until the operation was completed. When the army had moved on, they might return home, often to find their houses and crops destroyed. Then they would either begin again or move to an area thought to be more secure until another military operation forced them out. Because the Salvadoran peasant typically had little money and few possessions, and because public assistance was unavailable for most, those displaced were continually trying to find a temporarily safe place in which to grow food. For many, then, displacement was not simply a single event but rather a way of life for a period of years. Human rights organizations monitoring the conflict consistently denounced the strategy of depopulation as a violation of Protocol II Additional to the Geneva Conventions of 1949, to which El Salvador is a party. The General Assembly of the United Nations has recognized the applicability of Protocol II to the situation in El Salvador since 1980. Protocol II stipulates the limits of force that may be used by a government against a civilian population in an armed conflict of a noninternational character. The Geneva Conventions clearly establish that noncombatants are not to be deprived of their civilian status. The Conventions further point out that "the presence within the civilian population of individuals who do not come within the definition of civilians does not deprive the population of its civilian character."6 Article 17 of Protocol II, which details the minimum standards of humane treatment for civilians, expressly prohibits forcible relocation for strategic purposes "unless the security of the civilians involved or imperative military reasons so demand. Should such displacements have to be carried out, all possible measures shall be taken in order that the civilian population may be received under satisfactory conditions of shelter, hygiene, health, safety and nutrition."7 In the judgment of Americas Watch, the conditions under which forcible relocation occurred in El Salvador did not comply with the Geneva Conventions. In its 1986 report, Americas Watch explicitly denounced the manner in which a military operation that included the large-scale displacement of civilians was carried out in Guazapa, a traditional stronghold of the FMLN about 20 kilometers from the capital. The armed forces had attempted to depopulate the strategic area of the Guazapa volcano between April and June 1985, but had been only par-

20

Introduction

tially successful. In December, the region was subjected to intermittent bombing, despite a statement by Archbishop Rivera y Damas of San Salvador that hundreds of civilians remained in the area. Bombing was intensified on January 10 with the launching of Operation Phoenix. On that date, the Guazapa region was massively bombed in an effort to "soften up" the area before 5,000 ground troops assaulted the volcano, burning a swath north from the capital through populated farm land. During the operation, 427 people designated as masas were captured, and approximately 200 others fled. Civilians captured and taken away had no notice and were not allowed to take personal belongings with them. A journalist who witnessed the interrogations and removal of the population gave this report in The Guardian of London: Journalists who were taken in an army helicopter to witness one evacuation saw a group of 73 people cowering against a stone wall near the hamlet of Mirandilla on the west side of the hill. Thirty-seven were children, including one baby born the night before, all showing signs of serious malnourishment. Few had shoes and all were covered with dirt. They had been hiding in a ravine in the woods for some days. One woman, with six children, said: "You don't know from one minute to the next if they're going to bomb." The bombing during Operation Phoenix has been so massive it has shaken the windows of houses in San Salvador 20 miles away. The people (from another group) were forced to leave behind all their belongings except the clothes they could carry in their hands. The army said helicopter pilots were afraid someone would carry explosives aboard, and they burnt the sorry little pile of rags. 8

In assessing the situation, the Americas Watch report said simply: "The manner that civilians were evacuated in Operation Phoenix does not meet the requirements in international law that 'satisfactory conditions' shall be provided for those forced to abandon their homes. Americas Watch has in addition set forth certain minimum standards that should be met by governments claiming to be democratic which seek to relocate civilians. These relocations violate those standards." 9 The army attempted to argue that its operations were in compliance with the Geneva Conventions, claiming that displacement was effected in order to protect civilians from the violence of subsequent combat. Groups monitoring human rights in El Salvador, however, dismissed the argument, pointing out that the armed forces' bombing operations typically occurred before civilians were evacuated rather than after. Moreover, the armed forces lacked the capability to provide minimum subsistence for those they had forcibly removed. Colonel Mauricio Hernandez, speaking to a foreign correspondent in 1986, admitted: "Although the army is removing hundreds of civilians from the combat zones, the army and the

Military Operations, Displacement, and Exile

21

Government currently have no facilities to take care of them."10 As a consequence of the depopulation strategy, then, a displaced population was created in El Salvador with two significant concerns: subsistence and security. Those displaced because of counterinsurgency operations faced extreme difficulty attributable to the suddenness with which they fled and the destruction of their possessions. Those who remained inside El Salvador were typically poorer, with fewer resources and less education than those who managed to leave the country.11 Many were without personal identification documents, which were burned, lost, or left behind, and were consequently unable to obtain government assistance. According to a 1986 study, 51 percent were without any education at all, and 38 percent were under 12 years old.12 Estimates suggested that 10 percent of the displaced lived either in camps or settlements;13 the remaining 90 percent lived with relatives or however they could, usually in the more secure urban areas nearest the homes they left. Many had been displaced for years, often more than once, and had to depend on assistance from either nongovernmental or official sources.14 As the war continued, growing numbers of displaced families and communities began to settle on abandoned lands in conflictive zones in order to try to support themselves. In other cases, the displaced built shelters on state-owned lands around provincial cities and the capital. In San Salvador, up steep hillsides and along railroad tracks, highways, and riverbeds, were the makeshift shelters of those displaced by war. These settlements took on a separate identity as displaced "communities within communities." As highly visible victims of the war, these families and communities shared the same misery, levels of unemployment, and poverty as their urban slum community counterparts. The fact of being displaced, however, set them apart as a social group with its own set of needs and problems. In 1985, then Planning Minister Fidel Chavez Mena told the national press that the displaced "make up the social sector in which the worst levels of poverty can be found, with all of the resulting implications."15 The Third U.S. Public Health Commission to El Salvador reported in September of that year that the Committee of Salvadoran Health Professionals (COPROSAL) had recorded soaring incidences of communicable disease, especially among children. According to COPROSAL, the incidence of chicken pox had increased 93 percent, measles by 550 percent, and whooping cough by 300 percent between 1981 and 1985. The commission also reported that malnutrition was the major cause of health problems among children under the age of five, and that the majority of children examined in camps for the displaced suffered from some form of diarrhea, malnutrition, parasites, skin diseases, and respiratory infections.

22

Introduction

Among adults, the most common problems observed were malnutrition, respiratory problems, and stress-related symptoms such as headaches, anxiety, and sleep disorders.16 In a summary report on the camps for the displaced, the commission wrote: "Living conditions in all the camps we visited can only be described as appalling. Even though there is a communal water supply and electricity, the camps suffer from insufficient space. Santa Tecla [a government-sponsored camp] has a single room per family in which as many as twelve people reside. The size of these rooms is about 10 feet by 10 feet."17 Mental health problems were recognized as particularly acute among the displaced. They have suffered firsthand the physical and emotional trauma of civil war. Many left their villages and farms hastily, taking little or nothing with them. Despite the trauma of displacement, mental health care was virtually unavailable. A group of psychologists interviewed by the U.S. Public Health Commission in 1985 reported that work with the poor and the displaced was very dangerous and had made some psychologists targets for the death squads.18 Nonetheless, primary health promoters interviewed by the commission ranked nervous disorders as one of the three major health problems in the country. They referred to widespread depression, psychosomatic symptoms, regression, and autism in children, describing these disorders as "a normal reaction to an abnormal situation." They pointed out that most programs for refugees and the displaced had no psychological component.19 Additionally, because of their previous residence in areas where the insurgency was active, the displaced were likely to be singled out by the armed forces for surveillance, capture, and other forms of repression. Because of these circumstances and the protracted nature of the war, by 1985 many of the displaced and the churches and nongovernmental organizations assisting them came to the conclusion that camps, settlements, and emergency assistance could no longer sustain this population. Longer term solutions had to be found. Large numbers of displaced persons had been in the camps for the duration of the war and could no longer tolerate the dependence, passivity, and forced idleness of the life there. By 1985, then, the opposite face of the army's depopulation campaign had fully emerged: the repopulation movement. During the period between 1983 and 1985, repopulation and resettlement occurred only under the auspices of the armed forces. The army's program, administered in part through civilian ministries, was motivated by a determination to "win the hearts and minds" of those displaced by the armed forces. As it evolved, it also took on features designed to co-opt emergent independent repopulation projects and to bring the growing repopulation movement under the control of the armed forces through its broadly conceived counterinsurgency strategy.20 Further, the official

Military Operations, Displacement, and Exile

23

repopulation program was designed to reduce the costs of assistance to the displaced after 1986. At that time, U.S. embassy and government spokespersons began to discuss the ballooning costs of employment generation and food relief while developing a cost-saving plan of civic actions and restoration programs. Under the new program, the displaced were to be converted into a new small-scale entrepreneurial sector through government-sponsored repopulation and support for microindustry.21 Three types of repopulation projects developed after 1985, reflective of the objectives of organizations assisting the displaced, the displaced themselves with their representative grassroots organizations, and the armed forces. These included, first, a project directed by the Salvadoran Foundation for Development and Basic Housing (FUNDASAL), a private institution that promotes social and human development. At the request of a displaced group of families, the archdiocese of San Salvador sponsored, through FUNDASAL, the first large-scale repopulation to Tenancingo, depopulated in 1983. Second, the National Coordinator of Repopulation (CNR), a grassroots organization of the displaced, coordinated its first three repopulation efforts during 1986. Meanwhile, the government had mounted its own resettlement and repopulation programs: the rural pacification component of its counterinsurgency campaign, United to Reconstruct (UPR). Part 2 of this book explores and compares the dynamics of these three repopulation efforts. An analysis of the first project, the repopulation of Tenancingo, identifies the components of a conventional rural development effort, as adapted by relief and development experts with institutional experience in the Salvadoran conflict. In the succeeding chapter, the dynamics of the grassroots return movement are explored through an in-depth analysis of a representative community. The community was repopulated independently in 1986 by displaced persons through the grassroots organization of the CNR, supported by certain religious institutions and by national and international nongovernmental organizations. The UPR project was organized by the armed forces of El Salvador and administered jointly by the military and the civilian ministries with the collaboration of the United States government operating through USAID and selected nongovernmental organizations recruited and funded by USAID. The CNR and the government-sponsored projects were chosen for analysis because their geographical proximity gave them a common prewar economic history as well as a similar pattern of social transformation. In addition, the projects were similar in size, and both were established at approximately the same period of time. Although the three projects examined are all located in the same geographical area (Cuscatlan), it should be emphasized that they were

24

Introduction

very different in their objectives and consequently in their implementation. The project at Tenancingo, under the auspices of the Catholic Church and humanitarian organizations, was primarily a pilot project. It sought to demonstrate the possibility of repopulating the countryside in conflictive zones and establishing enclaves of peace for civilians in the midst of war. The project of the CNR represented a step taken by the displaced, within their established rights as civilians, to return to and live in their places of origin free from attack, regardless of their political sympathies. It was part of a grassroots movement that asserted the human dignity and the civilian status of those displaced by the war and that claimed the basic human right to survival and to participation in the economic and political development of the country. Finally, the government's UPR project was a response to the crisis presented by the magnitude of displacement since 1984, and a part of the overall strategy to secure the countryside by repopulating specific areas in such a way as to ensure the allegiance of project beneficiaries to the armed forces. The examination of these projects provides a microcosmic look at the fundamental issue at stake in El Salvador's civil war: the contest surrounding recognition of the basic human and civil rights of the majority of people. The repopulation process is, on the one hand, the struggle of displaced civilians to survive in the context of a war that is apparently never-ending. On the other hand, in its official manifestations, the process is an attempt to control populations and territory—and ultimately, land and wealth. Part 3 examines the repopulation movement among Salvadoran refugees at the Mesa Grande camp in Honduras. As the repopulation movement developed among the internally displaced, the refugees in Honduras showed growing interest in the possibility of returning to their homes in El Salvador. In 1987, approximately 20,000 people lived in the camps not far from the border. The largest of the camps was Mesa Grande, where 11,500 refugees lived in exile. Many had been there since the beginning of the war, driven out of the northern departments during the early displacement operations. In January 1987, the refugees at the Mesa Grande camp communicated to the governments of El Salvador and Honduras and to the UNHCR their decision to return home despite the continuing war. As was the case in the return of the internally displaced, the decision of the refugees to repatriate represented a unique and complex situation. They were returning not because the war was ending but rather because it was continuing. As the war grew more protracted, Salvadorans in Honduras came to feel that they had to choose between a long-term sentence to life in a refugee camp or a return to conflictive zones in an attempt to assert their rights as noncombatants. After years of waiting for

Military Operations, Displacement, and Exile

25

a resolution to the conflict, the last alternative began to appear the most workable, once the way had been paved by the Tenancingo project and the independent community repopulations. Finally, Part 4 provides an account of the growing significance of the independent repopulation movement since 1986. On the one hand, the movement has broadened among both the internally and externally displaced and has expanded to include additional departments as designated sites for repopulation. On the other hand, the resistance of the armed forces to autonomous repopulation projects has also increased, and human rights violations among civilians residing in the repopulated areas have escalated. As the war has developed, repopulated areas and grassroots organizations sponsoring the return of the displaced to their places of origin have emerged as key elements in the struggle to determine the future of rural El Salvador.

PART 2 Los Desplazados:

The Displaced in El Salvador When the first soldiers came, I was ready to pack my bags and leave right then. It was very difficult for us before, to live as displaced people and try to make a living. W e lived in a ravine, it was awful. I wanted to try to come back; however it was, it had to be better, I thought. I am afraid there will be more battles in Tenancingo. Imagine the trauma we have lived with. My sister's daughter was three when the bombing happened. When the bombing took place, she was crying, "Stop shooting, I'm hurt." A three-year-old in the middle of the bullets-—imagine. Rosa, 37, repopulated displaced person, Tenancingo; May 1986

' "«Hilf

"«WS«

Child from Calle Real camp for displaced persons, with belongings, waiting to board bus for repopulation of Hacienda El Barillo, July 1986

Member of El Barillo Community Council viewing the cooperative's fields after planting, July 1987

Repopulators unloading buses and trucks at Hacienda El Barillo, July 1986

The Repopulation of Tenancingo

The municipality of Tenancingo is located approximately thirty kilometers northeast of San Salvador in the department of Cuscatlan. To the south and west of the town are rich volcanic soils used for coffee cultivation, but traditionally, the people of Tenancingo and its environs had access only to the relatively poor lands closest to town, which they farmed as minifundios. To supplement their incomes, many braided palm strands and sold them for low prices to a local hat factory owner who monopolized marketing in the area.1 Before the war, the town and its neighboring villages had a population of approximately 10,000 residents. Although the municipality of Tenancingo had public transportation, electricity, and running water, the surrounding hamlets had only rudimentary public services and infrastructure, and the people lived in conditions of extreme poverty and deprivation.2 Combat and Depopulation at Tenancingo In the early summer of 1983, people began to flee their homes in the small villages around Tenancingo, trying to escape the intensifying war. With the FMLN active in the area and an army post in town, from which troops regularly forayed into the surrounding countryside, the situation had become intolerably conflictive. When an impending FMLN attack against the army post was rumored in September, combat moved into Tenancingo itself. As the FMLN attacked, the armed forces called for an aerial attack. Before the FMLN could take up positions in the town, the bombing began, killing soldiers, insurgents, and civilians alike and extensively damaging homes and buildings.3 All survivors still able to flee did so as the armed forces moved in and militarized the entire area. When the fighting ended, fewer than one hundred people remained in the area; later, they too were evacuated. After the battle, conditions at Tenancingo were unlivable: Uncounted bodies had been buried in shallow graves throughout the town, all public services were defunct, and there was no potable water. No one remained. 29

30

Los Desplazados

FUNDASAL and the Tenancingo Project Most of the townspeople displaced from Tenancingo relocated to three nearby urban areas: Cojutepeque, Santa Cruz Michapa, and San Salvador. Many of these, particularly the propertied and landowners, maintained contact during 1984, and among them, they formed the Committee of the Displaced of Tenancingo. The committee approached Archbishop Arturo Rivera y Damas of San Salvador to secure his cooperation and support in demilitarizing the zone and establishing the conditions for their eventual return. In June 1985, the committee and the archbishop approached FUNDASAL, seeking assistance for the repopulation of Tenancingo. The foundation agreed to support the project, seeing the displaced population as part of its constituency and the project goals as consistent with its mandate. The principles and objectives of FUNDASAL, therefore, became the principles of repopulation at Tenancingo as well. The foundation was established in the early 1970s by intellectuals and technically oriented social workers within the Catholic church, who were encouraged by the liberalizing philosophical currents that followed the hemispheric conference of bishops at Medellin.4 In 1972, FUNDASAL explicitly stated its objectives, focusing on human development, economic growth, and social change. The organization concentrated its efforts in the provision of housing for the poor and marginalized of El Salvador; its projects were designed within a traditional institutional framework to provide technical assistance. Typically, FUNDASAL sought to promote self-confidence, political awareness, and a sense of community in project beneficiaries, as well as to deliver material aid. Over the years, donors to FUNDASAL included private foundations in Germany and the Netherlands, Catholic charities in Europe, the Interamerican Foundation, and the World Bank. As an organization, FUNDASAL had experienced difficulties in the repressive political climate of the 1970s, particularly during the period of widespread death squad activity and killings by the armed forces in the early 1980s. As the organization developed, however, its objectives were clarified and expanded in response to the needs of the population it was established to serve and the objectives of donor agencies. According to its principles, the fundamental goals of FUNDASAL were the promotion of the interests of the poorest people, families, and communities in El Salvador, the encouragement of active, responsible, and enlightened participation from these sectors in both local development processes and social change at the national level; and the specification of alternative development models designed to benefit the largest possible number of families through a rational expenditure of the minimum amount of resources.5

The Repopulation ofTenancingo

31

The documents and the personnel of FUNDASAL repeatedly emphasized the critical importance of the active participation of project beneficiaries in the decisionmaking processes of any foundation undertaking. In attaching priority to popular participation, of course, the foundation was not alone. Spokespersons for many other agencies and organizations promoting community development also emphasized the importance of popular participation.6 In El Salvador, however, this component of development projects was seen as especially important because many project participants were likely to have been victims of repression, either directly or indirectly. As such, they might have found it difficult to relate to each other and to social organizations. To the extent that assistance projects could not address this problem, real needs and popular objectives were likely to go unmet. Thus, in El Salvador, many projects had foundered on the rocks of inappropriate assistance, waste, mismanagement, and lack of direction. In their analysis of the political and economic context of the repopulation project at Tenancingo, FUNDASAL personnel wrote that the repopulation would "lead to new ways of addressing the problems of the displaced and their integration into the social and economic life of the country."7 The central problem to be addressed was the issue of the conflict and its effect on repopulation in Cuscatlan. Because the repopulation of Tenancingo was a movement of people back to a conflictive zone where the FMLN had been and continued to be active, it was likely to be interpreted by the armed forces as an attempt to restore civilian support for an insurgency. The administration of FUNDASAL, however, believed that it would be possible to implement the project and that a return to Tenancingo for the poorest of its former residents would represent an improvement over their lives as displaced persons. As conceptualized, the project incorporated objectives designed to promote the interests and well-being of the displaced community, not only as displaced persons but also as an historically impoverished and marginalized group. The foundation adapted its operating principles to the particulars of the repopulation effort, and the project was designed to promote social and economic welfare on a long-term basis as well as to solve the immediate difficulties of displacement. These objectives were expressly stated in the project review and description. In these documents, three fundamental goals of the project were described, which were to guide all FUNDASAL activities with respect to Tenancingo: 1) The project is an attempt to conceptualize the problems of the displaced in a manner that is radically differentfromcurrently accepted ideas on the subject. This means a fundamental transition away from the tendency to see the displaced and refugees as passive victims of war and toward efforts to convert them into active subjects involved in the

32

Los Desplazados

solution of their own problems. Through this effort and action, they will also become a part of the solution to the conflict. 2) The project also seeks to supercede concepts and practices associated with "reconstruction" [of the Municipality and its caniones]. When the term "reconstruction" is used, it is not intended to mean a return to the status quo, or life as it was before the war and displacement. Rather it is meant to connote a concept that will address, to the extent possible, the structural inequalities that lie at the heart of the war. Fundamentally, there are two significant types of inequality: the question of the distribution of wealth and the issue of the role of the poor in participating in the decision-making process concerning the socioeconomic and political questions facing the nation. With this in mind, the project will attempt to promote a concept of reconstruction that will promote, to the extent possible, a better distribution of wealth and will generate mechanisms permitting greater participation of the poor in the most important local decisions. 3) The project is to constitute part of the solution to the conflict itself by demonstrating a new way of relating to the opposing military forces. The agreement that made the project possible shows the results of this approach.8

These principles indicate the progressive and participatory intentions of the foundation as it approached the repopulation of Tenancingo, but they also reveal general problems of perspective and organization that later affected the development of the project. Although FUNDASAL staff members did not overtly seek for the foundation a directive role at Tenancingo, in taking upon themselves the function of establishing project goals (however democratic the goals themselves), FUNDASAL staff had already begun to assume leadership tasks and appropriate responsibility for the project's ultimate success or failure. In outlining project objectives, FUNDASAL officials assumed the function of promoting the interests of a displaced community as identified by the foundation rather than by the community itself. The statement of objectives reveals this tension quite clearly. For example, the first objective shows an explicit awareness of the fundamental importance of popular participation in decisionmaking affecting the community. FUNDASAL staff were always sensitive to this critical component of self-sustaining community development in a repressive environment. At the same time, however, the objective assumes that the foundation is responsible for "converting" the displaced from passive victims to active subjects—though it had been the displaced themselves who had organized a committee and approached FUNDASAL in search of assistance rather than direction. The FUNDASAL documents go on to provide a concise analysis of the profound socioeconomic conflict affecting the nation as a whole and

The Repopulation ofTenancingo

33

the community of Tenancingo in particular. The social environment is accurately assessed, and the measures necessary to restructure it clearly identified. According to the documents, the repopulation was conceptualized as a return in order to build "a different and a better life through social progress and economic reactivation."9 These processes, the working papers asserted, would require the participation of a disadvantaged population that had traditionally been excluded from the benefits of economic growth. The problems that later emerged at Tenancingo, therefore, were not a consequence of unanticipated developments or unforeseen conflict. Rather, they resulted from an inability of FUND AS AL to remain faithful to its own principles and goals. Politically, FUND AS AL staff were capable of articulating concepts of participatory community development that were workable in a conflictive context; organizationally, however, they were incapable of implementing them. Local Economy, Politics, and Power Structures The repopulation project proceeded in three phases. During the first phase, from June through December 1985, the basic cleanup work took place and the road to the town was made passable again. This was also the stage when political negotiations were most intense. The Archbishop of San Salvador, the armed forces, the government of El Salvador, the FMLN, the embassy of the United States, the International Committee of the Red Cross, and numerous nongovernmental humanitarian organizations were all involved in this process. In an effort to obtain official approval for the project, these actors, particularly the archbishop, began to play an increasingly significant role. The negotiations received highest priority because one of the most important factors in promoting the return of the population to Tenancingo was the ability to guarantee that the violence of September 1983 would not recur. Repopulation of the area could not proceed without some type of agreement with both the armed forces and the FMLN. Archbishop Rivera y Damas succeeded in securing separate pledges from both the military and the FMLN to refrain from placing a permanent base in the town or engaging in armed confrontation within the town limits. Other agreements were also negotiated between the administration of FUNDAS AL and the property owners of Tenancingo to allow the use of houses by initial returnees. One-year agreements were made with nonreturning homeowners that allowed the reconstruction and occupation of their houses during the first phases of the project. It is worth noting that community representatives were not centrally involved in these negotiations. Moreover, during the negotiating process, project administrators

34

Los Desplazados

repeatedly expressed uncertainty about the ability of the returning townspeople to manage their own affairs, as well as misgivings about the project because of the heterogeneous political sympathies of the returnees. The second project phase occurred during the first six months of 1986, with the actual repopulation taking place in January. On the twenty-eighth of that month, fifty-six families (187 people) were transported from Cojutepeque, Santa Cruz Michapa, and El Jocote to Tenancingo by the International Red Cross. During the day, a series of incidents occurred that highlighted the difficulties the community would face in attempting to assert its demilitarized status in a conflictive zone and the weaknesses of dependence on an agreement that had been negotiated in an uncertain political environment. The officer in command of the local brigade issued statements from Santa Cruz Michapa throughout the day, proclaiming the Tenancingo project to be part of the military's United to Reconstruct campaign. These statements violated the substance of the agreement negotiated with the archdiocese by undermining the civilian status of project participants. At the same time, the displaced living at Santa Cruz Michapa were discouraged from returning by army officials, who offered them shoes, assistance, and even circus tickets if they agreed not to go back. For their part, the forces of the FMLN made several appearances in town during the first weeks after repopulation, though they did not stay long and were always gone by nightfall. Because the first returnees were typically, though not exclusively, from among the poorest of the displaced of Tenancingo and had few personal belongings to sustain them, this phase of the project focused on support and emergency assistance. Transport, food, medicine, work implements, and construction materials were donated by humanitarian organizations and delivered through FUNDASAL, which also organized work on community projects as the returnees began the task of making the town livable again. Reconstruction of houses began, along with the reconstruction of public buildings and the church on the main plaza. The people themselves provided the labor for both individual and communal rebuilding. At this time, basic infrastructural work was also undertaken, which was coordinated by the newly established community council. Sources of potable water had to be repaired, electricity restored, and public services reestablished. All of this work continued through the third phase, which occurred during the second half of 1986. Throughout the period, the population of Tenancingo continued to increase, as former townspeople trickled back individually. In both the second and the third phases, economic activity and reconstruction efforts increased significantly, and efforts were made by FUNDASAL to consolidate social organization in the municipality of

The Repopulation

ofTenanàngo

35

Tenancingo and the outlying villages. During the period, however, tension developed between FUNDASAL personnel in the field and FUNDASAL administrators and supervisors in the capital. Field staff reported that they had to respond primarily to the concerns of project participants as the military situation became more threatening. For example, the military roadblock at Santa Cruz Michapa became increasingly strict. Those bringing supplies out to the project reported that they were checked and questioned carefully, and the material they could bring into Tenancingo was limited. There were also rumors circulating that an army informer was stationed out of sight at the roadblock, anonymously identifying people as FMLN collaborators when they passed through the checkpoint. These circumstances caused uneasiness and fear among the repopulators, who expressed the desire that the project maintain a lower profile with respect to the armed forces. This opinion was communicated to project administrators in the capital, but by this time, the military had already assumed an adversarial stance with respect to Tenancingo.10 The effort to rebuild the economy of the area had two related emphases. First was an effort to encourage cooperative farming and promote the sharing of inputs among independent farmers. It was hoped that cooperative farming would increase productivity by providing poorer producers with access to credit and technology that had previously been unavailable to them. Second was an effort to decentralize economic power in such a way as to allow the poor to benefit from the sale of their own products. Toward this end, project personnel in the field had encouraged the formation of a cooperative and assisted in the development of marketing networks for hats and other crafts made of palm, which were the traditional products of Tenancingo. It was thought that alternative access to national markets would allow small producers to escape the marketing monopoly enjoyed by a local distributor before the war. The owner of the single hat-making factory in the area had moved his business to San Salvador and largely retained his clientele. The challenge for FUNDASAL was to reorganize production and develop additional markets so that the members of the new cooperative could compete with their former employer. One of the most important initial components of economic reactivation at Tenancingo was the public works program (Bolsa de Trabajo) established for the first returnees with technical and financial assistance from FUNDASAL.11 Through the program, participants were paid 8 colones (U.S. $1.60) per day for such community tasks as debris cleanup, roof repair, demolition, and painting. The payments were expected to provide not only a cash supplement to individuals but also a source of liquidity to promote new commercial enterprises. The program also

36

Los Desplazados

Table 3.1 Credit for Tenancingo Project by Type of Economic Activity (through December 1986) Total Colones

Total U.S. Dollars

Percent

Agriculture Ranching Handicraft Commerce Services Industry

162,050 360,633 70,241 21,800 13,000 10,200

32,410 72,127 14,048 4,360 2,600 2,040

25.4 56.5 11.0 3.4 2.0 1.7

Total

637,924

127,585

100.0

Source: Sección crédito y cobros Fundación Salvadoreña de Desatollo y Vivienda Minima, December 1986.

served as an organizational focus because the community decided, through its community council, which tasks would be undertaken, what sorts of priorities would be assigned to them, and what means would be used to carry them out. All returnees were eligible to participate through a family member who was of working age. The program continued in operation until December 1986, when it was decided that economic activity had been increased sufficiently and that this exogenous stimulus was no longer needed.12 The project also increased access to formal credit sources for those producers who previously could not obtain it and facilitated the purchase of raw materials necessary for handicraft production. The bulk of the loans made during the first year were to support farming and ranching activities, as the townspeople returned to subsistence production. Smaller loans were made available for handicraft production to microenterprises, most of which were located in the municipality. The provision of credit to small producers who never before could borrow at affordable interest rates from formal sources was also an important component of economic reactivation. Table 3.1 shows the distribution of loans made during the year after the initial repopulation. Much of the administrative work of the credit program was handled through an agricultural administrative council, which was formed from among small farmers who wished to work the land again. The council contacted landowners who had not returned to Tenancingo to arrange for the use of their lands through the 1986-1987 agricultural season. Council members were elected by residents of districts in the municipality and the outlying villages (cantones). As a group, council members distributed

The Repopulation ofTenancingo

37

parcels of land to applicant farmers, based on credit available to each applicant, type of crop to be cultivated, land quality, and a farmer's past production history. Most applicant farmers proposed to cultivate basic subsistence crops, primarily maize and beans. Only a small percentage sought land and credit for the cultivation of cash crops, such as sugarcane or tobacco. FUND ASAL would loan a maximum of U.S. $307 per hectare of corn and U.S. $275 per hectare of beans. The producer borrowed for a period of one year, receiving 75 percent of the loan during the first three months of the period and 25 percent after the third month. The loan itself took the form of inputs for production substantiated through purchase orders. An interest rate of 5 percent of the value of production was charged and could be paid after the harvest or through a labor donation to the community during the year. Those who worked with the project suggest that these formalized loans with concessionary terms of payment did much to delegitimize the usurious and exploitative rental arrangements that farmers had been subject to before the war. Through the credit program, FUNDASAL staff assert, not only were customary relationships between borrowers and lenders irrevocably changed, but also relationships between landowners and renters were affected. One community development specialist with FUNDASAL explained that before the issue of unequal distribution of property could be confronted, patterns of land rental had to be addressed. Through the credit program, townspeople in and around Tenancingo had gained access to rented land and to markets for their products; thus, they had come to understand the true value of the agricultural inputs they formerly received through intermediaries. They also came to have an accurate assessment of the value of their own labor and consequently an understanding of the degree of past exploitation. FUNDASAL staff believed it unlikely that the people in the Tenancingo area could ever again be made to pay a proportion of their crops for credit. Through FUNDASAL, however, temporary legal arrangements for the use of the land were made, explicitly acknowledging the right of landholders who had abandoned the zone to return and reappropriate their property should they wish to do so. Thus the project did not claim the right of the displaced to farm abandoned lands, as the CNR later did, and continued to operate as if traditional economic structures had simply been temporarily suspended because of generalized conflict. According to FUNDASAL field staff at Tenancingo, the project was based on the premise that reconstruction and economic, cultural, and political development would come about only through the transformation of the social organization of the town and its cantones. The formation of work teams through the Bolsa de Trabajo, the establishment of ad-

38

Los Desplazados

ministrative councils in residential districts, and the popular election of a community council were three significant steps in the social transition toward more participatory and democratic organizational structures. These structures represented an important break with the past because before the war and displacement, the people of Tenancingo and its environs had had little or no access to economic or political decisionmaking. The formation of the community council was proposed in order to establish a political entity primarily responsible for community decisions and activities. In addition, administrative councils were established by each residential district through popular election. Together, they would discuss, analyze, and orient the agricultural needs and production capability of the entire community. At planting time, groups of farmers from the municipality organized the preparation of the land and the sowing of seeds, breaking with the traditional individual farming methods for the first time. By the end of the year, according to the records of the agricultural administrative council, 234 credit applications had been approved, and approximately 100 hectares had been cultivated in the area of Tenancingo and the cantones that surrounded it. u By the end of 1986, elections had been held repeatedly for seats on the community council, and its legitimacy, responsibility, and representative character appeared to be established. At the same time, however, problems were emerging concerning the council's scope of authority. It had no real legal jurisdiction because of its provisional character and because the legal mayor of Tenancingo continued to operate in a limited capacity out of nearby Cojutepeque. Nevertheless, the administration of FUNDASAL began to promote the visibility of the council vis-à-vis the the armed forces, absent landowners, and municipal officials, even as the organization retained all true negotiating authority. This caused confusion and concern among council members, some of whom feared coming to the attention of the authorities in such a role. From these two new community organizations, other social and cultural groups emerged. A youth club was formed, which promoted cleanup campaigns and recreational activities, and an Alcoholics Anonymous chapter formed to address one of the most serious of the town's social problems. Those who worked with the project reported that in all reconstruction, economic, social, cultural, and educational activities, the participation of the townspeople was crucial. During its first year, the project had managed to address several potentially serious problems on a temporary basis: the question of access to land for the growing season, the fact that the majority of peasants had never before had access to formal credit, the problem of new agricultural technology, and some initial lack of confidence in the project. During this same period, however, the initiative and the weight of responsibility for

The Repopulation

ofTenandngo

39

continued project activities remained the province of FUNDASAL staff rather than of the community of returnees. One reason for this was the inexperience and lack of training of the community council, which was made up of people who had never before had a say in political decisionmaking at any level. The council consequently suffered from frequent member turnover as well as a certain amount of fear and lack of authoritativeness. Despite these difficulties and the intimidating political climate overall, it is significant that there were many council members who were dynamic, involved, and committed individuals. As time went on, however, and the political and military atmosphere surrounding the project became more and more repressive, communication became increasingly unilateral. Lacking day-to-day contact with the townspeople and recognizing the growing official opposition to the project, FUNDASAL administrators became increasingly directive. By late 1986, directives were coming from the capital for implementation at Tenancingo rather than issuing from the community as requests for prioritized material or political support. Consequently, interviews with townspeople andfieldstaff suggested, the community's ability to develop mechanisms for dealing with internal conflict and arriving at a consensus in a democratic manner never consolidated. Social cohesion became more a result of capitulation to authority rather than arrival at compromise and agreement. For a civilian, noncombatant community located deep in disputed territory, this corrosive process had dangerous and long-lasting consequences. For example, project participants frequently needed to react as a community to an incursion by the armed forces, and opinions often differed as to the most appropriate response. As a community, participants were also required to reach agreement concerning priorities for reconstruction, for granting individual loans, and for funding social programs. But as the project administration became more hierarchical and authoritarian, mechanisms for reaching consensus atrophied, and the community failed to develop the social cement it needed to confront the repressive external political/military situation. Vulnerability of Tenancingo The directorate of FUNDASAL encapsulated the original political objectives of the Tenancingo repopulation project in its press release on the occasion of the July 1986 festival for the town's patron saint: The experience of Tenancingo demonstrates that it is possible to find non-violent alternatives that address the interests of the people. Tenancingo approaches the question of war from the perspective of the displaced and seeks solutions for and with them. This is not to say that the

40

Los Desplazados

town is free of military conflict, but it is to say that the town is a place where people humbly and courageously confront the root causes of war. In this sense, the reconstruction of Tenancingo is an important contribution to peace in this country. 14

This evaluation by FUND AS AL was an optimistic assessment of the project's achievements, however. In fact, because FUNDASAL failed to relinquish decisionmaking responsibility to the community, the project became less and less inclined to deal realistically with either the root causes or the consequences of war. At the same time, it was less able to make a concrete contribution to peace. In many ways, the project represented a microcosm of the acute contradictions that affected the country as a whole. The question of land tenure was still far from settled, and the jurisdiction of the elected community council, should the previous municipal authorities decide to return, remained an open question. Many at Tenancingo feared they would once again suffer repression and lose what they had gained, as problems with the armed forces became more serious. Threatening and frightening incidents were increasingly frequent after the January 1986 arrival of the first repopulators. One of the most significant occurred in May 1986 when the chief of staff of the armed forces, General Adolfo O. Blandon, arrived in Tenancingo, along with Colonel Leopoldo A. Hernandez of the First Brigade. Their visit was preceded by the arrival of approximately 400 soldiers of the elite Belloso Battalion, who entered the town and established a command post. When Blandon and additional troops arrived two days later, the general advised the returnees of the army's attitude toward them and warned them to avoid any contact with insurgents.15 The troops remained for two days after General Blandon had departed, effectively occupying the town for five days and making it a potential military target once again. At the time, Colonel Orlando Carranza, commander of the troops at Tenancingo, told the press that the five-day occupation was part of a military operation in the area and denied knowledge of any agreement to treat the town as a demilitarized zone. He insisted that the armed forces could stay in Tenancingo for whatever period of time deemed necessary by field commanders, just as they might in any other part of Salvadoran national territory. The incident was described in the San Salvador press: "Tenancingo has received the support of the armed forces now that more than fifty families have returned to their homes."16 And in June 1986, the press in San Salvador reported: "The Departmental Commander of Cuscatlan and Head of the Fifth Military Detachment, Colonel Oscar Armando Carranza, said that Tenancingo is no longer a 'ghost town,' now that ninety families, which had been displaced to other towns, have returned and are working productively with the assistance of the armed forces."17

The Repopulation ofTenancingo

41

In September, the army entered the town again and took a house-tohouse census of all residents. Soldiers went to the few stores in town and told shopkeepers to stop collaborating with the FMLN by selling them goods. They alleged that the people of Tenancingo were responsible for a major FMLN buildup in the area. As early as November 1986, the army's intentions to control events at Tenancingo began to go beyond propaganda efforts to shape public perceptions of the repopulation project and intermittent attempts to intimidate returnees. On November 5, troops again entered Tenancingo and stayed for more than one week. According to a FUNDASAL employee: "The army entered on November 5 and stayed for eight days. The officials stayed in town and the others all around it. Most were troops from the Fifth Military Detachment in Cojutepeque. On two mornings, I believe, the troops started to fire toward this side [of town]. The people who were working in the fields were in danger. There were several men and some boys down there. It was very frightening."18 One man, fifty-six years old, who had been in the fields at the time, told an interviewer: When the troops entered, we were tending the bean crop. About ten meters from here, where my son was working, that's where the bomb [mortar shell] fell. We left because we couldn't work. They were shooting from the town to down here. On Friday [November 7], the soldiers were shooting from the other side [of town] to where we were in the fields. Troops at the school told them by radio not to fire; there were people working and kids playing soccer. We were very nervous and stopped working. On Saturday morning there was more [mortar] fire.19

As time passed, the roadblock at Santa Cruz Michapa became increasingly restrictive. People were questioned and checked very carefully, and the amount of supplies they were allowed to carry into the town was limited. The army suspected the townspeople of giving food and supplies to the insurgents, whom they knew were close by. In 1987, the town was repeatedly occupied by the armed forces for extended periods of time. The forces of the FMLN had made appearances in Tenancingo during the previous year, but their stays were always short-term, and they never made any attempt to co-opt or control the project politically. By 1988, however, the army had moved to secure the zone once again and had militarized the entire area, continuing to occupy the town for lengthy periods on repeated occasions and subjecting residents to surveillance, interrogation, and intimidation. During the municipal elections held in the spring of the year, a member of the right-wing National Republican Alliance (ARENA) party was elected mayor. According to townspeople interviewed after the election, the repopulation project had become riddled with spy networks in

42

Los Desplazados

contact with the armed forces, and many people were afraid to vote against the ARENA candidate, who was also a former member of the community council. For practical purposes, FUNDASAL had lost control of the project, and its future seemed uncertain at best. As the army began to reassert its presence, the returnees began to fear that the armed forces wished to occupy the town and bring back prewar landowners and municipal authorities. It seemed possible that once the returnees had cleared the roads, plowed the land, reconstructed the houses, rebuilt the public buildings, and reestablished public services, the former landowners and public officials would find it worth their while to return, reclaim their authority, and appropriate the benefits of the project. According to existing legal structures, they would be within their rights to do so. Without countrywide socioeconomic reform, the people at Tenancingo had no permanent legal rights to the achievements of the project. Nor did they have the cohesion to resist militarization—they had never actually wrested responsibility for community development away from FUNDASAL and therefore lacked the united front necessary to face the dangers and tensions of day-to-day life in a war zone. The situation was also complicated by the frequent, although less intrusive, visits of FMLN combatants, who tended to arrive in the afternoon and leave by nightfall. Their presence was usually limited to purchases in the local stores and conversation with townspeople. Although the townspeople did not report perceiving them as a threat, many felt that their presence could provoke another military attack. At times when the guerrillas overstayed their welcome, the townspeople, through their community council, sought ways to communicate their fears. Initially this was handled through FUNDASAL, but later they spoke directly with the local FMLN commanders. Continuous military presence or attempts at political co-optation of the project were not reported, although FMLN military activity in the surrounding villages made a return to those areas impossible. In addition, there was at least one incident in which combatants of both armies happened upon each other in the town. When this occurred, both sides held their fire and retreated in accordance with the agreements. Nevertheless, because Tenancingo continued to be in the heart of a conflictive area, the people could not be sure that the events of September 1983 would not recur. The town and its cantones fell within the scope of Operation Phoenix, the counterinsurgency campaign that began in the Guazapa region at virtually the same time that actual repopulation began. After that time, the initial agreements facilitated by Archbishop Rivera y Damas were repeatedly violated and weakened by the military incursions, such as the November 1986 occupation of the town. The agreements had provided sufficient security to initiate the project, but they did not seem

The Repopulation ofTetumcingo

43

adequate to secure its continued development and success.

Assessment of the Tenancingo Project

From the beginning, the government of José Napoleón Duarte and the armed forces looked upon the repopulation project with suspicion and extreme wariness. Independent repopulation of abandoned villages and towns undermined the conduct of the counterinsurgency campaign, designed to remove from specific areas all potential civilian supporters of the FMLN. It also presented a direct challenge to the prewar socioeconomic structures that promoted an income distribution skewed away from rural workers while simultaneously excluding them from political participation. During the years since the repopulation of Tenancingo, there have been continuing reports of attempts to prevent success of the project through use of both coercive and persuasive tactics. An army roadblock at Santa Cruz Michapa has monitored all supplies going into the town and constituted a further obstacle for potential returnees. Many rural people are afraid to undergo interrogation by the army at these roadblocks and are thus discouraged from returning. In an attempt to undermine FUNDASAL's credit program during the first growing season, the government's agricultural lending institution approached people living in the hamlets surrounding Tenancingo, offering them credit at competitive rates and advising them not to accept credit from FUND A S A L . Those who opted to receive credit from the government, however, found that it did not materialize; ultimately, FUND A S A L provided virtually all of the credit for the town. In its initial stages, the Tenancingo project appeared to have the potential to support community development and promote the social goals first articulated by FUND A S A L . But the evidence suggests that the administration of FUND A S A L , after identifying workable means of empowering the displaced community, was unwilling to take a supportive role in negotiating or decisionmaking and did not allow grassroots leadership to develop. In assuming responsibility for formulating principles to orient the project, for example, FUNDA S A L administrators contravened their own established objectives of encouraging the displaced themselves to become the subjects of their struggle and, as such, to articulate their own solutions to the problems they encountered. Quite simply, by appropriating the task of defining project objectives, F U N D A S A L administrators began to eliminate the displaced as subjects of the project, though recognition of the displaced community as the primary actor in the struggle for a different and a better life had itself been established as a principal goal.

44

Los Desplazados

In the end, this has proved to be a conventional project based on the institutional assumptions that typically surround the provision of technical assistance—that is, the intentions of the institution are good, its staff members are experts, and its role is directive. In this context, the displaced were prevented from asserting themselves as the subjects of their own struggle for self-determination and were once again relegated to the category of objects to be managed or manipulated for their own good. It was this lack of self-determination that weakened the project at Tenancingo and opened the door to the government and the armed forces of El Salvador in their efforts to control and contain the displaced in the zone. But the FUND AS AL approach had progressive aspects, too. It incorporated goals designed to challenge traditional social structures when it appeared possible to do so. In detailed descriptions of project objectives, for example, the repopulation of Tenancingo was to encourage popular participation in the redevelopment of the local economy and in the design and implementation of new forms of production and distribution of goods. Although these intentions were regarded with suspicion by the armed forces and by former landowners in the area, the negotiations that took place in 1985 between the Duarte government and the FMLN had created an atmosphere of hope for a political solution. As a result, a certain social "space" opened that allowed, for a time, the discussion of new organizational concepts in specific dimensions of social life. Thus, out of the institutional history of FUNDASAL and the influence of the political conjuncture in the country came both the strengths and the weaknesses of Tenancingo. On the one hand, the repopulation was to incorporate progressive socioeconomic transformation brought about through popular political participation. But on the other, the progressive change envisioned had actually been conceptualized by FUNDASAL; it had not emerged from the displaced community itself, as the subject of the repopulation process. The Tenancingo project also provides a demonstration of the complexities and costs imposed by a conflictive environment upon a traditional "top-down" institutional effort to promote community development. First, the initial demilitarization was secured through tortuous negotiations, undertaken at a specific political conjuncture, that involved the highest levels of government, the military, the FMLN, and the Catholic Church. Second, material support was comparatively generous because the project entailed considerable financial expenditures. Third, and perhaps most important, negotiations to secure funding and government approval were lengthy, and during this process, the institutions involved assumed larger roles in project implementation while the community correspondingly failed to develop autonomy or initiative. It was highly unlikely, therefore, that the resources necessary for

The Repopulation ofTemncingo

45

preliminary work of the scope of Tenancingo could be mobilized for the number of projects necessary to address the problem of displacement adequately, even in the long term. Nor is it clear that the top-down institutional involvement that begins as support and ends as direction is desirable or effective. The expressed displeasure of the armed forces with the agreement negotiated by the archdiocese and FUNDASAL, which initially precluded military conflict in Tenancingo, made it improbable that a broader accord might be reached that could be applicable to other sites. Moreover, the frequent disregard of the Tenancingo agreement by the military put the utility of negotiations with the army in question. In contrast to the stance of the FMLN, whose forces periodically passed through the town but never attempted to occupy it, the military High Command regarded the agreement as an intrusion upon the jurisdiction of the armed forces, which extends to all Salvadoran territory. Nonetheless, the Tenancingo project had opened the way, politically and socially, for larger, more autonomous movements. These subsequently coalesced under the auspices of the National Coordinator of Repopulation.

The National Coordinator of Repopulation Even as negotiations for the repopulation of Tenancingo proceeded, the size of the displaced population grew, and problems of survival for the people deepened. In 1984, according tofigurescompiled by the International Commission of the Red Cross, the National Commission for Assistance to the Displaced of El Salvador (CONADES), the Social Secretariat of the Archdiocese of San Salvador, and Catholic Relief Services, there were just over 460,000 displaced persons in the country. By 1986, this number had increased to over 500,000, according to the legal aid office of the Archdiocese of San Salvador. Because the displaced were previous residents of areas where the FMLN operated, many found themselves subject to repression at the hands of the military and the Duarte government, wherever they were. Their economic and social problems were also considerable because most fled their homes with few if any personal possessions and were unequipped to work in urban areas. As a consequence of the immediacy of these problems, some displaced persons with a history of participation in religious social welfare organizations, or Christian base communities, during the 1960s and 1970s began to organize and address their own particular needs and difficulties. In July 1984, the Christian Committee for the Displaced of El Salvador (CRIPDES) was formed as the first national organization representing families and communities displaced by war. CRIPDES announced that its objectives were to organize and assist the displaced, to monitor and publicize humanrightsabuses directed at this population, and to advocate therightsof displaced communities. It is important to emphasize that in contrast to the FUNDAS AL project at Tenancingo, CRIPDES was created by the displaced without the direction, facilitation, or sponsorship of any governmental or nongovernmental entity. Popular Organization of the Displaced In one of its earliest public statements, CRIPDES described the organization of its newly constituted National Council. The council included eleven 47

48

Los Desplazados

members: the president and vice president, along with the heads of fivemember commissions assigned to address the issues of resettlement, finances, nutrition, production, social necessities, legal problems, organizational relations, and religious (pastoral) needs. Regional committees were also formed to represent the needs of the displaced from specific zones of the country. During 1984 and 1985, CRIPDES took on a demanding variety of activities and became the only group in the country representing the organized displaced, helping them to set up coordinating committees to distribute food and medicine sent from abroad for people in the asentamientos (settlements for the displaced) and other displaced persons. The organization facilitated the training of health promoters and effectively sought assistance from nongovernmental humanitarian institutions. For their efforts, many of the more visible CRIPDES members suffered personally: Even as the organization denounced abuses of the displaced, several of its members were openly threatened by the armed forces and were captured, mistreated, and imprisoned. Between September 198S and September 1987, five members of the CRIPDES leadership were captured and imprisoned: Miguel Antonio Mejia Cruz, Margarito Arturo Alvarado, Salvador Rosales, Armando Menjivar, and Saul Flores.1 In 1985 and 1986, as difficulties for displaced communities multiplied, those represented by CRIPDES began to consider the inadequacies in existing programs of emergency relief assistance supplied by humanitarian organizations and to discuss their growing certainty that short-term assistance could never be an adequate solution to problems of security, health, and subsistence. At the time, according to CRIPDES documents, the organization represented approximately 350,000 displaced persons. Under increasingly difficult conditions, it was working with twenty-seven existing asentamientos in the provinces of Usulutan, Cuscatlan, La Libertad, and San Miguel. During this period, the organization began to assist displaced persons confined to refugee camps and urban slums to resettle abandoned lands in the conflictive eastern provinces. These lands were typically unused and unclaimed, their occupation undisputed by landowners who had moved to the relative safety of larger towns and cities. CRIPDES documents described the ongoing difficulties the displaced in marginal urban areas and in the asentamientos encountered that led to the final decision to initiate the systematic return to abandoned rural areas. In the marginal zones around the capital, the displaced cannot find the work necessary to earn a decent living, they live in small unsanitary shacks, and they are unable even to subsist. TTiey cannot raise domestic animals because they haven't the space necessary to do so. Children play along the railroad tracks and parents are forced to live on the charity of humanitarian organizations and the Church. The majority suffer from

The National Coordinator ofTaumcmgo

49

serious illnesses but are unable to obtain medication, and many children at ten years old appear to be onlyfivedue to the level of malnutrition from which they suffer.2 In addition, the presence of large numbers of displaced families in marginal areas further depressed the overall living standards of the urban and rural poor. The displaced inevitably came to compete with the local poor for already scarce resources such as work, land, services, and aid. Moreover, those in the asentamientos faced serious security problems and were periodically attacked: In the first year after they were established, fourteen CRIPDES-associated asentamientos were attacked by either the armed forces, the National Police, or the civil defense.3 Faced with these difficulties, the displaced in settlements and camp settings represented by CRIPDES concluded that a move back to rural areas was the most workable, desirable, and potentially permanent solution to their problems. This sector of the displaced also began to assert publicly that, as civilians, it was their right under international law to remain in their places of origin despite the conflict. As CRIPDES studied the possibilities for return to rural areas, the earthquake of October 1986 struck San Salvador and its environs, causing extensive damage to the marginal housing of the displaced. Many were living in flimsy self-built shelters perched precariously on the steep mountainsides that surround the city. During the quake, these highly vulnerable structures simply collapsed, causing injury and death and aggravating the crisis of homelessness to intolerable levels. Caught in the crosscurrents of both natural and man-made disasters, CRIPDES consolidated the intention to repopulate abandoned rural areas. If families could not return to their places of origin, they would establish resettlements (reubicaciones); if they could return to the villages from which they had been displaced, they would organize repopulations (repoblaciones). "The most viable form of relocating the displaced is to take them back to the countryside: even if they cannot return to their places of origin, they would still be able to cultivate the land."4 The effort to establish reubicaciones on abandoned land in conflictive zones met with considerable resistance and repression from the armed forces and the Duarte government, which charged that the moves represented an effort to undermine the counterinsurgency strategy and reconstruct a network of civilian support for the FMLN. After the establishment of the first reubicaciones on the coast of Usulutan between Salinas de Potrero and Sisiguayo, the armed forces routinely patrolled these villages in active combat mode. During these forays, soldiers prevented residents from working, confined them to their shelters, threatened to burn their crops if they did not leave the area, and accused

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them of being FMLN sympathizers.5 CRIPDES responded through its official communications that the primary interest of its membership was the restoration of peace rather than the continuation of war and that, as civilians, their members had the right to return to rural areas if necessary to survive. CRIPDES activists took to the streets to demand their right to farm abandoned land and support their families. Given the growing certainty of a protracted war, CRIPDES argued that short-term solutions to displacement were simply inadequate. In the repressive climate of El Salvador, this in itself was a courageous act. At the same time, with the support of certain churches that had traditionally protected and assisted the displaced, CRIPDES began to seek more assistance for the reubicaciones and to promote organized, collective repopulation as an appropriate alternative for the displaced that was within their rights under Protocol II of the 1949 Geneva Conventions. During 1985, the depopulation campaign of the armed forces broadened and intensified. While President Duarte spoke publicly of respect for civilian populations in conflictive zones, the air force repeatedly bombed villages and towns in areas where the armed opposition was thought to be active. These air attacks were often followed by or coordinated with scorched-earth operations during which soldiers burned homes and personal effects, destroyed crops, both in the fields and in storage, and slaughtered domestic animals. The military's objective was to force all civilians to flee these zones in order to expose and corner the insurgents.6 The attacks were forcefully denounced by CRIPDES in both the national and international press. In its efforts to halt the depopulation campaign, the organization sought to broaden its international base of support and draw attention to the plight of El Salvador's displaced. On January 10,1986, the armed forces launched Operation Phoenix, the beginning of a long-term intensive counterinsurgency operation that would last throughout the year. Equipped with air cover, 5,000 elite army troops assaulted the Guazapa volcano, a heavily populated insurgent stronghold fifteen kilometers from the capital. The area was "softened up" by continual bombing and strafing, and ground troops burned a swath north from the volcano through approximately thirty kilometers of densely populated farmland. Heavy bombing continued for six weeks, while the people hid in makeshift bomb shelters (buzones) or left the area as best they could. Many were detained by the armed forces, interrogated, and airlifted to the capital, where they were deposited in camps for the displaced (refugios). One relief worker at Calle Real, a refugio in San Salvador, recalled that in February 1986, one month after the launching of Operation Phoenix, the camp's population of under 100 had tripled, and refugees continued to arrive weekly.7 Operation Phoenix was soon fol-

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lowed by Operation Chavez Carreno in northern Chalatenango during March and April 1986, and similar counterinsurgency campaigns began in the eastern departments of the country. By spring, displacement had reached crisis proportions: The camps were full to overflowing, relief agencies were overburdened as never before, and medical care was scarce to nonexistent. The government's own commission, CONADES, had always been inadequate, and as the problems grew worse, relief workers reported that its food distributions became even more erratic and meager. During the operations, CRIPDES repeatedly appealed to the government and the armed forces to halt the displacement: With the advent of Operation Phoenix in Guazapa and its spread into the Departments of Chalatenango, Cabanas, Cuscatlan and San Vicente, we can only expect even greater difficulties for the displaced. We also expect a continuation of the lamentable sequence of murders, captures, disappearances and destruction, principally directed against civilians and their property. This is what has occurred during the past four months of this operation.8

It was in the midst of this crisis that CRIPDES sponsored a national assembly of displaced communities in order to discuss both long-term problems and immediate needs. Two years of organizing experience and relief assistance among displaced persons had developed the analysis the CRIPDES leadership brought to bear upon displacement, and the objective of the assembly, therefore, was twofold: First, representatives were to decide upon viable and realistic alternatives to the increasingly precarious circumstances in which the displaced now found themselves. Second, those displaced participating in the forum were to begin to approach the deeper need for empowerment in order to assert and protect their right to survival. It was at the national assembly, held in May 1986, that the National Coordinator of Repopulation (CNR) was formed. The CNR was composed of representatives from the most conflictive areas of the country, such as San Vicente, Usulutan, Chalatenango, Cabanas, and Morazan. Representatives from the displaced camps in San Salvador were also included. While CRIPDES would continue to be responsible for the broader issues facing displaced communities, the CNR would focus its activities on achieving recognition of a single principle: the right to return and live peaceably in one's place of origin, regardless of its location or one's political sympathies. At the forum, it was decided that returning home was the only workable solution for the displaced, and that all efforts should be expended to secure the neutrality and safety of the returnees. The method chosen to assert the right to return was collective, public

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repopulations with a high degree of visibility and international accompaniment. Toward this end, work began in the refugee camps in the capital and among displaced communities. Many of the people displaced from Guazapa and Chalatenango during Operations Phoenix and Chavez Carreno joined with the CNR in organizing the repopulation of San Jose Las Flores on June 20,1986. Shortly afterward, the second CNR repopulation occurred on July 15,1986, to Hacienda El Barillo in the foothills of the Guazapa volcano. The third repopulation, organized with the support of the Lutheran church, was to Panchimilama, La Paz, just south of the capital. Other collective repopulations followed during the ensuing years, totaling nearly thirty by mid-1988. All CNR activities were largely funded by donations from international church organizations and religious institutions, whose cooperation and support was solicited by the displaced themselves. Typical of such efforts was an open letter from the CNR to religious communities in the United States. A broad outline of repopulation plans was presented, and an appeal was made for visiting delegations, an international presence at the repopulation sites, material aid, and moral support. Prominent supporters of the repopulation movement included the Archdiocese of San Salvador, the Lutheran World Federation, and the Lutheran church, among others. Because of its grassroots character, its operating principles, and its activities, however, the CNR was consistently regarded with hostility and suspicion by the armed forces and the Salvadoran government. As a grassroots organization that vocally opposed government policy and military strategy for their effects on the poor and especially on the displaced, the CNR was seen as a subversive organization, and several members of its directorate were abducted, tortured, and imprisoned. In the existing political climate, all direct criticism of the government from popular sectors or grassroots organizations may be labeled terrorism, subversion, and a threat to national security. Although a certain social and economic latitude may exist, such tolerance does not extend to either the political or the military spheres. As a result, the CNR has always operated in a decidedly repressive political climate. The CNR, however, assessed the contradictory position of the Salvadoran government and tried to promote the interests of the displaced within that framework. The CNR maintained that the government's ability to continue to wage war depends on military and economic assistance from the United States. The U.S. Congress, however, bowing to domestic popular pressure, had in the past made such assistance contingent upon a modicum of respect for the human rights of civilians. Therefore, the organization decided that popular pressure might be effective again in focusing U.S. congressional attention on the character of the

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counterinsurgency strategy ongoing in El Salvador and the toll it was taking on noncombatants in conflictive areas. During the period leading up to the initial repopulations, CRIPDES systematically denounced the army's violations of human rights and international law regarding the rights of rural civilians in an intranational conflict. The organization reasoned that if these violations could be publicized and if the conditions for the displaced could attract international scrutiny and concern, only then could the depopulation campaigns of the army be halted and guarantees of safety for those who wished to return home be assured. In order to survive the government's ideological campaign against it, the CNR adhered strictly to certain basic principles in orienting its activities. These principles consisted of selected fundamental human rights. The CNR insisted on the recognition of member communities as civilian communities with corresponding rights established by international law. In supporting its position, the CNR cited Article 17 of Protocol II Additional to the 1949 Geneva Conventions: "Civilians shall not be compelled to leave their own territory for reasons connected with the conflict."9 Under Protocol II, civilian status should then accord community residents the right to live in their place of origin, free from attack, detention, or removal. The CNR's citation of these principles was a direct response to government and military policies that blurred the lines between combatants and noncombatants, in violation of international law. Recognition of the consequences of these policies for unarmed noncombatants in conflictive zones thus became one of the basic objectives of the CNR. Repopulation of Hacienda El Barillo One of the areas completely depopulated during Operation Phoenix was Hacienda El Barillo, near the city of Suchitoto in the department of Cuscatlan. The hacienda and the area that surrounds it had a recent history typical of many conflictive areas in rural El Salvador. The rural population in the zone was affected by both the extension of commercial agriculture and the deterioration of income levels that occurred during the 1960s and 1970s. As a result, the area had experienced acute conflict as tenants and minifundistas struggled for access to land in order to cultivate subsistence crops. Throughout this period, the local landowners were preparing themselves to confront political unrest. The paramilitary group ORDEN was well developed around Suchitoto and prepared to confront resistance to the type of modernization occurring in agriculture. Initially, ORDEN had little impact on the situation, but gradually its significance grew, while at

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the same time, military personnel and patrols in the area increased.10 When the Molina government inaugurated the Agrarian Transformation of 1972, the reformed areas included the environs of Suchitoto. After the enactment of these limited land reform measures, the Hacienda El Barillo was run as an independent cooperative by its former tenant farmers and their families. By 1977, however, the agrarian reform programs came to a halt. Two years later, severe repression swept through the hacienda in the form of assassination of cooperative leaders, followed by captures, disappearances, imprisonment, and displacement of cooperative members. Many people were forced to flee, and estimates indicate that approximately 220 people were killed as a result of the death squads' widespread activity in the area. In 1985, as part of the military's campaign to depopulate conflictive zones, daily bombing of the nearby Guazapa volcano began, coordinated with monthly military operations, and a large number of residents fled the area. Those who remained werefinallyforced from the zone during Operation Phoenix in 1986. The conditions and circumstances of the people displaced during Operation Phoenix were reported by observers to be shocking. Those displaced who were interviewed at the refugee camps in San Salvador were described as physically and mentally exhausted. They had lost everything in their flight, and most were disoriented and could not locate family members from whom they had been separated during the bombing. Many had tried to hide in buzones, but had finally been forced out for lack of food and water. In the aftermath of Operation Phoenix, some of those displaced from Guazapa organized a march, during which they delivered a letter to President Duarte asking that they be allowed to return to their homes and requesting security guarantees should they attempt to do so. They also requested indemnification for the homes, crops, and animals destroyed by the armed forces. The letter went unanswered. Subsequently, they requested the intercession of Archbishop Rivera y Damas, who provided the assistance of the social secretariat of the archdiocese of San Salvador. In the end, however, permission to return was not granted, and many of the newly displaced were temporarily resettled in refugee camps. During the CRIPDES forum in May 1986, several members of the Hacienda El Barillo cooperative were active participants and contributed to the formation of the CNR. Through the new organization and the national and international church communities, they orchestrated the second large repopulation of the displaced. On July 15,1986,135 families (approximately 500 people), local church representatives, and the national and international press left the refugios and asentamientos to return to El Barillo and reactivate the cooperative. The trip became an international incident when the military detained twenty-four foreigners, most of whom

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represented U.S. churches accompanying the displaced at the request of the CNR, and expelled them from the country. After the removal of the international observers, repressive conditions were imposed on the cooperative by the armed forces. The army took a census of the returnees and allowed only those who could prove they were formerly hacienda residents to remain, placing these people under careful scrutiny and close supervision and requiring them to obtain express permission to leave the grounds of the hacienda. At the same time, the army began to impede would-be visitors to the repopulation site, restricting the access of international delegations and the families of the returnees. For safe conduct to Hacienda El Barillo, it became necessary to obtain permission from the army chief of staff, the commander of the First Brigade, and the commander at Suchitoto (the nearest town) and to pass military checkpoints leaving Suchitoto and upon arrival at El Barillo. As a result of the imposed isolation of the returnees and the close proximity of the military, the atmosphere at the hacienda became, and remained, tense. Community Organization and Economic Reactivation Despite strained relations with the army, the repopulators worked to reestablish themselves and reconstruct the cooperative. A community council was chosen by the families before they left the camps. It was composed of elected members, two of whom had served in the leadership of the cooperative before depopulation and who therefore brought some organizational and managerial expertise to the body. After the group arrived at El Barillo, new members joined the leadership, and by January 1988, the community council included eight representatives. New members were proposed to the community as a whole by the existing leadership, with every adult voting on candidates on the basis of personal merit. Interviews conducted at El Barillo in 1987 revealed that the community was generally satisfied with the activities of the community council and assessed it as able to fulfill its functions under difficult circumstances. It was seen as providing leadership, cooperative direction, project development, and discipline. Communications received from the community council by humanitarian organizations in the United States, whose support had been solicited, illustrated the responsibilities of the leadership as defined by its members: Since our arrival, we have shown our love for our work and our honesty as men and women who wish to move forward organizationally, educationally and collectively. This community is an example of collective work for many who are in the same situation in which we found ourselves.

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We hope we may show others how to address the problems and the needs of their communities in these times of emergency.11 At the hacienda, the community was divided into working teams for production, each headed by two group leaders who had been proposed by the community council and approved by the community as a whole. Workers were allocated among the production teams for farming, carpentry, and bricklaying tasks, and at harvest, each worker received dividends according to days worked (rations of food and basic commodities were given to each family). Although there was no surplus production in 1987, plans called for any surplus to be sold in the market at Suchitoto, with the proceeds to be reinvested in the cooperative. As of September 1987, the community council felt that food assistance would continue to be required through October, at which time the first major harvest would be gathered. It was the hope of the council that the cooperative would not require either food aid or donated agricultural inputs during the following year. In July 1987, extensive interviews were conducted with families at El Barillo concerning the development of the repopulation project and their current living conditions. The average household size of families interviewed was six persons, with three to four children per family. Before the war, most families had owned the houses in which they lived and had farmed their own small plots (0.5-1.5 hectares). Virtually all of the families had been displaced during Operation Phoenix in January and February 1986, although a few had left the area during a military operation much earlier, in 1982. Heads of households were farmers, although one of them also had bricklaying and carpentry skills. To return to the hacienda, they had received assistance from a variety of sources, including international delegations, the archdiocese of San Salvador, local parishes, the International Committee of the Red Cross, and the community council of the cooperative. Unanimously, they reported that they felt the level of assistance they had received from humanitarian organizations was adequate, and that their current circumstances represented an improvement over their previous status as displaced persons. They remained a poor community subsisting on a basic diet, but they uniformly perceived themselves as better off with the cooperative than they were as displaced persons. Community structures developed during the first year at El Barillo included a parents' association that met regularly to discuss issues relating to education and the school. Seven local teachers were designated by the association to operate a newly constructed school, and they were initially trained by the community to teach children up to the level of the third grade. In the fall of 1987, the school was expanded to include the fourth grade, and 220 students ages four to sixteen were enrolled. According to

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residents interviewed, the building and opening of the school improved educational stability. Before the war, the children of El Barillo had to travel to a neighboring town to school, and as the political situation became more tense, most families felt it was risky to send their children there. After the war started, there was no schooling available in the area at all because the teachers had been threatened. Upon return to the zone in 1986, hacienda residents attached a priority to the establishment of an educational facility capable of providing basic instruction in literacy and mathematics skills. There were also four health promoters at the site by July 1987 who operated a local clinic, and a doctor visited the repopulation area when allowed through the military cordon. This, too, represented an improvement over the prewar situation for cooperative residents. Before the war, people from El Barillo had to go to the regional capital of Suchitoto for any kind of health care. When the war began, such travel became dangerous, and the families on the hacienda had no access to formal health care. After returning to the hacienda, cooperative residents placed a priority on obtaining medical services and sought training for health promoters in preventive medicine. Nevertheless, adequate medical care remained a problem; doctors visiting El Barillo were viewed with suspicion by the armed forces, who were reluctant to allow medical supplies to reach the repopulation site. The army charged that medical assistance and supplies might be passed through to the insurgents and frequently delayed shipments meant for the hacienda. A women's vegetable-growing project was also organized during the first year. It employed women part-time to grow vegetables collectively for the hacienda, and some horticultural training had been obtained. Rabbits and chickens were also raised as part of a community project, and the community had established a range of human development projects, including nonformal skills training in agriculture, sewing, embroidery, health care, and teaching. In its first year, the hacienda farmed 105 hectares collectively (45 of which were rented), raising corn (85 hectares),rice(11), peanuts (2.5), and sesame (6.5). The cooperative also experimented with soybeans during the 1987 growing season. To supplement collective production, each family had its own plot where corn and vegetables typically were grown. Those families interviewed all reported that they felt they had access to land sufficient to feed themselves adequately. In addition, the cooperative had obtained a loan to purchase seventeen cows, which was expected to be repaid over the course of the next seven years. Funds came from national and international church entities, international foundations, and grassroots fund-raising inside El Salvador and abroad. Fund-raising was coordinated by the CNR, which communicated

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the needs of the returnees on a regular basis to sponsoring organizations. The funds were used to purchase food rations and medicine, pay salaries, obtain agricultural inputs,financeschool construction, and buy a tractor. Accounting procedures were established and maintained, and contributing organizations periodically received information about project expenditures. After the 1987 rainy season, however, the cooperative expected to be self-supporting. The overall costs, according to the 1987 budget, amounted to approximately $665 per family per year. Although actual costs may have been slightly higher because of incidental assistance and in-kind contributions not included in the budget, thefiguresrevealed efficiency in organizing and operating this project. Security Concerns The community was able to obtain external funding and credit as well as to organize production relatively effectively, but security remained a primary concern. The army argued that the move back to the hacienda was part of an FMLN strategy to repopulate strategic zones with sympathetic communities that might once again function as an economic support base. Because of intense international scrutiny, however, the armed forces had to tolerate the presence of the residents at El Barillo and did not try to remove them forcibly, as they did during Operation Phoenix. Thus far, they have relied on control tactics to limit the movements of the people and to prevent the rapid growth of the cooperative. The hacienda was surrounded continuously by the military, which allowed only a minimum of food and supplies to pass through the cordon. Of most concern to the people at El Barillo was the intense surveillance to which they were subjected by the army and the permanent establishment of a military post at the entrance to the hacienda. This strategy of intimidating and isolating the community permitted the occurrence of incidents such as the 1987 capture and subsequent murder of a Community Council member by an army patrol. On separate occasions, several other community members were captured and temporarily incarcerated. Soldiers of the First Brigade, Fifth Military Detachment, often patrolled the hacienda grounds. Many of the soldiers were familiar faces, encountered by the people during Operation Phoenix. The feeling was one of a fragile coexistence, with the military portraying itself in the Salvadoran press as protecting the project from insurgent forces while the returnees watched the army warily. When interviewed at El Barillo, people said that additional families could not return to the hacienda without the permission of the army. They reported that they felt unsafe there, but

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were probably more secure than they had been as displaced persons. Another security concern was the presence of explosive mines in areas around the hacienda where people gathered fruit andfirewood.The army contended that the mines were placed by the rebels, but the Archdiocese of San Salvador published testimony alleging that some of the mines were planted by the armed forces.12 Rumors circulated frequently that the army would impose its own demands on the project and attempt to manage it directly. This eventuality was feared because government projects usually involved a "civil defense" component that required civilians either to bear arms or inform authorities about the activities of their neighbors, thus transforming them into military targets. During 1986 and early 1987, the military placed several articles in the national newspapers stating that the people at El Barillo had sought the protection of the armed forces and were forming a civil defense of their own. According to returnees interviewed, this misrepresented their intention to remain free from the presence of any military group. They strongly opposed the formation of a civil defense, which they said would endanger their ability to remain in the area safely. For its part, the cooperative periodically published open letters in the press asserting its civilian status in order to prevent the imposition of a civil defense. One such announcement published shortly after the returnees arrived at El Barillo read: "We do not want the armed presence of either side in our settlement for it will endanger our lives. We are aware that we are in a conflictive zone where both armies operate, but we have made clear that we do not wish to be used by either."13 Through the newspapers and other media, the returnees and the CNR presented their platform and asserted their rights as both citizens and civilians without the sponsorship or protection of any other organization. They frequently expressed protest at their forced displacement and reiterated their right as a civilian population to live on their own lands and work in peace. They also worked hard to maintain links to the international press and international human rights organizations. This international attention proved useful in protecting them from more serious confrontations with the military. The degree to which they were successful in asserting their civilian status and defining the hacienda as a civilian zone, which under international law should not be subject to military attack, depended on continuing international scrutiny. Assessment of Hacienda El Barillo In its first year, the project realized a number of achievements. First, civilians previously living in the most precarious circumstances, with

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respect to the army, managed to reclaim their previous place of permanent residence. Such de facto identification with an established residence has gone a long way toward enabling the community to act in its own interests in opposition to constant political and military pressures. Second, the foundations for a more stable economic and social future were laid, based on the organization of the community. Although the standard of living at El Barillo remained low, adequate food and shelter were obtained in the short term, and plans for longer-term development were addressed. A new structure of production and distribution of resources was established through local initiatives, and efforts were mounted to improve the community's standard of living. Food shipments from international humanitarian organizations have succcessfully passed through the military cordon on a regular basis, and the community has become increasingly self-supporting since repopulation. Third, the community was able to insist on its civilian status. This did not prevent the planting of mines in areas close to the community or the periodic abduction of individual community members, but it did forestall the direct military attacks on the hacienda and the wholesale death squad activity that were commonplace before and during Operation Phoenix.14 Fourth, a community was reconstituted based on a high level of popular participation, a strong educational and training component, and a land tenancy arrangement that promised to allow self-sufficiency in the near term.

United to Reconstruct

Whereas the Tenancingo project and the repopulation of Hacienda El Barillo through the CNR were initiated by the displaced themselves, the United to Reconstruct (UPR) campaign was a government-sponsored program, with a component designed to address the problem of displacement. Because of the character of the war, however, an atmosphere of distrust exists between the organizations of the displaced and the government, which profoundly affects official approaches to this issue. As discussed earlier, the sizable displaced population in El Salvador is not simply an unfortunate consequence of a generalized conflict but rather a result of extreme conflict in populated zones and, more specifically, of the armed forces' counterinsurgency strategy, mounted in pursuit of a military victory over the FMLN. Organizations representing the displaced, such as CRIPDES and the CNR, have strongly protested this strategy, as have international humanitarian organizations and groups that monitor human rights violations.

Strategy of Depopulation and Control In 1983, government officials, the High Command of the armed forces, and U.S. advisers began to fear that, militarily, they were losing the war. Despite infusions of U.S. military aid, the FMLN at the time held approximately 25 percent of national territory. Insurgent forces were too mobile and too well supported, coordinated, informed, and trained for the armed forces to defeat in a direct confrontation. Moreover, the army's battlefield techniques were archaic and cumbersome, and corruption throughout the officer corps impeded efficiency.1 With U.S. equipment and training, the officers corps was to be fortified, and more flexible fighting techniques were to be implemented. Increased firepower was to be used in a more comprehensive counterinsurgency program based on the depopulation of the countryside. The new strategy was designed to eliminate the insurgency by first isolating the armed opposition from the civilian sympathizers suspected 61

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of feeding and protecting them. In practice, this strategy meant the systematic bombing and strafing of civilian population centers, accompanied by army ground sweeps, such as Operation Phoenix. These combined tactics were intended to force all civilians from areas of the country, such as the environs of Suchitoto, thought to be controlled by the FMLN. The strategy also destroyed alternative economic, political, and social structures that civilians had developed in areas beyond the control of the government during the early 1980s. The rural civilian population in targeted zones therefore represented a complex problemfromthe perspective of the government and the armed forces. First, many civilians were suspected FMLN sympathizers (masas) because of their residence in areas where the insurgency was active. Consequently, the armed forces saw them as the enemy in the overall context of the war. Second, they were an indictment of the government because their displacement was largely effected in violation of international law regarding the treatment of noncombatants in a civil war. They were therefore an embarrassment to a government seeking to promote a democratic image abroad. The displaced were an increasingly visible and vocal population with growing organizational strength that could play a key role in jeopardizing continued U.S. military assistance. And most important, they were recognized as one of the ultimate objectives of the war itself. They were one of the critical groups to be controlled and pacified if the war was to be won and if prewar social structures were to be reestablished. Because government-sponsored programs for the displaced were created and administered within this UPR framework, it is impossible to divorce an analysis of them from consideration of the counterinsurgency project as a whole. Although UPR was only inaugurated in 1986, it evolved from earlier resettlement projects, reconstruction objectives, counterinsurgency plans, and food aid programs for the rural poor and the displaced. These programs have historically been coordinated through three organizations that deal with the displaced: CONADES, CONARA (National Commission for the Restoration of Areas), and DIDECO (Community Development Directorate administered through the Vice Ministry of Social Development in the Ministry of the Interior). Although CONADES and DIDECO are civilian agencies, high-ranking military officers have held positions of authority in CONARA, which assumed a directive role in the campaign. By the mid-1980s, the Ministry of the Interior had been attempting for some years to replace its short-term food aid programs with food-forwork and longer-term infrastructural projects. The conclusion that the problem of displacement required long-term solutions rather than stopgap remedies was shared by organizations for the displaced and govern-

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ment agencies, but the reasoning behind it diverged sharply. The government had adopted this approach because it conformed to the official view that the insurgency had been reduced to a few random terrorist acts, that relative peace reigned in El Salvador, and that the task at hand was one of development rather than repression. This reasoning contrasted with the position of the displaced themselves and the churches assisting them— both groups argued that long-term solutions had to be developed because of the likelihood of a protracted war rather than the advent of peace. At the same time, ministry spokespersons and representatives of USAID were expressing the intention of ending emergency assistance to the displaced because of its "welfare program" character. At USAID, a view of the displaced prevailed that saw them as welfare beneficiaries who were causing the costs of assistance to rise.2 This view was also in sharp contrast to the statements and activities of the organized displaced, who consistently advocated their right to return to their places of origin in order to support themselves and escape the demoralization and deprivation inherent in having to depend on inadequate and erratic public assistance. Nonetheless, the official view of the displaced as reluctant to work and eager to enlist in welfare programs for short-term gain profoundly influenced the design and implementation of all of the government's repopulation projects. The ultimate objective of the Interior Ministry, according to its spokesman, was "to make the displaced disappear as a category." Ironically, making the displaced "disappear" became a government priority because the inordinately large numbers of displaced persons represented a fundamental challenge to the government's claims that democracy had come to El Salvador. Thus, the government was obliged to resort to increasingly repressive measures designed to control and silence this population in order to appear more democratic. These contradictory imperatives were therefore incorporated into the official approach to the problem of displacement beginning in 1982. In that year, the ministry launched Proyecto Mil with financial support from USAID, through which 500,000 displaced persons were to be resettled in 1,000 villages. Because the program strongly resembled Guatemala's infamous Model Villages project, international donors were unwilling to support it. Nor could the military control the large areas of land necessary to implement the project; within a year it was defunct. The following year, the ministry inaugurated the National Plan, once again with funding from USAID. The plan was intended to restore the control of local authorities in selected conflictive zones and called, first, for intensive military actions to eliminate insurgent control. This phase was to be followed by the coordinated efforts of central government ministries intended to extend government authority into the newly secured areas.3

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Toward this end, CONARA was created in 1983 to coordinate the civilian ministries and local military authorities. The inaugural project of the plan was the Weil-Being for San Vicente campaign in the department of San Vicente. This plan, too, suffered continuously from military setbacks. At the time, the FMLN was expanding its forces and activities around the country, and the military was unable to hold strategic areas targeted for resettlement for periods long enough to attract the displaced. The plan also suffered from lack of participants and funding. The weak response to the plan from the displaced revealed the deep distrust many of them felt for both the civilian government and the armed forces. Civilians reported that they feared the coercive aspects of the government's pacification program, particularly its civil defense provisions. Potential participants in the plan said they feared that if they refused to enlist in civil defense patrols, aid would be withdrawn. They would then find themselves in a remote location, without assistance and under government suspicion. These fears were not without foundation. When the issue was subsequently investigated by the U.S. Congress, relief personnel reported that most villagers did not want to serve on the patrols, but that local military commanders often forced their participation by blocking economic aid until the patrols were formed. 4 The plan was also undermined by long-term, widespread corruption at high levels within the agencies responsible for administering it. A 1986 report commissioned by USAID revealed extensive corruption at FEDECREDITO, the agency responsible for all jobs programs for the displaced. The report, as quoted in the Wall Street Journal, concluded that "mismanagement and politicization of the program, and the corruption which is a natural consequence, have passed tolerable levels and jeopardized the fundamental feasibility of the program." 5 Two years later, the former director of CONARA, who had resigned in November 1987 to run for the National Assembly, Luis Mejia Miranda, was alleged to have misdirected approximately $2.5 million in USAID restoration funds, 25 percent of the total monies provided, while he managed CONARA projects.6 Because of these difficulties, then, few activities programmed under the National Plan were actually implemented after 1985. Nevertheless, between 1983 and 1986 the increasing firepower and efficiency of the armed forces continued to swell the ranks of the displaced. By 1986, the government was confronted with a gathering storm of international criticism, the growing organizational strength of displaced persons through CRIPDES, and an increasing financial burden arising from the cost of the relief it provided through CONADES. At the same time, the military was fine-tuning a sophisticated rural pacification plan that would include aspects of the National Plan designed to address the issue

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of displacement. This was the UPR campaign, announced through a series of public appearances by senior military officers promoting the program through alliances with the private sector. The UPR campaign was conceived in three phases, in keeping with the design of the National Plan. First, "cleanup" or "sanitizing" operations were to be mounted, during which insurgent forces and civilian populations suspected of supporting them were to be eliminated from designated areas. Operation Phoenix, the depopulation of the Guazapa area, was an example of this. Ironically, many of those displaced from Guazapa were instrumental in the formation of the CNR and were among the independent repopulators at El Barillo. Second, consolidation efforts intended to secure these areas permanently under the control of the military were to be undertaken. Third, reconstruction was to begin. The army's official statements about UPR also explained: "Psychological operations will have special importance in this campaign, including civil defense, military/civic actions and the active participation of the populations of the area."7 Under this third phase, resettlement and repopulation projects were to be implemented. Displaced persons who could substantiate ownership of land in designated areas were to be returned there, while the landless were to be resettled into the reformed agricultural sector in zones to be consolidated under UPR. Certain features of UPR distinguished it from earlier programs, but it had one characteristic in common with both Proyecto Mil and the earlier version of the National Plan: Careful assessment of the political sympathies of potential project participants was a high priority, and the designation of territory to be repopulated was based, at least in part, on military considerations. No government plan had been expressly developed to allow the displaced to return to their places of origin as intact civilian communities. Rather, the population removed from conflictive zones was to be screened for association with the armed opposition, and only those individuals and families whose loyalty to the armed forces could be established and whose claims to land ownership were in strategic areas were allowed to repopulate. As a consequence, these plans all were based on the reformation of communities organized, structured, and controlled from without, with a strong strategic component. Because of the tension prevailing between the government and sectors of the displaced population, the government's programs could be designed in no other way. Both Proyecto Mil and the National Plan illustrated the weaknesses of the approach; a review of UPR projects reveals the same flaw. When the government unveiled the new projects for displaced persons as part of UPR (phase three), it became clear that the principal intent of the campaign was to win the allegiance of the civilian population in targeted zones for the armed forces. Thus, this phase of UPR represented

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a clear example of what U.S. military strategists had earlier termed "total grassroots war." Noncombatant civilians and the displaced, not armed insurgents, were the objects of this phase of the campaign. And although the projects were implemented through the civilian government, the ministries' activities with respect to the displaced were coordinated through CONARA, which was directed by the armed forces. In an effort to improve its image and win popular support, the military adopted this manner of implementing civic actions under the auspices of the civilian government. Frequently, military convoys could be seen driving down rural roads with trucks full of USAID food, military bands, clowns, and medical workers. The civic action brigades also included psychological operations (psyops) teams that made certain that this goodwill came with a political message concerning the benevolence of the army and its identification with the national patrimony. The campaign was designed to incorporate different civilian ministries and the private sector into the recuperation of rural areas under the guidance and authority of the armed forces. This administrative model explains the wariness with which organizations representing the displaced regarded UPR repopulation projects. In the early days of the UPR campaign, in fact, the civilian president, José Napoleón Duarte, rarely appeared or was mentioned in the press of San Salvador. Instead, the newspapers followed closely the activities and appearances of Army Chief of Staff General Adolfo O. Blandón. The following press release was typical of the public relations that accompanied the advent of UPR: Under the program "United to Reconstruct," the bridge at Citala in the Department of Chalatenango was inaugurated at noon, and the entire town attended the ceremony. President José Napoleón Duarte presided over the event but, when asked to speak at the opening of the bridge, requested that General Adolfo O. Blandón, Army Chief of Staff, perform these duties for him.8

Inside El Salvador, there was little pretense about the army's ultimate authority over the campaign. Blandón himself announced to the press that the high command of the armed forces, over which he presided, would be the primary institution behind UPR. At the same time, the campaign would require funding and participation from the Ministries of Education, Labor, Agriculture, Culture and Communication, Public Health, Interior, Public Works, and Planning. In addition, according to the plan, the private sector, through the Association of Private Enterprise (ANEP), was to contribute, as were trade unions, the churches, and the civilian population in general.9 A report issued by the U.S. Congress in November 1987 revealed the extent to which the UPR campaign was designed to allocate ultimate

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political and military decisionmaking power to the chief of staff of the armed forces rather than to the civilian president. Investigators obtained the text of an agreement signed by President Duarte, the minister of defense, and General Blandon. The agreement established the UPR program and granted military commanders authority over CONARA. The agreement also established a National Joint Coordination Committee, of which General Blandon was the chairman. Further, it created a chain of command from him to the fourteen Department Joint Coordination Committees, through which local military commanders would exercise control over local CONARA activities. The areas designated to receive aid through CONARA under UPR were discovered to be authorized under General Blandon's signature alone.10 Through the administration of UPR, then, the armed forces came to preside directly or indirectly over virtually all significant social and political institutions, both governmental and nongovernmental, in their activities regarding rural civilians and the displaced. Along with a focus on the rural poor, the UPR campaign incorporated municipal projects designed to reconstruct the infrastructure destroyed in the fighting. Areas for municipal projects were chosen by the military based on security considerations.11 The campaign emphasized the strengthening of local authority by using mayors and municipal leaders to implement military-run programs. This quasi-military function of the mayors within the framework of the UPR pacification strategy was a key factor behind the subsequent FMLN campaign to force them to resign through threats and attacks. Through this UPR program, 70 communities in the conflictive areas of fourteen departments were specifically targeted, and 232 communities received assistance. The program was intended to fortify local authorities by allowing newly reconstituted municipal governments and the army to gain legitimacy and consolidate power through their involvement in the restoration of public services. A third focus of the campaign was the fortification of local governments through the Municipalities in Action program. The program, funded by USAID, provided local authorities with ideological instruction and basic civics courses. It was part of the effort to restore municipal governments in jurisdictions these officials previously fled. In many of these areas, local government came to be discredited before the war because of an image of widespread corruption. In the early years of the war, they were further delegitimized by an appearance of complicity in the activities of the death squads. In general, the organized displaced, through CRIPDES, responded negatively to the initiative for two reasons. First, the cleanup operations of Phase I were a clear human rights violation that had been strongly denounced by CRIPDES since the organization's inception. Second,

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through U P R , the army intended to incorporate the rural poor into activities that would deprive them of their civilian status. This policy strongly contrasted with the principles of C R I P D E S (and later the C N R ) through which displaced participants insisted, above all else, on their right not to bear arms and not to participate in the military activities.

The Canton Ichanqueso Project One of the government's returnee projects coordinated through U P R was Ichanqueso, a town in the jurisdiction of Suchitoto, department of Cuscatlan, in the foothills of the Guazapa volcano. It was one of several similar U P R projects in the same zone, and the village had shared the social and political history of Hacienda El Barillo over the past decades. It experienced the same type of social transformation and economic and political integration as the neighboring hacienda. Before the war, approximately 200 families lived in the town, most of them landless except for the small plot on which their houses stood. Peasants typically rented land from one of the large landholders in the area or worked the land for a wage. Along with subsistence crops such as corn, the peasants cultivated sugarcane, which was tithed to landowners as rent. The tension over access to land for subsistence farming prevailed in Ichanqueso as it had in El Barillo before the war. Throughout the region, relations of production were backward: a combination of wage labor, payment in kind, and a debt system that worked through private channels of usury. In the department as a whole, land distribution was skewed: 77 percent of all landholdings accounted for 20 percent of the land, while 0.5 percent of all holdings accounted for 31 percent of the land. A local school offered classes up to the ninth grade. Health care was not available in the town; residents had to travel to Suchitoto for medical attention. War came to Ichanqueso in the late 1970s when the area became an insurgent stronghold, which it remained until 1986. Early in the war, both the armed forces and the FMLN were active in the zone, and returnees say that in those years people would disappear from their homes at night. No one knew who took them. As the level of violence increased and the F M L N gained territory, the armed forces ordered those who had remained through the fighting to leave, and by early 1980, no one was left in the village. People left as best they could, with the more affluent leaving first and those with fewer means leaving later. According to the returnees, many families lost everything when they fled. Few were able to move their possessions out with them. Many families resettled as a displaced community in a place called Tierra Virgen, San Martin, about thirty kilometers away from Ichanqueso

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on the Pan American highway. Others fled to Suchitoto and the capital, where they lived in conditions typical of the displaced and the marginalized of El Salvador. Most lived in shacks they built themselves and had to pay for water and firewood. Virtually all were unemployed or underemployed, trying to survive by selling whatever they could in the streets. After Operation Phoenix swept through the area around Ichanqueso in January 1986, reducing the FMLN presence and forcibly removing more than 1,000 civilians, some of the displaced began to return. They say they wentfirstto survey the site, always being certain to leave by nightfall. At the same time, the government and the army, eager to repopulate the area as part of UPR, made it known through CONARA that they would assist some families who wished to return there. Families that had registered with CONADES formed committees at the instruction of the agency and, through CONADES and CONARA, met with the departmental commander and the mayor of Suchitoto. In this way, they were incorporated into a returnee project sponsored by the armed forces, the government, and USAID. This process began in August 1986. By late November, twenty-four families had returned permanently to Ichanqueso. By March 1987, seventy-four families had returned. Community Reconstruction and Project Administration The administration of the return to Ichanqueso illustrated the method of coordinating the activities of the civilian ministries under the direction of the military through UPR. In an official CONADES report describing the project, implementing agencies for the return were listed as DIDECO, CONADES, and the armed forces. CONADES was to coordinate the execution of the project, with other legally constituted governmental and nongovernmental organizations working with the displaced and marginalized populations, as authorized by the Ministry of the Interior. The Vice Ministry of Social Development (Ministry of the Interior) was affiliated with the project in an advisory capacity, and World Relief and CONARA were involved as financing agencies. Because both World Relief, an international evangelical association, and CONARA received the bulk of their funding from USAID, all activités related to the project were subject to review through the coordinating capability of UPR—in effect, USAID and the armed forces of El Salvador. Although previous USAID audits of World Relief, CONARA, and CONADES revealed improper expenditures and account discrepancies, these agencies were primarily responsible for the budget of the Ichanqueso project. USAID was obliged to rely on them despite their records, largely because better-known and more respected nongovernmental or-

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Table 5.1 Budget Information for Canton Ichanqueso Expenses for 74 Families Transportation Cleanup Temporary housing Agricultural assistance Food aid

$1,184 $2,664 $31,962 $3,730 $5,920

Total

$45,460

Cost per family

$ 614

Source: Interview with CONADES official, October 1987. Unpublished CONADES data.

ganizations refused to participate in the campaign. Total expenditures for Ichanqueso (Table 5.1) were approximately the same order of magnitude as those at Hacienda El Barillo. According to CONADES reports, the project had two general objectives: "1) to promote the active conscious and voluntary participation of the population in the productive processes of the nation, and 2) to advise, orient and implement productive projects and other resources, which will permit these populations to become self-sufficient."12 Specific objectives included the establishment of a permanent organization coordinating the beneficiaries' participation in the community; execution of housing, handicraft manufacture, and agricultural projects; and provision of the resources necessary to transport the returnees to the site. In the selection of families eligible to return to Ichanqueso, evidence suggested that those moving back had to be individually approved by the armed forces. The return of each family was subject to the veto authority of the military despite the fact that the residents' collective flight from the area, at the time the armed forces withdrew, made it unlikely that they were sympathetic with the insurgency. An employee of the National Fund for Agricultural Transformation (FINATA), the institution with administrative responsibility for Phase III of the agrarian reform, said about Ichanqueso: "The army is very careful about putting people back there. They want to put people there who will not cause problems." He explained that FINATA could work only in areas approved by the army and that applications for land under the provisions of the agrarian reform were reviewed by the military for final approval.13 The FINATA official further explained that in his opinion, actual approval of an application for land at Ichanqueso depended upon the information available to the military with respect to the political affilia-

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tions of the applicant: "The armed forces have information about people, like those who have been with the insurgents. They decide who goes and who does not." Interviews with CONADES officials confirmed this practice—both the land to be cultivated and the families to return were selected by the armed forces. These operational procedures effectively destroyed the humanitarian character of the government's projects. The projects were neither designed nor implemented primarily to address the problems of hardship shared by virtually all of the displaced. Rather, the armed forces made it evident that only those of whom they approved could repopulate and could do so only to areas of military interest. Formal criteria for return were less discretionary, but also imposed an external selection process. In order to be eligible, a displaced person had to be registered with CONADES, possess skills appropriate to the relocation site, and, in initial project phases, be a property owner. In subsequent phases, the landless would also be allowed to return to work the land of the first returnees, or they might be relocated to designated areas far from their place of origin. In this way, the prewar structure of land ownership could be restored. The FTNATA official clearly indicated that the role of the armed forces was intrusive, but that FINATA was not in a position to protest. He pointed out that military authorities saw the recuperation of the zone around Ichanqueso, in particular, as a significant victory and that they were determined to repopulate it with people who would not jeopardize their control. Assessment of the Canton Ichanqueso Project To evaluate the progress made at Ichanqueso since repopulation, interviews were conducted with heads of households at the project site in July 1987. The families interviewed were generally representative of the returnees; they included, on average, seven to eight members, with four to five children per household. All were originally from Ichanqueso and had fled the town in 1980-1981 during military operations. Most of them were farmers, but some also had other skills, among them tailoring, commercial cooking, and bricklaying. Before the war, about half of the families had owned small plots (less than 1 hectare); and one family had owned approximately 4 hectares of land. The other families were landless, but most owned the plot on which their houses stood. All of them had returned with assistance from CONADES and World Relief after approval by the armed forces. Interviewees were specifically asked to identify the functions of the community council and evaluate its performance. A community council

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was elected before the families returned to Ichanqueso. Its original functions consisted of coordinating the reception of assistance from institutions participating in the returnee projects. Some respondents correctly identified these functions, but several respondents replied that the community council sought assistance from the armed forces. An equal number of interviewees said, variously, that the council did not do anything, that they did not know what it did, and that it sought assistance from the government. Among these respondents, some thought the council was responsible for schooling at the repopulation site; others said it was responsible for religious activities. Respondents who said the community council sought assistance from the armed forces went on to say that it did not successfully fulfill its liaison and coordinating functions and that it had not initiated any others. In their own defense, members of the community council explained that they could do little about delayed food shipments or insufficient building materials. In their words, they had to wait until "the promoters come out," at which time they would request additional assistance. Some council members identified their other function as "organizing community events," but pointed out that until a community center was built, they were unable to schedule anything. According to the Ichanqueso residents interviewed, council members had received no organizational or motivational training and had called no community meetings since arrival. The sole function of the community council at Ichanqueso appeared to be the reception of aid. When asked who made the decisions about projects or assistance needed, council members replied that World Relief representatives offered possible types of assistance, and individual residents told them directly what they wanted. The council did not appear to play any organizational or mediating role in this process. In general, informed residents assessed the council's activities negatively, saying its members had been elected in order to request assistance from the government and the military for the return, but that their role, to date, had been passive rather than active. Interviews with both community residents and members of the community council at Ichanqueso suggested that the council lacked initiative and authority. The reported attitudes of its members also contrasted with the stated objectives of the repopulation project: "The decisionmaking process with respect to all aspects of the project, especially those concerning housing and the initiation of productive activities, should begin at the level of the beneficiaries."14 Without leadership from the community council or the traditional authority of large landholders, decisionmaking devolved upon the mayor of Suchitoto and the commander of the military detachment in the zone. In this role, the overarching authority of the armed forces complicated the

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position of the community council still further by politicizing the atmosphere in the village. In interviews at Ichanqueso, returnees reported a prevailing sentiment that offers of assistance through UPR were used to determine where the loyalties of individual residents lay. One man remarked that during a fertilizer distribution, he was reluctant to accept assistance for fear that he would be pressured in some fashion by the army. But, he said, he was also reluctant to decline the fertilizer for fear of being labeled a guerrilla sympathizer. Residents at Ichanqueso were consequently hesitant to accept aid but afraid to reject it. Although they were grateful for any assistance, they pointed out that both the army and the FMLN had an interest in knowing who was taking UPR aid and who was refusing it. Returnees typically reported that the situation was difficult in the village, that they continually struggled to avoid identification with either armed force, and that the arrival of assistance awarded to individual families had complicated their circumstances. Although the community council might have resolved the dilemma by insisting that all aid be provided to the community as a whole for subsequent internal distribution, it had not taken that step. Had it imposed itself as an intermediary and organized aid distribution based on need, the council could have made the acceptance of assistance less visible. The army's desire to control the project and the individual families involved seemed to discourage this possible initiative. As it was, individual families had to deal directly with the government in receiving or rejecting aid. Based on previous experience, many residents said they were suspicious of the material aid they received, believing there might be an ulterior motive behind such support. All interviewees, however, realized they could not subsist without material aid from some source, and a few felt they did not receive sufficient assistance. These fears of an ulterior motive behind the provision of aid were not idle speculation. The returnees' primary concern was the possible formation of a civil defense force. Those at Ichanqueso had to remain in the good graces of the army if they were to continue to receive any aid at all. Interviews with a high-level military officer in the zone indicated that the future formation of a civil defense at Ichanqueso remained a distinct possibility. In response to questions about this eventuality, he replied that an armed civil defense was not planned; the armed forces intended to establish an "ideological defense." Community members were to be trained to "resist Marxist influences" and inform the armed forces of any suspicious activity. The system described could be characterized as a network of informers, similar to that of ORDEN. Such a network was, at the time, operating in a neighboring village, where it had destroyed the cohesion of the community and resulted in at least three unsolved murders.

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Interviews with officials at the U.S. embassy in San Salvador confirmed military intentions to extend these networks. One authority on the issue explained that the army did not then have sufficient forces to patrol each project and hamlet. He also expressed his view that the High Command of the armed forces "believes in civil defense." At Ichanqueso, the community council had voiced acute concern over the issue because many residents claimed they would leave the area again if civil defense were imposed. The colonel at nearby Cojutepeque had broached the subject with the council and told them to consider it. Although no definite requirement had been made, residents remained apprehensive and yet seemed unable to form a united resistance, through the community council, to such a proposal if it did come. For their part, CONADES officials seemed unconcerned about the issue; they were unaware of whether civil defense patrols existed at Ichanqueso. Several factors combined—lack of control of the project through the community council, the provision of material aid through agencies associated with the armed forces to individuals rather than to the community as a whole, and possible loss of noncombatant status through the imposition of civil defense—have done much to undermine the cohesion of the community. The availability of sizable quantities of aid tended to create internal division and suspicion, given that the community was located in a conflictive zone where it was dangerous to be associated with either side in the conflict. Those struggling to maintain a neutral image viewed the assistance programs as a form of control and a means to judge the allegiances of individuals. They were very much aware that material aid could be used to oblige them to form civil defense forces and immediately transform them into military targets. It is important to emphasize that "ideological" civil defense could be just as devastating as armed patrols to a community such as Ichanqueso, where tension was high and both sides of the conflict may have had some sympathizers. The lack of cohesion and community direction also affected the material objectives of the project. The manner in which CONADES went about achieving the goal of providing housing reflected the problems resulting from the "top-down" project design that official agencies were obliged to adopt. Housing was to be provided for each family by using materials donated through World Relief. Temporary housing was built for each family, but all houses measured 3.5 by 5 meters, regardless of family size. They were made of corrugated tin and wood and, in some cases, were too small to allow the entire family to return to Ichanqueso. When asked, individual families did not know when resources would become available to construct more permanent dwellings. Moreover, the residents of the area were accustomed to houses made of adobe or soft bricks with tile roofs and a covered porch, where people sit when the rains come and

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cooking takes place. A brick-making machine was on the site at Ichanqueso, which might have allowed the families to add living space to their houses, but no one seemed to know to whom it belonged or how it could be operated. Returnees to Ichanqueso also reported that handicraft manufacture projects seemed limited in scope and did not include a training component. Agricultural assistance has been comparatively generous, but it, too, was in some ways inappropriate and lacking in training opportunities. For example, each family was given domestic animals, and many received pigs. The type of pig donated, however, was a pedigreed animal ( t u n c o de raza) that would eat only a special food concentrate. When the families exhausted their supply of the pigs' food, they sold the animals because they could no longer feed them properly. Finally, they either spent the cash or used it to buy indigenous pigs that could eat local vegetation and refuse. Although agricultural assistance enabled the population to subsist through the first harvest season, long-term difficult issues remain unaddressed. The forms of agricultural assistance provided did not include training in innovative forms of cultivation, introduction of alternative crops, or methods of securing credit individually or collectively. In addition, the criterion for eligibility for the project—an established claim to land ownership—had begun to reconstitute the inequitable prewar structure of land tenure. Overall, then, the economic life of the town had not changed dramatically with the repopulation of the area and did not appear likely to do so. The returnees had been able to repopulate their place of origin, but they continued to suffer from landlessness and poverty, just as they did before the war. Consistent reports of lack of access to sufficient land to maintain a family, and of not having the means to rent the necessary area, suggested that the structural changes necessary to raise living standards had not been incorporated into the project. Although the returnees sometimes referred nostalgically to their prewar lives, closer investigation elicited the admission that there were frequent difficulties between landowners and renters then, also. For example, the landless were forbidden to collect fruit or cut firewood on the grounds of the large haciendas and were threatened or harassed if they did so. The returnees continued to view themselves as subordinates, just as they did in this prewar social structure. Because the only cohesive element in the reconstruction of Ichanqueso was the fundamental authority of the armed forces, the people had not developed an awareness of their own bargaining power and political significance. Thus, the traditional way of dealing with social and economic problems had been reconstituted: The townspeople expected to be coerced and therefore remained subject to coercion. When in need, they turned to the authority of the armed forces

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for permission to act or for direct assistance. Although the US AID-funded food-for-work program provided temporary employment and a supplementary cash income, available jobs were low-wage casual labor, and workers were assigned to tasks identified and prioritized from outside the community. In addition to food received, workers earned 6 colones (U.S. $1.20) per day as an income supplement for clearing roads, for example. Moreover, both the food-for-work program and direct food aid were to end after the first harvest, and according to U.S. embassy officials, the town could not possibly become self-sufficient until well into the following year. Even so, the community council had taken no initiatives to secure additional aid or to make up the shortfall. When interviewed at the site, the returnees reported that they had expected their return to offer improved living conditions over those they had experienced as displaced persons. Most of those at Ichanqueso had lived for five years or longer as displaced persons by 1986; they had left the area when it became a conflictive zone. After their return, however, more than half of those interviewed said they had been better off as a displaced community. One-third of them reported they did not have access to sufficient land, and approximately half had complaints about the amounts and regularity of government assistance. Again, there was widespread dissatisfaction with the functioning of the community council, and families seemed to work alone without integration or cooperation. There was in the village a general attitude of passivity—of waiting for assistance to arrive—together with apprehension arising from an awareness of the dangers of dependence on the armed forces in a conflictive zone.

Analysis of the Three Projects

The return to rural areas by those displaced by war represents an important civilian dimension of the social conflict in El Salvador. The return and the projects developed to coordinate it are expressions of clearly articulated basic popular demands and of strategically designed official responses in the context of a protracted civil war. Through the CNR, the displaced actively asserted their right to subsist, free from attack, in their places of origin. The armed forces, through the UPR campaign, attempted to control the movement and the loyalties of those they previously displaced, without sacrificing the military objective of continuing displacement. The Tenancingo project demonstrates the importance of truly democratic community development and illustrates the weaknesses of well-intentioned community development efforts that lack a true commitment to grassroots participation. The repopulation of Tenancingo represented a demonstration project that identified objectives of repopulation and community development in the context of civil war. But project administrators attempted to make structural changes in social and economic life within the framework of rebuilding Tenancingo, rather than first empowering the community to insist upon its right to live in peace in rural areas—to work and to survive despite the continuing conflict. FUNDASAL articulated progressive socioeconomic project goals, but the repopulators at Tenancingo were not assisted in developing a sense of community based on human and civil rights. Nonetheless, under the auspices of FUNDASAL, the returnees repopulated the town and its cantones, adopted more cooperative cultivation methods, and gained restricted access to formal sources of credit for the first time. They expanded the manufacture of handicrafts and began to develop national markets for their products, although these efforts were later effectively blocked. As the project developed, the community remained subject to the administrative authority of FUNDASAL and therefore never assumed autonomy and initiative. Further, as directives continued to come from the top down, the community failed to develop the mechanisms necessary to mediate internal conflict in a democratic and effective manner. This 77

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appears to have prevented the community from resisting the pressures of militarization that by 1988 had eroded the cohesion of the townspeople and endangered the entire project. Even so, for the returnees at Tenancingo, the situation was a temporary improvement over their lives as displaced persons. Ironically, it was the army's depopulation campaign that set the stage for the progress the people at Tenancingo were initially able to make. In attempting to clear the area of insurgent forces, the army also removed local landowners, wholesalers, and corrupt, ineffectual municipal governments, creating in the process a social vacuum within which the repopulation movement would begin to take shape. The project has survived thus far because its powerful supporters have been able to provide some degree of protection. However, long-term, large-scale questions regarding land tenancy and local government jurisdiction remain to be addressed, and the returnees have been able to deal with them only on a short-term legalistic basis. Consequently, participatory forms of local government remain provisional, and more egalitarian methods of agricultural production are not institutionally secure. Moreover, the prevailing balance of force in the country profoundly affects the project at Tenancingo, which continues to operate in a national and local context that remains repressive and economically polarized. The repopulators at El Barillo have made significant social progress beyond the advances of Tenancingo. They created a community that spoke with unity about human rights and that efficiently coordinated economic activity. They went further than the repopulators at Tenancingo by claiming, through the CNR, their rights as civilians and as Salvadorans. In reactivating the cooperative, they adopted measures best suited to the circumstances and composition of the community. Production methods in construction and cultivation were collective in order to ensure the subsistence of all members of the community. In repopulating the hacienda, the displaced were asserting that their presence there was legitimate and that they could not be legally removed. By making such claims, the returnees have suffered repression, but they have also guaranteed the permanence of their community—as a community. The project at El Barillo was thus a step toward the modification of a historically exploitative economic system and represents a grassroots initiative seeking to address structural economic and social injustice. The project was also a step made necessary by the draconian measures taken by the Salvadoran army to isolate the armed insurgency. The armed forces themselves had eliminated the prewar patterns of land tenure that increasingly marginalized the rural poor. In the wake of counterinsurgency military sweeps, the military left large tracts of abandoned farmland. They also created conditions of extreme deprivation for so many that the displaced were able to organize and begin to defend certain principles of

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basic human rights. The repression directed at this population reached such dimensions that a cooperative and organized response became the only possible political alternative. The project at El Barillo was a consequence of these developments. El Barillo was an example of grassroots initiative as it is typically understood: "a process whereby the marginalized groups in a community take the initiative to shape their own future and better their lives by taking full responsibility for their needs and asserting themselves as subjects of their own history. This is a collective venture through which the grassroots discover their identity in a wider society."1 This process, of course, began decades before the repopulation of El Barillo, as peasants in the area came to understand the content of their traditional relations with local landowners. The CNR itself was a creation of this process, through which a social group began to see the character of the forces that opposed its interests and came to assume the organization necessary to survive. The people at El Barillo have exemplified this kind of social transformation. At the project site, they demonstrated their adaptability and facility for cooperative management, as well as a high level of political awareness and organizational sophistication. They established more advanced production relations and more democratic political structures, and they have defended the legitimacy of these initiatives. The landowning class, the armed forces, and the civilian government view these developments as a direct threat to the structures that have accorded them their power and privilege for so long. Therefore, the official response to independent repopulations such as El Barillo was repression and the increased promotion of repopulations sponsored by the armed forces through the UPR campaign. The Ichanqueso project and other projects like it were an effort to pacify the countryside while reconstructing patterns of social and economic domination. Such arrangements, however, operate effectively only if the dominated are disorganized, fragmented, and apathetic, as they were before modernized agriculture and commercialization came to rural El Salvador. In order to pacify a deeply conflictive socioeconomic environment, then, the armed forces must combine material aid with repression in an effort to reestablish delegitimized hierarchical principles and discourage the kind of selfmobilization emerging at El Barillo. At Ichanqueso, under the sponsorship of the military, no grassroots leadership has emerged, nor have development projects incorporated effective training dimensions. Evidence suggests that this is not an accident. Counterinsurgency strategists, though adopting the vocabulary of community development and popular participation, actually have engaged in the defense and reconstruction of the status quo ante. They cannot allow project beneficiaries independently to organize because they

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would then face the consequences of true community development: a loss of control over the movement, expression, and sympathies of the people. As indicated by those interviewed at Ichanqueso, the questions of excessive rent, access to sufficient land, low wages, crop prices, and access to social services immediately surface. But through the manipulation of aid and the threat of repression, the armed forces can control people, brutalized by civil war, who find it difficult to trust each other and relate to structures they have experienced only as exploitative and agencies they can only perceive as ineffective. Late in 1987, the mayor of Suchitoto, who was familiar with both El Barillo and Ichanqueso and actively cooperating with UPR projects within his own jurisdiction, seemed to be aware of the social and political problems at Ichanqueso. Like FINATA officials, he reported that the army supported repopulation, as long as it could be controlled by the military, but feared the independent movement, the CNR, as an organization that might ultimately undermine the counterinsurgency strategy. When interviewed, the mayor indicated that local officials were also aware of the difficulties at Ichanqueso and realized that the project of the armed forces compared unfavorably to the CNR repopulation of El Barillo. "In El Barillo the people are dynamic. They are working well, and they are the kind of people we need. At Ichanqueso, the people aren't organized; they have their community council only to ask for help."2 Without effective internal leadership to show respect for people's needs and experiences and thus to involve them in making the decisions that affect their lives, popular participation has not emerged. The mayor also recognized that UPR projects did not incorporate changes in land ownership and that this was a central issue. "So far, there has been nothing done about land tenancy in these projects [Ichanqueso]. Instead, people get 6 colones a day for work, which isn't even enough to buy food."3 He believed, however, that the visible political and economic problems might be solved through motivational training and provision of credit to small farmers. He did not seem to see the link between external project control, lack of structural change, and lack of initiative on the part of project participants. Control by the armed forces contravened a rising level of social awareness and militated against taking effective action to address the causes of poverty. UPR, then, was designed in reaction to the challenge mounted by a mass social movement, the organized displaced. It adopted much of the rhetoric of popular participation, but could not truly incorporate democratic processes into day-to-day activities. The project at Ichanqueso was therefore profoundly affected by the external political environment. In place of participatory democratic processes, Ichanqueso has perpetuated the hierarchical social structures

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that have marginalized the rural poor—conditions that at this site have translated into reports of frustration, delays, and apathy. Although local officials were discussing community development, the actual implementation of the project showed that this was never the true objective. On the contrary, the repopulation of Ichanqueso and similar projects under the auspices of UPR fit within a counterinsurgency strategy designed to control the civilian population, neutralize the initiatives of the displaced, and eradicate potential opposition to the pursuit of a military victory. The war in El Salvador began as economic change brought social awareness and cohesion to the poor and began to integrate them into national political processes. Historically, the dominant class and the armed forces have stifled democratic impulses and blocked all attempts to broaden participation in the economic growth and the political life of the country. To accomplish this, they have used increasingly sophisticated repressive techniques as well as traditional methods of eliminating unrest. Over the years, this dual approach to social control has changed in form and emphasis, but its content remains the same. Today, its form is expressed by material aid to UPR projects such as Ichanqueso coupled with informants networks, military surveillance, major military operations near civilian population centers, and physical repression. Thus, the CNR represents a profound democratic challenge to the entire counterinsurgency strategy. It is a self-mobilized popular movement that threatens traditional structures of power and domination simply by asserting that all people have the right to subsist, to help to structure the relations through which they work, and to live in their places of origin free from repression.

PART 3 Los Refugiados:

The Refugees at Mesa Grande, Honduras In spite of everything, we want to present our proposal. After six years as refugees, we continue to live in these conditions: without freedom of movement, without freedom to work and support ourselves. We are farmers. We are not accustomed to living on charity. And so we want to return to our own lands to work and to support ourselves. (Letter to President José Napoleón Duarte from the Repopulation Committee at the Mesa Grande refugee camp, February 1987)

"For a Return to Our Places of Origin, the People Mobilize," April 1987

"Faced with Duarte's silence the people mobilize! We demand peace with social justice! Duarte unable to respond to our appeal! We demand protection for our return! We want to return to our places of origin! We want repopulation and not individual repatriation! Oswaldo Villapando [VNHCR official], we demand our return!" A poster at Mesa Grande, April 1987

Mesa Grande Refugee Camp, Ocotepeque Department, Honduras, April 1987.

Soldiers watch as buses cross border into El Salvador at El Poy during the repatriation from Mesa Grande, October 1987

7 The Refugees' Proposal to Return: January 1987 At 6:00 A.M. on October 10, 1987, 110 trucks and buses left the Mesa Grande camp in Honduras, carrying 4,313 Salvadoran refugees and their belongings home to the mountains of northern El Salvador. This first large-scale repatriation of refugees was the second phase of El Salvador's developing repopulation movement: the return of the externally displaced to previously depopulated areas that remained war zones. The repatriation as an "intact community" marked the conclusion of a nine-month struggle to return, which involved the governments of both Honduras and El Salvador, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the International Committee of the Red Cross, the archdiocese of San Salvador, organizations representing the displaced and the refugees of El Salvador, and international humanitarian agencies. The refugees intended to return to five villages in the departments of Chalatenango, Cuscatlan, and Cabanas, all located in conflictive zones. They believed that a large-scale return with strong national and international support would enable them to establish demilitarized enclaves in these areas. The refugees' repatriation, the largest in the history of Central America, was unprecedented. It had its origins in a January 1987 communication from some 4,500 refugees, more than one-third of the population at the Mesa Grande camp in Honduras to the governments of El Salvador and Honduras and to the United Nations stating their decision to return home despite the continuing civil war. This decision to repatriate reflected a complex and contradictory situation: The refugees wished to return not because the war was ending but rather because it was continuing. In the face of an indefinitely protracted conflict, Salvadorans in Honduras were faced with a choice between a long-term sentence in a refugee camp or repatriation to El Salvador. The latter alternative had, in the past, meant joining the ranks of the half million displaced who were barely subsisting on the margins of urban areas inside the country. The repopulation experience that had begun eighteen months earlier, however, had shown that another alternative was possible: an organized return "in community" and an attempt to assert civilian status and achieve

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economic security. A collective return to the refugees' places of origin (or nearby) therefore seemed the most logical and desirable course of action, particularly in terms of achieving the goal of economic self-sufficiency. Strong pressures within the camp and from the government of Honduras, coupled with extensive discussion and analysis of the repopulation movement of the internally displaced, resulted in the January decision to attempt a large-scale repatriation/repopulation effort.

Conditions at Mesa Grande The flow of refugees from El Salvador began in 1979, when state repression of mass organizations and opposition groups developed into full-scale civil war. The northern departments were particularly affected at this time, and the inhabitants of these zones, fleeing brutal army operations and heavy combat, began pouring over the border into Honduras seeking safety. They initially settled into the communities they found there, such as La Estancia, Guarita, La Virtud, and Colomoncagua. Although Honduras is not a signatory to the international protocols regarding refugees, more than 100,000 refugees from El Salvador, Guatemala, and Nicaragua had entered the country and remained there for years. As the dimensions of the exodus from El Salvador grew, however, the government of Honduras and the UNHCR formally established four basic principles regarding the refugee issue: (1) that Honduras would accept refugees seeking asylum; (2) that Honduras would not forcibly repatriate the refugees, recognizing continuing violence in their country of origin; (3) that the refugees would not be permitted to work; and (4) that the refugees would be allowed to stay only in zones designated by the Honduran government. In spite of this agreement, two confirmed incidents occurred during the 1980s in which the Honduran army joined the armed forces of El Salvador in hammer-and-anvil operations, killing hundreds of Salvadoran civilians fleeing counterinsurgency operations and trying to enter Honduras. Since that time, the UNHCR has overseen the treatment of refugees in Honduras. In October 1981, the UNHCR monitored the relocation of refugees from the communities along the border to the Mesa Grande camp. Refugees from the eastern provinces were resettled into the Colomoncagua and San Antonio camps. Because of incidents like the mass killings at the Sumpul and Lempa rivers, relations between the refugees and the Honduran government had always been strained and were often hostile. The refugees themselves opposed the move to Mesa Grande from the Honduran villages where they had originally settled, realistically fearing the collapse of their fragile

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new community structures and deterioration of their living standards. But the Honduran government insisted, saying, on the one hand, that the move would enhance the security of the refugees, and on the other, that the move was necessary to prevent the refugee community from harboring FMLN combatants on furlough from thefightingin El Salvador. Since the establishment of the camps, the refugees had been under the protection of the UNHCR, which coordinated its operations with the Honduran National Commission on Refugees (CONARE). Despite UNHCR protection, however, the refugee community at Mesa Grande suffered continuing security problems. In addition to the border killings, more than thirty refugees and four relief workers were known to have been killed between November 1981 and April 1982 by Honduran troops. Because of the isolation of the area, human rights organizations operating in Honduras suspect that the number of refugees killed was actually much higher. During the 1980s, refugees arriving at the camp from the department of Chalatenango in El Salvador routinely reported difficulties crossing the border or gaining access to the camp. Many were captured by Honduran troops during the attempt, and those who successfully reached the camp often reported the disappearance of members of their party. Those who disappeared are now believed to be dead.1 After the camp was established, the situation at Mesa Grande steadily deteriorated. Over the years, the refugees were exposed to mounting pressure to repatriate individually, even as the armed forces of El Salvador continued systematically bombing and burning their places of origin in the departments of Cuscatlan, Chalatenango, and Cabanas. At the same time, the military cordon around the camp tightened, international observers were discouraged from visiting the refugees, and food shortages became chronic. By 1984, after a series of attempts by Honduras to relocate or repatriate them, the refugees had begun to fear that soon their presence would no longer be tolerated by Honduran authorities. In April 1983, Honduran army Colonel Abraham Garcia Turcios, coordinator of CONARE, announced to the Honduran press that 22,000 Salvadoran refugees inside the country would be relocated for a second time to a site farther from the border, probably in the western provinces of Yoro or Olancho. The colonel noted the probable reluctance of the refugees to move, but cited security concerns as the reason for the relocation. Both the UNHCR and the U.S. embassy in Honduras endorsed the plan, but during the next eighteen months, the refugees and international humanitarian organizations strenuously opposed the relocation, claiming that it was unnecessary, that it would cause undue hardship, and that it would jeopardize the refugees' security. In the end, the relocation did not occur. In September 1984, the Honduran National Security Council, in view

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of the unsuccessful attempt to relocate the refugees farther from the border, declared its intention to repatriate Salvadoran refugees. The council suggested that if the refugees would not repatriate voluntarily, they would be forced to return to El Salvador. At the same time, the government of El Salvador announced its willingness to cooperate in receiving the refugees on an individual basis. The UNHCR, however, by speaking out against involuntary repatriation, succeeded in defusing the attempt to force the refugees to return. In an effort to mediate, the UNHCR encouraged further discussions of the issue. As a result of those discussions, a tripartite commission, composed of representatives of the UNHCR and the governments of El Salvador and Honduras, was formed to establish principles and oversee repatriation if it did occur. The commission first met in April 1986.

The UNHCR Promotes Individual Repatriation With the formation of the tripartite commission, the small yet constant flow of voluntary repatriations to El Salvador from Honduras continued. As part of the process, the UNHCR sent the first permanent representative, Roberto Rodriguez, to El Salvador in August 1986. Rodriguez's mission was to strengthen the controversial reception program of repatriating refugees. Unlike in missions in other countries, the role of the UNHCR in El Salvador would consist of operational facilitation, protection of personal security, and assistance with the integration of repatriated persons. In this regard, it is important to note that the UNHCR has no official mandate once a refugee has repatriated, and its presence in El Salvador therefore was based solely on a tenuous agreement with the government. As the refugee reception program developed, all individual repatriates were accompanied to the border by representatives of the UNHCR in Honduras. After clearing immigration and customs in both Honduras and El Salvador, the refugee was taken to an army facility for interrogation, processing, and release to government officials in the area. Each returning refugee was informed of government assistance programs through CONADES. During the period for which records are available (1986-1987), however, only 3 percent of the repatriates chose to accept the assistance, allegedly fearing government monitoring and surveillance through the CONADES program. Assisted repatriates were then registered with CONADES and received benefits in the form of food supplies, housing materials, or resettlement programs. The unassisted cases—the remaining 97 percent—went their separate ways after interrogation.

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According to UNHCR records, approximately 870 persons returned through the reception program in 1986, and another 850 persons reportedly repatriated in 1987 before the move from Mesa Grande in October. In March 1987, the UNHCR began meeting returning refugees on the Salvadoran side of the border, and records kept since then show that only 20 percent of repatriates returned to their places of origin. The remaining 80 percent, prevented from returning home by ongoing violence, joined the ranks of the internally displaced living in the departments of La Libertad, San Salvador, Sonsonate, and La Paz. But whether they were assisted or unassisted, and whatever their destination, all returning refugees were interrogated and processed by the Salvadoran military. Those returning from Mesa Grande were met by the UNHCR and taken to the headquarters of the Fourth Brigade for questioning. Initially, returning refugees typically spent one to four days there for processing, but the presence of the UNHCR at the border in El Salvador subsequently reduced this time, in most cases to a period of several hours. Because of the ongoing war in £1 Salvador and the increasingly frequent reports of abuse of individual refugees by the armed forces, international concern arose about this type of repatriation. It was well known that individual returnees were regarded with suspicion by the army because of their previous residence in zones where the FMLN was active. Further, the High Command of the Salvadoran armed forces had long regarded the refugee camps in Honduras as a training ground for insurgents, an allegation the refugees, the UNHCR, and the international agencies working in the camps all denied. One army colonel in the High Command alleged that the refugees' desire to return to El Salvador was part of an effort to restore civilian support for the FMLN.2 The refugees strongly denied this charge and insisted upon their civilian status. The problems of capture, mistreatment, and imprisonment of refugees who repatriated individually have been well documented. In 1986 and early 1987, twenty-six former refugees who had repatriated individually, several of them minors, were found to be incarcerated for political crimes at Mariona and Ilopango prisons in the capital.3 Dozens of other returnees were reported to have been captured, detained, interrogated, and subsequently released. Although these prisoners did not represent a large proportion of the refugees who voluntarily returned to El Salvador from Honduras, the circumstances of their detention gave cause for alarm. Interviews with prisoners showed that the majority of interrogations conducted by the security forces focused primarily on particular types of activities. Repatriates were asked about their activities at Mesa Grande, about a possible FMLN presence there, and about their ac-

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tivities before seeking refuge in Honduras. Many testified that they found themselves under suspicion simply because they had once fled their country. Additionally, prisoners reported both physical and psychological torture during their interrogations and imprisonment. They had variously been beaten, denied sleep, denied water, interrogated for days, drugged, suspended in the air and beaten, drenched with cold water, forced to stand for entire days and nights, and tied and blindfolded for extended periods of time. Many were threatened with death or with the capture and execution of family members. All were forced to sign extrajudicial confessions that they were not permitted to read.4 The statements of imprisoned repatriates given to the authors and the representative of the UNHCR in El Salvador show that many were detained on the basis of accusations of antigoverament activity at Mesa Grande and not for crimes allegedly committed post repatriation. The truth of the statements was later acknowledged by military officers when questioned about the matter by the UNHCR representative.5 The detentions implied that any refugee could be subject to arrest simply for having lived at the camp. These captures and abuses of family members and friends caused the refugees in Honduras to fear that they, too, might receive similar treatment should they decide to return as individual repatriates, even with limited international protection. The refugees' proposal for repatriation as a community to their places of origin was therefore, in part, formulated to provide security during and after the move and preclude the arbitrary captures suffered by individual repatriates.6 The UNHCR representative in San Salvador intervened with the civilian and military authorities regarding the detentions and, after protracted negotiations, succeeded in obtaining the release of all but eight of the repatriates. The remaining eight were released, along with more than 470 other political prisoners, in November 1987, under El Salvador's amnesty program (Decree #805), which was designed to comply with the Central American Peace Accords signed at Esquipulas, Guatemala, in August 1987. Some of the repatriates had spent more than two years in jail, without either a conviction or a sentence, before their release. In the meantime, however, security conditions for the thousands of refugees who remained in Honduras worsened. In October 1985, Robert Gersony, a representative of the Refugee Bureau of the U.S. State Department, went to Honduras to determine what steps were necessary to insure that the Honduran army could be certain that there was no FMLN presence in the refugee camps. In his report, he recommended increased military and administrative control by the government of Honduras. After Gersony's report was issued, there were increasing indications that the Honduran government was considering various plans to control the camps

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more directly. This possibility was disturbing to the refugees for security reasons and complicated the position of the UNHCR in Honduras. The UNHCR acknowledged the right of the government to intervene in the administration of the camps, but it also recognized that the Honduran army, security forces, and paramilitary groups had been the primary threat to the safety of Salvadoran refugees in Honduras. The UNHCR had emphatically denounced the August 29, 1985, attack by the Honduran armed forces on the refugee camp at Colomoncagua, during which three people were killed, sixty people were wounded or beaten, and ten were abducted. Although an attack on such a scale was not repeated, the refugees felt that the Honduran military encirclement of the camps was a source of continuing insecurity and tension. Since the camp's formation, the armed forces of Honduras had been a constant presence immediately outside Mesa Grande, and their presence inside the camp increased in 1987. Moreover, in that year, the government of Honduras signed a memorandum of understanding according to which the government would assume de facto control of the camp's infrastructure, budgeting and expenditures, all productive or commercial activities, camp personnel, medical assistance programs, and the educational system.7 Significantly, the agreement also delegated to the Honduran government responsibility for the day-to-day operation of the refugee reception station on the Honduran-Salvadoran border. Both responsibilities were politically sensitive. Within the camps, medical care had been provided by international humanitarian organizations, such as the French medical agency Doctors Without Borders. Similarly, the educational system had been organized and staffed by the refugees themselves and administered by the humanitarian organization of Caritas of Santa Rosa de Copan, Honduras, using a curriculum of human development. The new arrangements specified in the memorandum caused the refugees to fear that they might soon lose fundamental human rights. The refugees criticized the UNHCR for what they felt was an abdication of responsibility to the Honduran government. Given the history of conflict with the Honduran authorities, the refugees reportedly feared a Honduran takeover of the camps and saw the growing presence of Honduran authorities as a threat to their own internal social structures as well as to their physical security. The refugees also felt the effects of the UNHCR 1986 worldwide budget cuts on the camp, which limited the monitoring services provided. At the same time, the captures and abuses of those who had repatriated individually continued to intimidate many. Accordingly, after a meeting in December 1986 between UNHCR representatives and a refugee committee at Mesa Grande during which alternative courses of action were discussed, the decision to repatriate as intact communities took shape.

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Refugees Seek Collective Solution Historically, large-scale repatriations have occurred only after the violence has subsided in the refugees' country of origin. In 1987, however, immediate prospects for an end to the generalized violence in El Salvador were few. During the three previous years, there had been periodic attempts at a negotiated solution to the armed conflict such as the bilateral talks between the government and the FMLN/FDR and the multilateral Contadora Initiative negotiated by the countries in the region.8 Later in 1987, the Central American Peace Plan would be signed in Esquipulas, Guatemala.9 No one of these intitiatives produced a ceasefire in El Salvador. Although the Central American Peace Plan created a regional framework for a negotiated solution to the conflict, the levels of violence in El Salvador actually rose in the six months after its signing. It was widely recognized that the Duarte government and its primary ally, the Reagan administration, were deeply resistant to political negotiations leading to power sharing with the FMLN and intended to pursue a military victory. Despite protestations of good faith and flexibility from the Salvadoran president, neither the government nor the military showed the political will to achieve a negotiated settlement and an end to the war. Nor did the war appear likely to be resolved through a military victory for either side. The Salvadoran government, with 54,000 soldiers under arms and bolstered by more than $300 million annually in war-related aid from the United States, was well fortified but unable to defeat the insurgent forces, estimated to number between 7,000 and 9,000 combatants. Given the pressure from the Honduran authorities and the likelihood of prolonged civil war in El Salvador, the refugees at Mesa Grande recognized that in their position, the best alternative was repatriation as intact communities to a country that was still at war. But only after an extended period of analysis did the refugees announce their decision to repatriate. Among their considerations were the conclusions from the December meeting with UNHCR representatives, security problems, repression, and conditions at the camp. Also significant was the experience, accumulated over the years in the camp, of developing a strong community structure and managing limited resources equitably. The demographic characteristics of the camp population also played a part. Because of the large number of partial families made up of women, children, and the aged, who could not be entirely self-reliant, the need to remain a community with a pool of resources and skills was very strong. The refugees also considered the political conditions inside El Salvador at the time. After the Duarte electoral victory in 1984, a campaign had developed to promote the image of a democratic El Salvador abroad through public statements welcoming refugees, and those at Mesa Grande

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hoped to benefit from this posture. Years of survival in a climate of persecution had sharpened their political awareness, and they felt that at that moment circumstances were more favorable for a collective return than they had ever been before. The visible successes of the internal repopulation movement organized through the CNR supported this conclusion. At the same time, the refugees had been monitoring the discussions of the Honduran-Salvadoran-UNHCR tripartite commission, which was slowly but surely making plans for them without their representation or participation, and they feared that if they did not act soon, directives from the commission might force a course of action upon them. Also important was the recognized danger and inadequacy of individual repatriation as a solution, which left returnees at high risk of becoming internally displaced persons with neither political nor economic security. This convergence of circumstances led the refugees to the decision to repatriate. They then formed the Committee for Repopulation to determine the details of implementing the move. The name of the committee, which was designated to study the particulars of repopulating rather than repatriating, is indicative of the refugees' view of their ultimate goal. Clearly, they intended from the beginning not simply to return to El Salvador, but specifically to return to their places of origin. As representatives of the committee explained when interviewed, this was their goal because of their ties to the land. Only in their places of origin were they informed about availability of land and about sources of fuel and water. Their ties to the land were also compelling: These were the places where their homes had been for generations and where their dead were buried.10 On January 10, 1987, the refugees at Mesa Grande presented a statement to the United Nations and the governments of Honduras and El Salvador. The document included a list of more than 4,500 people who wished to return to the villages they originally fled; it included the names of their destinations and a set of conditions for return to El Salvador. The stated conditions for their return were that they be allowed to return to the places of origin; that they be allowed to work freely; that there be no forcible recruitment of their young men; that there be no armed forces or civil defense posts in their villages; that there be no bombings or strafings; that they have freedom of movement; that national and international agencies be allowed free access to the repopulations and that delivery of program assistance not be restricted; and that they be allowed freedom of expression. In the January petition and in a later elaboration of their plan, the refugees set out their case for repatriation.11 They presented a brief history of their flight from counterinsurgency operations in northern El Salvador.

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They insisted on their right as Salvadorans to live in their own country and explained their determination to return as communities to their places of origin. They pointed out that many were widowed and orphaned by the war, and that neither they nor the many older people among them would be able to subsist without the support of a community. They also stated that they wished to return to their places of origin because only there might they enjoy some access to land and benefit from their familiarity with the terrain, water sources, and crop suitability. In their written plans, the refugees described in detail the proposed return of the first four thousand people. This group would resettle five areas: Santa Marta in Cabanas, Copapayo in Cuscatlan, and San Antonio Los Ranchos, Las Vueltas, and Arcatao in Chalatenango. In the document, the Committee for Repopulation asked that UNHCR officials, representatives of the archdiocese of San Salvador, international humanitarian agencies, the nongovernmental Salvadoran Human Rights Commission (CDHES), the CNR, and the diplomatic corps be present at the border to meet the refugees. The refugees' plans went on to describe each individual resettlement and the needs that the returning refugees would have for assistance: financial resources to purchase land, build homes, plant crops, and replace the physical infrastructure of their communities. The document ended with a declaration and an appeal: We, the Salvadoran refugees at Mesa Grande, recognizing the interest of the Salvadoran and Honduran governments and of the UNHCR in promoting our return to our country, to which end they have formed the Tripartite Commission, and aware of the limits of this Commission with respect to assuring us of work and subsistence in our country, make the following declaration: Our repopulation project is the only means to defend our aspiration to return to our country and to guarantee that we will not become public charges, nor will we fall once again into the circumstances that caused our flight to Honduras in the years 1980-1981. We believe that no government on Earth can consider itself democratic if more than 15,000 of its citizens are concentrated in refugee camps outside the country. For this reason, the Salvadoran government has an obligation to study our project with us and give us a response that satisfies our demands based upon the eight minimum conditions contained in the project for repatriation and return to our places of origin.12

In addition to this document, the refugees appealed for international support from the religious community in face-to-face meetings and in letters. Over the course of the months that followed, these organizations began to respond.

8

Responses to the Repatriation Appeal: January to September 1987 Resistance of the Salvadoran Government When presented with the repatriation proposal, the Honduran government responded with enthusiasm. Collective voluntary repatriation of the refugees at Mesa Grande was an optimal solution in the official view. At the time, the Honduran government found itself becoming deeply embroiled in the internal conflicts of both Nicaragua and El Salvador, a situation that mandated increasing military spending and caused growing internal dissatisfaction. In addition, the government's image abroad was beginning to suffer as news of repressive treatment of Salvadoran refugees spread. Because of its ties to U.S. foreign policy, however, and its corresponding links to the Salvadoran military, the Honduran government was disposed to maintain a hostile attitude toward the refugees and unable to relax the repressive conditions. The Honduran government also responded positively to the potential repatriation because of the traditional hostility between El Salvador and Honduras and an ongoing border dispute. The fact that the issue remained unresolved made the Honduran government uncomfortable with large numbers of Salvadoran refugees settled into camps in the disputed border region. In contrast, the response of the government of El Salvador was unequivocally negative. Although El Salvador was a party to the UN Geneva Convention and Refugee Protocols, the treaty did not specifically address the issues of repatriation and the standards for treatment of repatriated refugees. The right to repatriation, however, is based on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (Article 13.2), which consecrates the right to leave any country and to return to one's own country. Similarly, the International Covenant of Civil and Political Rights (Article 12.4) declares that "no one shall be arbitrarily deprived of the right to enter his/her own country," and the American Convention on Human Rights states that "no one can be deprived of the right to enter the territory of the State of which he is a national." The rights provided for in both of these latter documents are actually a part of Salvadoran law under the country's constitution (Articles 1 and 144). It is also worth noting that the constitu-

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tion of El Salvador consecrates the right of free return to the country in Article 5, which states that the entrance of any Salvadoran into the territory of the republic cannot be prohibited. The Central American Peace Plan, which was signed by the five Central American presidents eight months after the refugees first presented their repatriation proposal, specifically set the standard for the treatment of refugees and repatriation. Section VIII of the document read: The Governments of Central America commit themselves to attend urgently to the movement of those persons who have been displaced or forced into refuge by the regional crisis. The Governments commit their protection and assistance to the displaced and the refugees in the areas of health, education, employment, and security. Assistance will also be provided in repatriation, resettlement or relocation of such persons so long as it is voluntarily requested by the individual.1

It should be emphasized that the refugees' plans for repatriation as a community to their places of origin fell within the guidelines later specified by the Central American Peace Plan and signed by the Salvadoran president, José Napoleón Duarte. The plans to repatriate to places of origin were also within the rights of the refugees, as stipulated in the International Covenant of Civil and Political Rights: "Everyone lawfully within the territory of a State shall, within that territory, have the right to liberty of movement and freedom to choose his residence." Despite the signing of the peace plan in August, however, the Salvadoran government had yet to respond to the repatriation proposal by the first week of October 1987, nine months after the refugees' first appeal, and had failed to enter into serious negotiations with them. According to the government, response was delayed initially because the possible returnee crisis generated by the passage of a new immigration law in the United States was to be considered first. During the intervening period, however, Salvadoran government officials had twice visited the camp at Mesa Grande. In June 1987, the Salvadoran ambassador to Honduras spoke with refugee representatives of the Committee for Repopulation in Mesa Grande. At the time, the ambassador made clear that his was a fact-finding mission and that he was not authorized to respond to or negotiate with the refugees. Nor did an August visit to the camp by a Salvadoran interministerial commission headed by a CONADES official result in negotiations with or a commitment to the refugees. During both meetings, the refugees emphasized that they intended to repatriate autonomously during the first week of October and that they should begin discussions with the government as early as possible to facilitate the move. Despite the refugees' repeated insistence on the October timetable, neither the government of El Salvador nor the UNHCR initiated negotia-

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tions during August. Evidence suggests that in fact the authorities in El Salvador did not take seriously either the proposed date of the move or the determination of the refugee community at Mesa Grande to repatriate. When the Tripartite Commission met on August 27 and 28, after several postponements, it considered the repatriation issue only generally and did not debate any specific proposal. At that meeting, the members of the commission agreed to facilitate "orderly and gradual" repatriations, a definition that seemed to exclude the intended repatriation as a community. At the time, both the Salvadoran government and the UNHCR maintained that the tripartite commission, which did not include a refugee representative, was the only legitimate forum in which to discuss major repatriation issues. Further, according to reports, the Salvadoran government inexplicably withdrew from scheduled commission talks set for September in Santa Rosa de Copan, Honduras, further delaying an official response. No date for future meetings was scheduled. According to military authorities and officials at the Interior Ministry, the Salvadoran government was unofficially committed to allowing only the "orderly and gradual" repatriation of refugees, in keeping with the controlled individual returns of approximately 120 persons per month. The refugees argued, however, that at such a pace it would take more than eight years to phase out the Mesa Grande camp alone. The children born there in the early years would be reaching young adulthood without ever having lived a normal life outside the camp. While the Salvadoran government delayed making an official response to the refugees' proposal, the air force made an unofficial one on September 1,1987. Beginning at 7:00 A.M., six planes and six helicopters bombed and strafed the village of Santa Marta, Cabanas, for three hours. Paratroopers landed in the villages and combed the area in search of an FMLN presence. Several houses in Santa Marta, one of the five selected repopulation sites, were extensively damaged by the bombing; one civilian was killed and six others were injured during the attack. The dead civilian and his family members all had repatriated from Mesa Grande in 1985. International observers monitoring the repatriation issue reported that the attack could be seen as a military effort to intimidate the refugees at Mesa Grande and dissuade them from repatriating.2 The High Command of the Salvadoran armed forces, though formally acknowledging that the repatriation question was a decision of the civilian government, retained de facto veto power over the final destination of returning refugees. According to one source, a Salvadoran general routinely characterized the repopulation sites as "a strategic FMLN chain from the mountains to the capital." Moreover, other army officials indicated that they would prevent large numbers of civilians from returning to depopulated rural areas that they now considered free-fire zones. The

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military claimed that the repopulation of the areas the refugees had abandoned years before would interfere with the ongoing counterinsurgency effort. The armed forces stated publicly that civilians who had already moved back to these areas were subversives and suggested that the FMLN was manipulating the desire to repopulate because the return of civilians to conflictive zones was of strategic and tactical use to the insurgent forces. In other words, from the outset, the army did not recognize the repopulation/repatriation movement as a civilian movement. For its part, the FMLN expressed support for the refugees and recognized their demands in an eighteen-point proposal to humanize the conflict, issued in the fall of 1987. The official position of the FMLN was consequently to support repatriation and repopulation as a right of Salvadoran citizens. Clearly, neither the displaced nor the refugees could have repopulated areas under FMLN control or influence without giving the FMLN prior notice and getting its tacit agreement. In their public announcements regarding the return, the refugees requested that their communities and their civilian status be respected by both armies. In fact, the FMLN permitted the refugees to settle in areas where the insurgents retained significant influence and, in general, appeared to respect the civilian nature of the settlements. Although several cases of human rights abuses by the FMLN were later reported in at least two of the communities, there was no evidence of the consistent abuses that credible documentation has attributed systematically to the Salvadoran authorities. In response, the armed forces used the FMLN statements of support to imply that formerly displaced civilians who had already moved back to the area had subversive connections. The Uncertainty of the UNHCR In public statements and official documents, the UNHCR considers repatriation to be the ideal solution to the problems of refugee populations. In developing this position, the UNHCR established the following conditions as guidelines for repatriation and has sought to apply them universally: 1. The voluntary nature of the decision to repatriate; 2. The free choice of a place of return; 3. Adequate security conditions for the integration of the ex-refugee, who must not be subject to discrimination as a consequence of the person's former status; 4. Cooperation between the host country and the country of origin with respect to migration and transportation;

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5. Material assistance for reintegration; 6. Availability of information regarding conditions in the home country and the opportunity for refugees to visit sites chosen for return; and 7. Cooperation of international relief organizations in financing, providing technical assistance, and observing the conditions offered the repatriates.3 Given the political and military climate in El Salvador and Honduras, the refugees looked to the UNHCR as a guarantor of their right to repatriate and as a protector during the move. In the absence of official Salvadoran support for the repatriation of communities, however, and in recognition of strong military opposition to the refugees' proposal, the UNHCR was reluctant to endorse the repatriation. In meetings with the refugees, representatives of the UNHCR instead actively promoted a more gradual, individual process of repatriation to which the Salvadoran government was more likely to agree. Without the acquiescence of the Salvadoran government by fall 1987, the UNHCR refused to commit resources to the community repatriation plans and thus drew criticism from the refugees as a group. The UNHCR's position was a result of resistance from the government of El Salvador to the repatriation and pressure from the refugees to fulfill the commissioner's mandate to protect them. In this situation, the attempt by the commissioner's representatives to find some middle ground led to a compromise that was unacceptable to either party. The refugees were, in part, disappointed in the position adopted by the commissioner. Through their spokesperson, they pointed out that the international community, which funds the UNHCR, had an interest in the large-scale voluntary repatriation of Salvadoran refugees in safety and that the community of nations recognizes therightof individuals to belong to their original communities. According to the spokesperson, this was the right that they wished to reclaim, and they felt that it was therefore the responsibility of UNHCR representatives to support them. The UNHCR apparently was trying to balance the objectives of the governments involved against the concerns of the refugees, but those at Mesa Grande argued that it was not the obligation of the UNHCR to protect the political and military interests of governments. Established governments could represent themselves in international forums and promote their own objectives. The UNHCR, in contrast, was created to represent the interests of stateless people, a mandate specifically recognizing that their interests were likely to conflict with those of the governments in the countries they had fled. Thus, in the end, the UNHCR often appeared to function as an advocate of the government's position rather than as an interlocutor for the refugees.

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Support of the Churches and the NGOs Since the beginning of the civil war in El Salvador, the Catholic church has provided social and pastoral services to the more than 500,000 displaced people inside the country. The pastoral clergy has also played a central role in advocating refugees'rightsin El Salvador as well as in the United States. Archbishop Rivera y Damas was instrumental in facilitating the repopulation of the Tenancingo zone in 1985 and repeatedly expressed his support for voluntary repatriation and repopulation. Over the years, he had assigned pastoral clergy to repopulated areas in conflictive zones and channeled significant amounts of material aid to these projects. After declaring their intention to repatriate, the refugees at Mesa Grande petitioned the Catholic church and secured a positive response for their project from the Honduran bishop. They specifically requested that Archbishop Rivera y Damas of San Salvador intercede and negotiate their return with the Salvadoran military. They also appealed to the archbishop and the national and international religious community for moral, political, and material support and for personal accompaniment. The archbishop assigned these tasks to the social secretariat of the archdiocese of San Salvador, and secretariat representatives subsequently sent three delegations to Mesa Grande in order to consult with the refugees about their proposed return. The churches already had an ecumenical committee to fund and support projects for the displaced: DIACONIA. Members of the committee particularly supportive of the repatriation were from the San Salvador archdiocese and the Lutheran church of El Salvador. During the months preceding the return, representatives of DIACONIA met regularly with the CNR, other non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and the refugees themselves to define the role of religious institutions in the actual process of repatriation and later in the newly settled communities. Members of the committee expressed their firm commitment to support the refugees' intention to repatriate as communities and repopulate their places of origin. The committee further declared a continuing commitment to promote human development and self-sufficiency at the community level. In addition to support from the Catholic church through the archdiocese, the refugees secured public support from the Lutheran bishop of El Salvador, Reverend Medardo Gomez. He could speak for a significant constituency inside El Salvador and publicly endorsed the repatriation and pledged assistance from the Lutheran church. The public support of the bishop, who made a pastoral visit to Mesa Grande on September 8,1987, lent further credence to the viability of a large-scale

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repatriation project at a critical time. An expression of support also came from the Reverend Carlos Sanchez, executive secretary of the Baptist Association of El Salvador. In a June 1987 letter to his international organization, he advocated the rights of the refugees in Honduras to return as communities to their villages in El Salvador. Thus, the refugees at Mesa Grande secured official public approval and support for a large-scale repatriation from three church organizations at the highest levels of their respective hierarchies. Such support was an effective defense in the ideological battle over the project with the civilian government and the armed forces of El Salvador. It lent credence to the refugees' contention that the form and content of their effort to return to conflictive zones were dictated only by reasons of social welfare and security, that they were noncombatants with no desire to engage in the hostilities between the FMLN and the military in any capacity, and that their civilian status had to be respected because it was recognized by the most important religious authorities in the country. As the repatriation project developed, NGOs assumed a number of administrative support tasks. Many of these organizations had a long history of work with the displaced and refugees before the repatriation movement. The Lutheran World Federation, for example, had been funding projects for the displaced for many years and had been providing assistance to repopulated communities since 1985. International NGOs operating in El Salvador, along with a coalition of religious organizations and international support networks, were asked to assist in planning the repatriation/repopulation project and in responding to the requests of the refugees. The NGOs were also to help obtain thefinancialresources and the personnel necessary to sustain the repatriation. Finally, these organizations were to serve as a communication mechanism between the refugee communities in Honduras and the international NGO network. The role assigned to humanitarian agencies outside the country was quite different from that adopted by NGOs operating inside El Salvador. In the United States, as a response to the refugees' appeal to the international community, a group of religious leaders inaugurated a nationally coordinated support effort. The project was called Going Home: An Interfaith Campaign in Support of Salvadoran Refugees Returning from Mesa Grande. Individuals and organizations participated by raising units of $1,000, the approximate cost of sponsoring a repatriating family. Participating organizations also assisted by coordinating or joining a delegation, either to accompany the refugees during the move across the border into El Salvador or to establish a presence at the repopulation sites in the conflictive zones. The refugees felt that the presence of U.S. citizens in the repopulated communities would lend moral support to the refugees as

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well as provide security. Key Role of the CNR Salvadoran organizations directly representing the displaced were also asked to play a role. The CNR, the mass organization of displaced persons, was incorporated into the repatriation effort early on. The experience of the CNR during 1986 and 1987 in successfully orchestrating the repopulation of three then-deserted towns in conflictive zones—an accomplishment encouraged by neither the civilian government nor the military—made it the only organization with expertise in coordinating autonomous collective returns. San Jose Las Flores, El Barillo, and Panchimilama were the sites repopulated under the auspices of the CNR, and the practical and developmental experience gained by the organization through establishing and maintaining these projects in the face of official opposition was well recognized by the refugee community in Honduras. As the Committee for Repopulation at Mesa Grande formulated repatriation plans, then, the need for participation and counsel from the CNR became increasingly clear. In preparation for the return, its representatives visited the camp and the proposed repopulation sites, together with church and agency personnel. At this time, the CNR also lobbied the UNHCR office in San Salvador, strongly advocating the refugees'rightto return collectively to their country.

The First Collective Repatriation: October 1987 In 1986 and 1987, even the most optimistic supporters of the civilian government of President José Napoleón Duarte noted a deterioration in official respect for human rights in El Salvador. Urban areas felt the violence most immediately, with the targeting of highly visible public figures. In the fall of 1987, the death squad-style killing of Herbert Anaya Sanabria, president of the nongovernmental CDHES, was most indicative of an increasing level of repression. The repression was also apparent in rural areas during the months before the refugee repatriation, when the army launched a prolonged military offensive, Operation Concordia, in the conflictive northern departments. The campaign emptied the barracks around the country and sent approximately 40,000 infantry troops into thefield.In Chalatenango, Cabanas, and Cuscatlan—departments identified for repopulation—the effects of the offensive were immediately felt. During May 1987, Tutela Legal, of the Archdiocese of San Salvador, attributed the deaths of ninety-seven persons in the area to political violence. In a typical incident near Sensuntepeque in Cabanas, three uniformed soldiers carrying M-16s went to the home of a peasant family and accused family members of membership in the insurgent forces. Despite their denials, the grandfather, aged sixty-three, and his grandson, aged fifteen, were taken outside the house, to be shot and killed. A third man, who tried to intervene, was also killed, and the house was subsequently robbed.1 The army sweep, coupled with a search-and-destroy mission, generated a wave of civilian arrests, disappearances, and killings in public places. During the period, the International Committee of the Red Cross responded to notification of, on average, twenty captures by the armed forces per day. Through written communication, church delegation visits, and the accounts of newly arriving refugees, the refugees at Mesa Grande were kept informed of the deteriorating situation inside El Salvador, and the Committee for Repopulation at the camp was aware of therisksinvolved in a large-scale repatriation movement. Those at Mesa Grande remained committed, however, to their decision to return despite the increasing numbers of human rights abuses at the hands of the security forces and 103

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military operatives. Precisely because of the past captures of individual returnees and bombings in the villages designated for repopulation, the refugee community insisted upon a large-scale return, believing that greater numbers and higher visibility afforded greater protection. In this regard, representatives of NGOs working with the refugees in Honduras, along with international observers in the area, reported a high level of political awareness among the population at Mesa Grande. Their impression contravened the usual perception of refugees as powerless victims of war, without opinions of their own about desirable resolutions for their situation. Those who worked with the refugees at Mesa Grande reported that these were not people who saw their sole function as receiving assistance and waiting. Those at Mesa Grande and in the displaced communities inside El Salvador were reported to be politically knowledgeable, well aware of the circumstances that transformed them into displaced persons and of their future prospects. Observers reported that by January 1987, the Salvadorans at Mesa Grande had tired of their role as war victims and made a proposal to secure the rights to which they felt entitled under international law. They were informed about both the conditions to which they were returning and the problems they would face in transit. During the nine months leading up to the repatriation, the Committee for Repopulation and the churches and agencies in El Salvador working with it formulated plans to carry out the move, with or without the still-unconfirmed participation of the UNHCR. The Central American Peace Plan signed in August of 1987 recognized the right of refugees to return to their places of origin, and this lent further legitimacy to the imminent repatriation. As the proposed date of the repatriation approached, the committee amassed considerable national and international support. During late summer and early fall 1987, more than a dozen international delegations visited the camps in Honduras. Each group reported that the refugees' commitment to return in October, with or without official support, remained firm. In El Salvador, Archbishop Rivera y Damas met with the formal support network of the Lutheran church, the Social Secretariat of the Archdiocese, and Catholic Relief Services to offer his qualified endorsement. In an interview at the time, the archbishop indicated that he was quite sure that the repatriation would take place without undue problems, and that should difficulties arise, he would be prepared to mediate. Subsequently, other sectors of the community publicly voiced their support for the repatriation. A spokesperson for the Salvadoran Christian Base Communities openly expressed a welcome for the returnees and, at the same time, criticized the Salvadoran government and the UNHCR for their positions on the repatriation. During the period, labor

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unions and organizations representing displaced persons jointly sponsored paid advertisements in the press of San Salvador, declaring support for the returning refugees and promising to be present at the border to receive them. Although there had been little, if any, press coverage, word of the impending repatriation trickled through international human rights organizations, and many of the organizations that had protested the forced repatriation or relocation from Mesa Grande two years earlier expressed their support for this return initiative. During the last weeks of September, the newspapers of San Salvador published a series of advertisements supporting the return, paid for by international organizations. Endorsers included the U.S. Catholic bishops, religious leaders of other denominations, trade union leaders, European support groups, academics, and refugee organizations in the United States. The demands of the endorsers were a response to the initiative of the refugees in their original appeal to human rights organizations abroad. Representative of the advertisements was a page published in the Salvadoran newspaper El Mundo by the Central American Refugee Network (CARNET) in the United States. It called upon President Duarte to take the following steps: • Respect the voluntary repatriation of refugee communities and their right to work in places of origin • Exempt the refugees from participation in the government's counterinsurgency campaign ("United to Reconstruct"), the civil defense, and the armed forces • Prevent the location of military posts in the vicinity of the repopulated communities • Halt the captures and intimidation of the residents of these communities and the members of organizations representing the displaced • Respect freedom of movement and commerce and allow the delivery of food, medicine and other supplies to the repopulated communities • Permit national and international humanitarian organizations to transport food and to work in the repopulated communities without harassment.2 In Washington, fifty-four members of Congress signed a letter to President Duarte supporting the repatriation and requesting that Duarte "do all in your power to assist the refugees' efforts to repatriate and repopulate free from all military intervention or harassment."3 The signatories of the letter asked the Going Home delegation, whose departure

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coincided with the repatriation, to deliver the letter personally to President Duarte. The delegation was never able to deliver the letter, however, because its members were denied entry to El Salvador by immigration officials. The refugees had set the first weekend in October as the date when the first five groups scheduled for repatriation would be moved. By the end of September, international support groups had sent U.S. $25,000 for the project, and the CNR had already tentatively contracted the necessary buses and trucks to transport the refugees. On September 17, realizing the imminence of the refugees' return, representatives of the Salvadoran government and the UNHCR met with the Committee for Repopulation for the first time to inform its members that their plan was unacceptable. At the meeting, government authorities and UNHCR officials outlined an alternative plan approved by the government: Refugees would be allowed to repatriate in groups of 100 persons per day in order to facilitate documentation through immigration authorities. Under the plan, the UNHCR would provide limited logistical support (transport, food, temporary shelter) for the most vulnerable (children, pregnant women, and the elderly), and refugees would not be subjected to military interrogation. Finally, the plan stipulated that the refugees would not necessarily be allowed to return to their places of origin. In response, the committee argued that the proposal failed to meet virtually all of the conditions earlier set forth, conditions that the committee regarded as indispensable for a safe return. Despite a wide disparity of viewpoints, however, all three parties agreed to continue the talks on September 24 at Mesa Grande. But at that time, without notifying the refugee committee, government representatives failed to appear for the scheduled meeting. Following this series of events, the refugees criticized the government's negotiating and non-negotiating tactics and denounced the official plan in a September 25 announcement in El Mundo. In the announcement, they reiterated their earlier demands to return as a community to places of origin without military harassment. They also rejected the government/UNHCR plan and criticized the role of the UNHCR in the negotiating process, accusing its representatives of failing to represent the interests of the refugees. They concluded by calling for international support in pressuring the government to fulfill its responsibilities to assist refugees as specified in the Central American Peace Plan. The announcement read in part: "As a community of 4,500 persons, we have decided to travel on foot from Mesa Grande to the border because the UNHCR is not assuming its protection duties as it should. This is the decision of the Salvadoran refugees at Mesa Grande and it will not be retracted."4

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The language of the announcement suggested what had, by that date, been decided in the camp—all of the nearly 4,500 refugees would move to the border on the appointed date as a single group. They reasoned that the security and logistical considerations that made large-scale repatriation more feasible than individual moves also made a single inclusive repatriation more sensible than five smaller ones. The immediate political situation was also a factor in the decision. During September and October, the progress of the Central American Peace Plan indicated a temporary lifting of military repression inside El Salvador. Moreover, the third round of dialogue between the government and the FMLN was scheduled to occur at the same time as the repatriation (October 3-4) and would bring the international press to El Salvador, a situation not likely to be repeated. The first date set for the repatriation was postponed by the refugees, however, at the request of Archbishop Rivera y Damas, who feared that the scheduled negotiations between the government and the FMLN/FDR could be disrupted if an emergency with the refugees developed. The archbishop suggested that those returning from Mesa Grande should wait until the following week. In exchange for the delay, he offered to speak again to the government in endorsement of the repopulation. At this point, the government was still firmly opposed to the refugee plan, and consequently, the participation of the UNHCR remained doubtful. Further, the archbishop asked Father Octavio Cruz and Bishop Ricardo Urioste, the vicar general of the archdiocese, to prepare a letter to the refugees in which the Church confirmed in writing its role vis-à-vis the repatriation. The letter, in part, read as follows: "From the beginning, the Church has expressed its willingness to work with the refugees during the repatriation;... the Church is also participating in the maintenance of repopulation projects and is providing pastoral attention in the different settlements." When assured that the Church was committed to assisting during repatriation and repopulation, the refugees agreed to postpone the move, and October 10 became the official date.

Final Week of Negotiations According to an official close to the repatriation negotiations, the Salvadoran government throughout the process did everything possible to prevent the return of the refugees from Honduras. Another source revealed that the Salvadoran government had requested on October 5 that the Honduran government forcibly prevent the refugees from leaving the camps. This request, however, was refused. Instead, Colonel Abraham Turcios, head of CONARE, stated publicly that should the refugees

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decide to repatriate, the Honduran government would not prevent them from doing so. Turcios also said that Honduran troops would be present for the entire journey from the camp to the Salvadoran border. The troops, he said, would accompany the refugees in order to assure their protection and prevent incidents of provocation. Turcios overlooked the fact that Honduran troops (as well as Salvadoran) were the threat the refugees feared most and that they had specifically requested the demilitarization of both sides of the border during the move. In the weeks preceding the repatriation, the Honduran army did little to dispel this fear. On the contrary, between September 24 and October 5, Honduran soldiers and military patrols fired repeatedly into the camp, and two military helicopters buzzed it. Salvadoran authorities also officially requested that the UNHCR prevent the refugee move. In a communiqué to the UNHCR headquarters in Geneva, the government stated that it opposed the repatriation plan under existing circumstances. The UNHCR declined to interfere openly with the return, but sent a cable to President Duarte asking that he specify the government's conception of the proper role of the UNHCR in the repatriation process. But UNHCR representatives, under pressure from the Salvadoran government to stop the repatriation, also apparently realized that their institution would be embarrassed if the refugees were to embark upon the return on foot, without UNHCR cooperation.5 Attempting to strike a balance, the UNHCR representative in Honduras made public on October 6 his office's intention to provide forty to fifty trucks and buses for the trip to the border, sufficient to carry only children, the elderly, the sick, and the pregnant, or approximately half of the total group. The others, according to the UNHCR's statement, would be expected to walk the thirty-five kilometers to the border, a two-day journey on foot. In an interview, the UNHCR representative admitted that his reluctance to do more stemmed from a fear of offending the Salvadoran government. The UNHCR's half-offer was received with criticism by both the government and the refugees. While the government saw the offer as cooperation with the repatriation initiative, the refugees pointed out that the plan would cause a logistical nightmare by separating groups of repatriates during a two-day trek, fraught with security risks, through Honduran territory. Meanwhile, Colonel Turcios informed the Going Home delegation, then in the camp, that Honduran military officers had reassessed their decision to accompany the refugees. CONARA officials apparently wished to avoid potentially negative press coverage portraying heavily armed Honduran troops surrounding defenseless refugees as they tried to leave the country. According to Turcios, the Honduran army would maintain a low profile and not interfere with the repatriation.

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The Going Home delegation also met with the Salvadoran ambassador to Honduras, who insisted that any repatriation must be "orderly and gradual" and that the refugees' plan could prove disorganized and chaotic. The ambassador frankly asked the delegation to meet with the refugees and encourage them to postpone their move. Apparently desperate to delay the return, the ambassador appealed, "Give us ten days, or seven days, or even three days' time." Speaking for the group, Bishop Gus Schultz told the ambassador that the role of the delegation was not to negotiate or attempt to influence the refugees, but only to accompany them in the capacity they had specifically requested.6 On October 7 in El Salvador, a special interministerial commission appointed by the Salvadoran government met to discuss the repatriation within the framework of the Central American Peace Plan. The governmental agencies participating in the commission were the Vice Ministry of the Interior, the Chancellor of the Republic, and the Treasury Police (represented by General Reynaldo Golcher). Also participating was Monsignor Rosa Chavez, auxiliary bishop of San Salvador, whose involvement caught many Church officials off guard. As a signal of dissociation from the auxiliary bishop's position, the archdiocesan delegation that left for Mesa Grande on October 8 intentionally conducted all meetings with the refugees independently from meetings between the refugees and the interministerial commission. Given the heavy governmental representation on the commission, it was not surprising that the six agreements reached reflected a lack of sympathy for the returning refugees: • The refugees could return only with government authorization • Repatriation would take place in a manner, at a time, and to sites to be determined only by the government • An emergency meeting of the Tripartite Commission would be called for October 14 (four days after the return was scheduled to occur) • International delegations wishing to accompany the refugees would not be allowed to enter El Salvador because their purpose was to foment violence • The Church would not accompany the refugees if they returned without government authorization • Under no circumstances would the refugees be allowed to enter San Salvador, but would be obliged to go in designated groups directly to the sites chosen by the government On the evening of October 7, President Duarte gave a press con-

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ference, carried on national television, in which he stated the commission's position that no international delegations were to enter the country for the purpose of "promoting violence." This was interpreted as a public message to the Going Home delegation, which intended to accompany the refugees from the camp in Honduras to the repopulation site for security reasons. President Duarte also stated that the refugees would not be allowed to enter El Salvador unless they carried valid identification papers, which few of the Mesa Grande refugees possessed, and that the papers would be cross-referenced with government records to establish their authenticity. Nor would refugees be allowed to repopulate their places of origin unless their personal documents indicated their former residence in these areas. In conclusion, Duarte expressed doubt that all of the returning refugees were in fact Salvadorans, suggesting rather curiously that non-Salvadorans posing as refugees were taking advantage of the situation to immigrate to El Salvador. On October 8, another government delegation traveled to Mesa Grande and met with the refugees' committee. According to the committee, members of the delegation expressed surprise at the news that 4,500 refugees intended to return to El Salvador on October 10. The delegation then informed the committee of the official decision to prevent the repatriation on Saturday, the following day. Finally, they told the committee to await the "gradual and orderly" repatriation plan to be described at the October 14 meeting of the tripartite commission. The refugees refused to comply with these directives. Their spokespersons reminded the official delegation that the return had been planned for months with the government's full knowledge and had already been postponed once at the request of Archbishop Rivera y Damas. In addition, the refugees said they had packed and prepared for the trip. In fact, the trucks were already loaded with the refugees' few possessions, and their shelters had already been dismantled. On October 9, more than 2,000 refugees at Mesa Grande participated in a 7:00 A.M. assembly with the government delegation, despite less than twelve hours notice. In addressing the assembly, the government representative notified the refugees of the official position that the repatriation would be allowed, but that a return to places of origin would be prohibited. Only those from Santa Marta would be permitted to return home; others would be taken to the two haciendas selected by the government for repopulation. The representative further warned that after governmentassisted repatriation, the tripartite commission would be dissolved. This statement suggested that those who did not return under the government plan would not be permitted to return to El Salvador in the future. According to independent observers, the response of the assembly was overwhelming. After a vote, the refugees rejected the official position, but

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the members of the government delegation replied that their position was final. After hours of negotiations, during which government officials accused the UNHCR of withholding information and manipulating the situation, the government acceded to the refugees' repatriation plans for October 10. The authorities would not, however, allow the refugees to return to their places of origin because these places had not been "sanitized," an apparent reference to an insurgent presence. Instead, the returnees would be transported to two haciendas, Valle Verde and Popayan in the department of Cuscatlan, where the government would implement a resettlement project. The spokesperson for the government added that the authorities would call upon the Church and other institutions to cooperate in the venture. The government-sponsored refugee resettlement at the two haciendas had also been discussed during the October 7 meeting between the interministerial commission and the refugees. The commission had expressed a desire that the Catholic church participate in the resettlement projects, possibly because of the financial resources available to the Church. Monsignor Rosa Chavez, however, had declined to commit the Church to any government resettlement project. Because of a history of repression and corruption in these projects, the Catholic church, as well as many other respected development and relief organizations, has refused to be involved in government assistance projects for those displaced by war. When presented with the government's resettlement proposal, the refugees refused to relocate to the two haciendas for fear that they might find themselves without protection in strictly controlled and remote locations. They suspected the government of attempting to establish a showcase resettlement while suppressing their demands for food, shelter, land, and autonomy. The plan presented indicated that on the haciendas, agencies under contract to the government and the armed forces would control all aspects of social, economic, and political life: production, housing, transportation, social activities, and community affairs. In all likelihood, the refugees felt, the military would establish a permanent post on the haciendas, and/or the refugees would be required to form civil defense units. Freedom of movement would become a prerogative restricted by the authorities through control of identification documents. Under such an arrangement, freedom of expression, freedom of movement, and political independence could be controlled by the same government the refugees had fled years before. After seven years in the Honduran camps, the refugees reported themselves unwilling to move to government-controlled haciendas; they viewed the move as an exchange of one refugee camp for another.

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Officials of the UNHCR concurred. Despite their preference for a negotiated repatriation with government participation, the office of the UNHCR in Geneva sent a cable to the Duarte government stating that the UNHCR could not cooperate with a government plan to relocate the refugees in El Salvador against their will. The UNHCR would withdraw from the plan entirely, according to the cable, if the government and the refugees did not reach an agreement on the destination of their return. Earlier in the day, the support committee of churches and agencies in El Salvador also reiterated concurrence with the refugees' decision and reaffirmed the intentions of church officials to be present to receive the returnees at the border, regardless of the date and the government's position. At the same time, the World Council of Churches sent a telegram publicly supporting the refugees' plan to return to El Salvador on October 10.

Faced with these circumstances, the Salvadoran Interior Ministry official, still at Mesa Grande, was given instructions to accede to the request of the refugee Committee for Repopulation. At 9:30 on the night before the scheduled repatriation, after appeals from the churches and the office of the UNHCR, the government ultimately relented.7 Thus, at the eleventh hour, the government officially agreed to allow the refugees to return to their homes and gave permission to the UNHCR to play an operational role in the move. At that point, agencies involved came forward with their preparations. The UNHCR in Honduras and El Salvador had contracted approximately 150 buses and trucks for transport on both sides of the border. Monsignor Rosa Chavez made public a letter identifying 116 church-related workers authorized to assist in the repatriation. The state of readiness of the office of the UNHCR, the churches, and the refugees themselves thus belied the government's claim that the repatriation was a spontaneous and unplanned undertaking. And hours before the government had officially relented, the refugees had finished packing; they had been determined to move, with or without official approval.

Crossing the Border After available vehicles were loaded, the first forty buses and trucks carrying 917 refugees and thirteen observers moved out of the Mesa Grande camp. It was 4:00 A.M. on October 10. Waiting at the border were representatives of the Catholic, Lutheran, and other churches and members of human rights organizations, organizations of the displaced, and the national and international press. Also present were officials of the Sal-

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vadoran Ministry of the Interior and the U.S. embassy, and forty additional immigration agents were on hand. In the background were stationed Salvadoran army troops carrying M-16s, a reminder of the problems the refugees had fled as well as an indication of the uncertainty to which they returned. When the first refugees reached the border crossing point at approximately 10:00 A.M., the press descended and the immigration processing began. Each refugee was interviewed by a Salvadoran immigration officer, who completed a 23-question form. Most of the questions solicited basic data: name, place of origin, religion, educational level, property owned, and crops cultivated. The two last questions on the form, however, alarmed and bewildered the refugees. These asked: "Would you be willing to return to your place of origin even in the midst of subversive violence?" "What do you recommend to end the violence and achieve peace?" Observers reported that although many refugees either refused to answer or did not know how to answer the questions, the interviewer invariably wrote down something to fill the blank. Some refugees responded with the suggestion that dialogue was necessary, while others asked for God's intervention. One woman said she believed that President Duarte should resign his office. In general, these final questions were interpreted by the returnees as threatening and intimidating. A representative of the Ministry of the Interior revealed that the questionnaire had been prepared by the Fourth Infantry Brigade of Paraiso, Chalatenango, as a requirement for all refugees who wished to repatriate. As a result, observers feared that the questionnaires were designed to provide a base of information on each refugee and the person's family and political leanings. This information in turn could be used by government-controlled networks of informants to target specific individuals or families for surveillance. The fact that the information being sought went well beyond the data necessary to process identification documents gave credence to these fears. When the last of the buses destined for Santa Marta passed through the immigration checkpoint, the UNHCR officials ordered them to depart. The refugees protested strenuously, arguing that in late-night negotiations, the government had agreed to allow the entire group of repatriates to cross the border and travel as a single caravan to the National Cathedral in the capital. With the UNHCR order, the first of many disputes began. This dispute, like the others that followed, revealed fundamental differences between the UNHCR and the refugees about security issues. The refugees had asked to go to the capital in order to pay homage to the tomb of Archbishop Oscar Arnulfo Romero, whom they felt had died for deploring their sufferings before they fled to Honduras. They also wished

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to be welcomed by family members and supporters, to tell the world that they had returned to El Salvador, and to ask in a public forum for support and protection. For them, a visit to San Salvador was their privilege as Salvadoran citizens—and it was one more form of guaranteeing their future security in the conflictive zones to which they would be returning. The government, however, was anxious to avoid a refugee demonstration in the capital that the government could not control and maintained that the refugees' request had been rejected outright the night before. At the same time, UNHCR officials were under instructions from their headquarters and under pressure from the government to assist in transporting the refugees only to their places of origin. During the day, each of the caravans had to pass through several military checkpoints in El Salvador despite the government's promise of unhindered passage to their destinations. The most serious delay occurred in the town of Suchitoto, where the Copapayo caravan was stranded for two days while waiting for launches to carry the repatriates across Lake Suchitlan. During those days, the refugees were housed in the Suchitoto Catholic church at the invitation of the local priest. For the duration of their stay, the military encircled the church, preventing the entry or departure of any of the refugees or their families. In response, members of CRIPDES held a sit-in at the cathedral in San Salvador to call for a lifting of the military cordon. When the boats finally were able to leave Suchitoto, and the refugees continued their journey to Copapayo, CRIPDES withdrew from the cathedral. Within one week, all of the refugees had returned to their homes without major mishap, given the dangers involved. However, throughout the journey, they were subjected to intimidation and undue hardship because both the armed forces and civilian authorities tried to maintain the strictest control over the caravans. Nevertheless, the refugees' arrival home, after many years in exile and the ordeal of the journey, was a moment of powerful and conflicting emotions. Most were elated about the successful completion of the trip, but many were traumatized by what they found. One clergywoman who accompanied those returning to Santa Marta gave the following account: When we arrived back in Santa Marta, it was all jungle. You had to clean back the growth and throw away the stones to be able to sleep on the ground. Some people went to look for firewood, others to grind corn to prepare our first hot meal in three days. In seven years of abandonment, everything had disappeared, but people went quickly to the places where the water tanks had been hidden to dig up buried grinding stones. And in a few hours, life began to organize itself.... The first shelters were built for the widows of war.

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Conditions at the Repatriation Sites After the repatriation, the social secretariat of the Archdiocese reported that at each of the five repopulation sites, the refugees organized work teams to repair roads, clear brush, erect temporary shelters, and plant vegetable gardens. At each site, the returnees had chosen a representative community council and appointed teams for each area of work. Before they left Mesa Grande, provisional but comprehensive work plans and corresponding proposals for assistance were delivered to humanitarian agencies disposed to help them reestablish themselves. The plans were finalized shortly after arrival. Because of the integrated nature of the plans, the refugees were reluctant to participate in food-for-work projects subsequently proposed by the government, which focused primarily on the construction of infrastructure. The community councils felt that these projects would deflect an already meager labor force away from shortterm priorities, such as planting and shelter construction. The Salvadoran and international agencies serving as the support committee ensured that food, tools, and materials sufficient to support the refugees' work plans reached the repopulation sites and that there was a constant international presence in each of the five villages. The continuing tension between the armed forces and the community made this presence necessary. The Salvadoran military immediately took steps to remind the returnees that the repopulation sites were officially regarded as "oases for terrorists," as General Golcher of the Treasury Police had characterized them in June 1987. The political nature of the immigration interrogation, the presence of armed troops at the border and at numerous roadblocks, and the continuing delays in providing documentation to the repatriates had served to intimidate and control the ex-refugee population. Nor did the armed forces limit themselves to subtle control tactics, such as the withholding of personal documents. Colonel Benjamin Canjura, commander of the First Military Detachment of Chalatenango, boarded one bus during the repatriation and, in a widely reported incident, instructed the refugees to go home and tend to their fields, but warned, "If you collaborate with the terrorists, you'll have problems with us."8 Canjura's threat was acted upon two weeks later. On October 26, Francisco Rivera, a schoolteacher, was taken from his house on the outskirts of Arcatao, one of the towns identified for future repatriation, and shot to death. His body was found the next day. Residents in the town attributed the killing to Canjura's First Military Detachment, and Tutela Legal, the human rights office of the archdiocese of San Salvador, confirmed the incident. Although Rivera was a resident of the town and not a repatriated refugee, the army attack on a respected community leader

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in a town so close to the repopulation sites spread fear among the returnees. Observers in the area agreed after the incident that Rivera's killing was part of a campaign designed to intimidate and terrorize the exrefugees. Moreover, the incident was not an isolated one; twenty-four captures were reported in the repopulated communities during the first five months after the return. 9 Such incidents violated not only the international rules of war and the government's own agreement with the refugees but also the Central American Peace Plan. Additional difficulties for the returnees developed when it became clear that the armed forces were determined to control and restrict the passage of supplies in the form of food, building equipment, and medicine to the repopulation sites. When this policy became known, Tutela Legal denounced it in the national press and to international reporters as a clear violation of the 1949 Geneva Convention regarding the treatment of civilians in an intranational conflict, Protocol II, Article 14, of which reads: "Starvation of civilians as a method of combat is prohibited. It is therefore prohibited to attack, destroy, remove or render useless, objects indispensable to the survival of the civilian population." When the Ministry of the Interior, nominally charged with responsibility for displaced persons and refugees, was confronted with the issue of access to the repatriated communities, however, a high-ranking civilian official revealed that the problem was largely outside civilian control; it was seen as a military problem. The official reported that her staff had also had problems and been detained for hours by the military when seeking access to the repatriation sites, but she was, by her own account, unable to intervene on their behalf. Seven days after the border crossing, on October 17, Archbishop Rivera y Damas himself was turned back at a military roadblock in the department of Chalatenango and prevented from entering Guarjila on a pastoral mission. In addition to denying access to the archbishop, the military routinely prohibited the passage of Church vehicles carrying supplies and international observers carrying letters of endorsement from the archbishop were also refused entry to the areas. It is important to emphasize that in the months following the return, the Salvadoran government failed to extend even provisional identification documents to the 4,313 refugees from Mesa Grande. Despite the fact that each returnee had been subjected to in-depth interrogation at the border, ostensibly for the purpose of obtaining the information necessary to process the national identity cards required of all Salvadoran citizens, these documents were not forthcoming. The identity cards were needed because nearly all of the returnees crossed the border without identity

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documents. Many had lost them in flight, others had papers that had expired during the years at Mesa Grande, and some were born or came of age in Honduras. This failure to issue identity cards had significant consequences for all of the repatriates. In El Salvador, an individual without documentation is subject to arrest at any time and is therefore unable to move about freely, seek employment, use social services, or seek public assistance. In short, undocumented persons are unable to prove their citizenship and consequently cannot claim any of the rights granted to citizens. It is virtually impossible to travel without documentation because posted on every highway are military roadblocks where soldiers demand the presentation of a cedula (identification card with picture, birth registration, and number) from every adult traveler. To be without a cedula is not only a civil crime in El Salvador, it is regarded as circumstantial evidence of membership in the FMLN. Because the insurgents are typically "underground" and consequently undocumented, those without cedulas are suspected insurgents. As a result of being denied identification papers, then, the refugees returned to El Salvador to become illegal in their own country; as events bore out, they were at risk for arbitrary capture, detention, imprisonment, and execution. Before crossing the border, the refugees recognized and attempted to deal with the documentation problem. It was clear that the issue would be a difficult one because despite nine months notice of the intention to repatriate and the presence of a Salvadoran consulate in Honduras, there was no effort on the part of the government to initiate the documentation process before the return, as mandated by Salvadoran law. During the negotiations at the camp, however, the Interior Ministry representative promised the refugees that upon their arrival at their places of origin, special government teams would be deployed to issue documentation through extraordinary procedures. One year later, however, over 70 percent of the repatriates remained undocumented, despite the fact that the UNHCR had offered to assist the authorities in this process and had drawn up an elaborate and comprehensive plan for issuing identification documents. Initially, officials of the Ministry of the Interior and the UNHCR, often accompanied by members of the armed forces dressed as civilians, visited each of the repopulation sites for census interviews. According to reports, the presence of military personnel during the visits frightened the returnees, who recognized the potential surveillance function both of the visits and of the census itself. The interviews conducted according to the plan of UNHCR, however, failed to produce documentation, leaving the impression that the sole purpose of these visits was to gather intelligence rather than to issue cedulas.

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Representatives of the human rights organization Americas Watch have documented the fact that the mayors of the repopulation sites of Arcatao, San Jose Las Flores, and Las Vueltas had been explicitly instructed by the armed forces not to issue new identification documents. These instructions, it should be noted, were clearly illegal, because it is the exclusive responsibility of local municipalities to register births, deaths, and marriages and to issue identity documents.10 To address the stateless situation of the returnees, the Church intervened to provide each refugee with an identity document from the office of Tutela Legal, which stated that the individual was under the protection of the Church. This measure, however, was inadequate in the long term— as the document had no real legal value. In the months following the repatriation, those who needed to travel to the capital risked the trip with only the document issued by Tutela Legal. They reasoned that although this document identified them as "ex-refugees," this was probably preferable to being branded a guerrilla as a result of having no documentation at all. Concurrent with the military harassment of the repopulation sites, the authorities attempted to offer the returnees conciliatory gestures in the form of military/civic actions. In one of the more conspicuous incidents, several truckloads of soldiers (approximately 100 troops) entered the repopulated village of Gauijila and held a dance one Sunday night in November 1987. Despite exhortations from the soldiers, the community residents refused to join in. The next day, the military insisted on distributing foodstuffs to individual families even though community leaders requested that the goods be stored in a warehouse and distributed at the regular time along with other donated materials. Few people accepted the donations of the military under these circumstances, which appeared to be designed to create dissension and antagonism within the community as well as to identify individual families as either sympathetic or hostile toward the armed forces. To complement the military/civic action, the army brought a medical technician to the village, who distributed medications while soldiers hung a piñata for the children. Also present at the time was Colonel Canjura of the First Military Detachment and a U.S. military adviser in combat uniform. Representatives of the Salvadoran armed forces press office photographed and videotaped the orchestrated affair, and the photographs were later printed in a Salvadoran newspaper in the capital.11 Throughout the incident, most of the returnees demonstrated an obvious reluctance to accept the proffered assistance despite the great need in the community. On the third day of the operation, the soldiers went from house to

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house among the provisional shelters of the repatriates, encouraging the people to accept the government's assistance. A rumor quickly spread that those who refused to receive what was offered would be considered subversive. In addition, the soldiers asked numerous questions about specific individuals at the site, questions that appeared designed to identify members of the coordinating committee of the repatriation. One international observer then present in Guarjila reported that the soldiers treated the people harshly, addressing them with obscenities and threatening them with guns. At the end of the army's three-day encampment in Guarjila, the returnees collectively informed the military that the government's assistance would be unnecessary because the repatriates were obtaining aid from church organizations. The returnees did, however, accept offers to improve the access road to the repopulation site. It was widely recognized that the army had adopted sophisticated population control techniques with a double-edged strategy, commonly referred to as a "beans and bullets" counterinsurgency campaign.12 As developed by U.S. forces in Vietnam during the Southeast Asian war and practiced in Guatemala, El Salvador, and other countries, control of territory is achieved through the application of this two-pronged strategy: Military sweeps incorporating heavy gunfire, accompanied by bombing raids and an informant network, eliminate the insurgent presence in a given zone; government-controlled social programs are subsequently implemented, designed to consolidate government authority among the civilian population. Residents of areas targeted for the "beans and bullets" programs reported suspicions that the provision of government assistance was used to determine the political sympathies of individuals because assistance, such as food, clothing, or building materials, was typically distributed to individual families rather than to the community, as the returnees had repeatedly requested. If a family accepted assistance, they say, pressure to join civil defense patrols or participate in an informants network would then be applied. If assistance were refused, the army would then assume allegiance to the insurgency, with the consequent reprisals. These military/civic actions, which were also planned for the repopulated villages of San Jose Las Flores and Arcatao, fit into a larger plan for military co-optation and control of the repopulated areas. According to public documents and interviews with officials concerned, the Ministry of the Interior had formulated, without refugee participation, a plan for infrastructural repair and development of the repopulated villages. An overall project proposal outlined eleven activities, including the installation of a potable water system and construction of housing, a school, and a health center. A copy of the plan was submitted to the archdiocese, and

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the plan was used to solicit fundsfromother sources, such as the UNHCR, USAID, the Interamerican Development Bank, and (according to the U.S. embassy in San Salvador) the government of Italy. According to a spokesman for the U.S. embassy, the government of Italy was expected to donate $25 million to the Salvadoran government to fund projects relating to the independently conducted repopulation projects. Upon learning of the government's plans for assistance, the repatriated refugeesfirstexpressed surprise, pointing out that the government had never done anything for them previously, nor had its representatives ever visited the camps in Honduras during the seven years many of them had spent there. They went on to express skepticism of the official intentions behind the plan to provide infrastructural assistance to the repopulated zone. One observer commented that the repatriates were not persuaded to trust the authorities on this account and characterized the assistance and its providers as "wolves in sheep's clothing.*' It was felt that government assistance, whether in the form of military/civic actions or full-blown development projects, was simply intended to control the returning refugees after all attempts to stop the repatriation movement failed. In the months after their return, the repatriates consistently resisted any government attempts to penetrate the community through the provision of assistance to selected individuals at the repopulation sites. The refugees also refused government participation in the repatriation of communities and delicately refused material aid offered through the military/civic action program. In general, the refugees stated their intention to refuse all government attempts at direct assistance to individuals, despite the pressing material needs of their communities, because they feared the conditions that might be attached to acceptance. In continuing to refuse aid, spokespersons for the communities also cited the inappropriate nature of the proffered materials. At no time had either military or civilian authorities consulted the communities about their needs and the priorities assigned to them, despite the fact that the existence of the communities' detailed work plans and implementation schedules was well known. As was the case at Ichanqueso, much of the material aid offered was consequently unsuited to prevailing conditions, coming in the form of animals that could not eat local vegetation or unalterable prefabricated housing units too small to accommodate most households. To guarantee their independence, thefiverepopulated communities presented their own development proposals to the committee coordinating support in San Salvador. Each community submitted detailed plans for housing reconstruction, agricultural start-up loans, reconstruction of churches and schools, and livestock purchases. The Going Home campaign pledged to raise $500,000 to support the repopulation effort with

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infrastructural repair and construction; work to solicit the necessary funds abroad began immediately. Assessment of the Move from Mesa Grande As part of a public relations campaign to present a democratic face to the world, the Salvadoran government represented the voluntary repatriation of 4,313 Salvadoran refugees from camps in Honduras as evidence of the improved human rights situation in the country. Government officials pointed to the event as a sign of the democratization steps called for in the Central American Peace Plan, particularly the section dealing with the issue of refugees and the displaced. On October IS, five days after the repatriation that the government had consistently and vigorously opposed, Vice President Rudolfo Antonio Castillo Claramount declared in a press conference that the "doors were opened" for all refugees who wished to return to their country. Meanwhile, President José Napoleón Duarte, during a trip to the United States on October IS, 1987, described for a luncheon at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., the recent strides his government had made toward "perfecting democracy" in El Salvador. As evidence, he declared, "We have received 5,000 Salvadorans from Honduras and will receive more from the refugee camps." Duarte's statement in Washington stood in sharp contrast to a statement he had made one week earlier to a Salvadoran audience. On national television, Duarte had characterized the refugee repatriation as an illegal movement and threatened to stop it before it began. Nevertheless, within one week after the repatriation, the Ministry of Culture and Communications hurriedly released a documentary entitled "The Greatest Repatriation in Latin America." The fifteen-minute documentary was shown seven times on national television between October 21 and 24 and was featured in full-page advertisements in national newspapers under the headline "Welcome, Brothers of the Land That Gave You Birth." In the documentary, the Salvadoran government and the armed forces took full credit for the entire endeavor. The rewriting of history by the government represented an attempt to conceal from world opinion its opposition to the repatriation at every turn. When it became clear that the refugees would return to El Salvador despite government opposition and threats to prevent the move forcibly, and that there existed significant national and international support for their move, the government sought to construe the returnee movement as political manipulation and its supporters as meddling foreigners intent on fomenting violence. When that approach failed, the Duarte government attempted to take credit on the world stage for the return by presenting it

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as a move that authorities had encouraged as part of the developing democratic process in El Salvador and official intention to adhere to the provisions of the Central American Peace Plan of 1987. In reality, the single most important factor in the successful repatriation was the determination of the refugees who, as an organized, politically aware community, persisted in their efforts to return to El Salvador. A report from the officials of the Catholic church in El Salvador, written after the repatriation occurred, concluded: The repatriation/repopulation is certainly an incident without precedent in history. This is a triumph of the refugees, and in no sense can it be considered an act of good will on the part of the Salvadoran government. If it had not been for their determination, their untiring labor, their sense of organization, their broad vision of their own conditions as persons, at this very moment they would still be living in degraded conditions in the refugee camps. Or perhaps they would have renounced their Salvadoran citizenship and simply disappeared as people, the product of a social-political conflict and an unjust society.13

Despite the deception, indecision, and outright opposition from the government and the difficulties with the UNHCR during the border crossing, all of the refugees' initial objectives were largely realized. In addition, events demonstrated that the conditions set out by the refugees at Mesa Grande—such as the return of intact communities, the demilitarization of the border area, an international presence, and the right to return to places of origin—were well-conceived precautions, all of which were necessary to guarantee a safe return to a country still at war. Although the UNHCR ultimately fulfilled its obligation to oversee the return, the refugees were justified in not relying solely on the representatives of the high commissioner to protect their interests. Their insistence on their right to return to their places of origin as intact communities was indispensable to the repatriation. It is important to recall that under the initial UNHCR plan for repatriation, it would have taken seven to nine years to empty the refugee camps, even assuming no new arrivals. The October 10 repatriation was a victory for the refugees from Mesa Grande, who ultimately overcame both the dangers and the obstacles posed by the Duarte government and the armed forces. The returnees asserted themselves as active agents in the struggle to claim their rights as Salvadoran nationals and noncombatants in a civil war. However, the repatriation and repopulation movement represents a larger triumph as well. The return of civilians to their homes in conflictive zones can be seen as a new factor in the countryside, altering the landscape of the decadelong war. With a renewed civilian presence in these areas, the aerial bombing and the search-and-destroy missions of the Salvadoran ground

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troops cannot be mounted at previous levels of recklessness without incurring much higher costs in terms of human lives. On a deeper level, the repopulation movement poses a democratic challenge to the Salvadoran government's only project in the rural areas: its "beans and bullets" system of control. During the months that followed the repatriation, eight abandoned villages in conflictive zones were repopulated, despite attacks by the army against three civilian communities.14 And the movement has continued to grow. On August 14,1988, over 1,300 of the refugees remaining at Mesa Grande returned to repopulate the communities of San Antonio Los Ranchos and Teosinte in the department of Chalatenango. This repatriation also faced government efforts to prevent the move, but the refugees were able to achieve most of their objectives and to reach their destinations. Later in the fall, the UNHCR moved an additional 763 refugees in Honduras to the Salvadoran border for a third repatriation. The repopulation movement, by its very nature, has provided an answer to the deepening problems for displaced civilians. The government, wedded to its counterinsurgency policies, is unable to address the problem. Unlike the government-controlled haciendas, the repopulation movement is an independent movement arising out of the needs, interests, and rights of those displaced by war. The repopulations have been necessarily decentralized and flexible, responding to individual situations and local conditions. These projects were neither proposed nor controlled by external forces or agencies, as the haciendas offered by the government to the refugees would have been. Instead, the repopulations represent a grassroots movement, with goals popularly identified and pursued, and leaders democratically elected on a systematic basis. It was the actions of the Salvadoran military in the field, as its forces carried on a repressive counterinsurgency campaign, that created a repopulation movement inherently independent of and opposed to the Salvadoran government's plans for full control of the countryside. In 1990, it remained to be seen whether the government and, in particular, military officials had retreated from their earlier strenuous opposition to the repopulation of villages in conflictive zones, or whether the real battle was still to be fought, this time on terms established by the army. In October 1987, when subjected to strong international pressure, the government capitulated and allowed the refugees to return peaceably. On a daily basis, however, in the isolated villages of the departments of Chalatenango, Cabanas, and Cuscatlan, the military continued to exercise blanket authority over the civilian population, using tactics of its choosing, far from the scrutiny of international observers and the press. Military harassment of the repopulation sites, documented earlier, clearly characterized the reception extended by the armed forces to the

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returning refugees. The unrelenting repression of the independent repopulations at Hacienda El Barillo and San Jose Las Flores are additional examples of the price civilians must pay to live in their homes in conflictive zones. In September 1987, a community council member at El Barillo, Jose Angel Lopez Portillo, thirty-three, was detained by soldiers. He never reappeared, nor was his body ever found, and he was later presumed dead. And in an aerial attack on January 4,1988, according to the CNR, the area around El Barillo was bombarded with forty rockets. In San Jose Las Flores, community leaders reported that during the first year following repopulation, forty civilians were captured by security forces and detained. In all likelihood, the residents of the five newly repopulated areas could expect the same treatment. Salvadoran military authorities, who viewed the returning refugees either as objects of manipulation by the FMLN or as the enemy itself, were facing additional collective repatriations. Given the success of the first massive repatriation, two subsequent moves occurred. In response, the government was accelerating its own plans for refugee resettlement through state-implemented projects in government-controlled areas where international scrutiny would not moderate the treatment of the returnees. With this possibility in mind, the refugees have refused government assistance and are likely to continue to do so. After a decade of war in El Salvador, one must ask what concrete steps might eventually lead to peace. The return of communities of refugees to their villages in conflictive zones may well represent a peace initiative in itself. If the armed forces were actually seeking peace, not simply pacification, and if the civilian government were willing to comply with the spirit of the Central American Peace Plan, they might cease the harassment of the repopulations, withdraw the roadblocks that obstruct the entry of food and materials, and accelerate the process of providing identity documents to the returnees. The rights of the refugees to repatriate—to return to their homes, to have the same official documents as other nationals, to be free from surveillance, attack, or forced recruitment—are founded on legal principles regarding refugee repatriation and human rights and should be assertively defended.

PART 4 Conclusion Here in El Salvador to be poor is a crime. Being poor is the most problematic thing. It is true that we have needs. Those who don't have needs don't have to raise their voices. But we are all Salvadorans, and we have a right to live in our own place. (Juan, 42, a displaced person who repopulated Panchimilama; January 1987)

Construction of temporary housing after repatriation from Mesa Grande, Santa Marta, Cabanas, November 1987

10 The Independent Repopulations Continue Sparked by the independently organized return movement to Tenancingo in 1985, the repopulation movement gained a momentum of its own. Through the CNR and CRIPDES, between 3,000 and 5,000 formerly displaced people have returned to conflictive zones in the central, northern, and eastern parts of the country. By 1987, the return movement of the internally displaced had expanded to include refugees from the Mesa Grande camp in Honduras. Before the end of 1988, more than 6,700 former refugees had returned to their places of origin in El Salvador in three large-scale repatriations, despite the continuing war. By spring 1990, the Colomoncagua and San Antonio refugee camps in Honduras had emptied and closed; nearly 10,000 refugees from these camps had repatriated collectively to El Salvador. Added to these numbers are those families that have returned individually to previously abandoned areas once the collective repopulations took place. In the case of both the displaced inside El Salvador and the refugees in Honduras, the living conditions attendant upon displacement were significant factors in precipitating a return. For the displaced and the refugees, the conditions to which they had been relegated provided neither security nor subsistence in a contracting economy. It is important to point out that displacement under such conditions is a violation of international law regarding the rights of civilians in a noninternational conflict. For the internally displaced, life in urban areas was precarious for both political and economic reasons. The displaced have been targets of official repression because of their places of previous residence, and the suspicion with which the armed forces regard them complicated their already difficult economic situation. Many were reluctant to register for assistance with CONADES, the governmental entity responsible for material aid to the displaced, for fear that their names and locations would be released to the security forces and because of the proven inadequacy of government-sponsored programs. This left them dependent upon either humanitarian organizations or individual support systems, neither of which could provide the resources necessary for an adequate standard 127

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of living in either the short or the long term. Living conditions for the vast majority of the displaced, then, have been and continue to be deprived: Most have no land, no work, no regular source of assistance, no health care or educational services, and no personal security. When repeated attempts to negotiate a political solution to the national conflict failed, it was clear that emergency assistance was no longer possible or appropriate and longer-term solutions were necessary. Sectors of the displaced population concluded that their best option for obtaining subsistence was a return to their villages in conflictive zones. A collective return would enhance not only their productive capability but also their potential for securing international assistance and monitoring, thus decreasing the likelihood of attack from the army. For those at the Mesa Grande camp in Honduras, security was also a primary concern, and socioeconomic conditions were motivating influences as well. Since the camp had been established, relations between the refugees and the armed forces of Honduras had been strained. On at least two occasions, the Honduran military had cooperated with Salvadoran troops in large-scale planned operations designed to target and kill civilians fleeing violence in the northern departments of El Salvador and seeking refuge across the border. Refugees arriving at Mesa Grande consistently reported hostile treatment from the Honduran troops stationed between the camp and the border. Many reported that members of their parties had been captured or had disappeared after entering Honduras. Moreover, Mesa Grande was continually surrounded by a military cordon after its establishment, and soldiers sometimes fired randomly into the camp or entered the camp in small-scale incursions. In 1986, a series of events led some 5,000 refugees to decide to repatriate to El Salvador. At that time, the government of Honduras initiated efforts to assume greater control of the camps near the Salvadoran border, and when the UNHCR announced that budget cuts would curtail its ability to provide monitoring services, the refugees began to search for alternatives to their situation. In a memorandum of understanding, a new administrative structure for the camp was announced by the Honduran government, and the refugees at Mesa Grande saw that they would soon lose what little autonomy they had preserved through the operation of their own social institutions within the camp. At the same time, incidents of harassment and intimidation by the Honduran military were becoming more frequent, and humanitarian organizations operating inside the camp experienced greater difficulty gaining access for the purpose of transporting food and medicine to the refugees. Refugees at Mesa Grande during this period told international observers that they feared their presence in Honduras would be tolerated only under more repressive conditions. Already, the UNHCR was

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presenting three alternatives to the refugees: nationalize, seek asylum elsewhere, or repatriate. By 1987, many at Mesa Grande had concluded, as had the membership of CRIPDES and the CNR inside El Salvador, that their most promising course of action was a collective return to their places of origin. The experience of the displaced in collective repopulations, together with the uncertainty of individual repatriation, which tended to result in internal displacement, were factors that contributed to the decision to repatriate as intact communities. The armed forces of El Salvador, meanwhile, had sponsored their own repopulation projects as part of a rural pacification strategy. In the aftermath of military offensives designed to depopulate conflictive zones, they elaborated a series of programs designed to consolidate these zones. Consolidation of territory was to be accomplished through the establishment of rebuilt towns and villages populated by displaced persons allegiant to the armed forces and willing to form civil defense patrols. These projects have not been widely replicable, nor do they show promise of becoming self-sustaining because of the top-down approach and inappropriate assistance. The counterinsurgency framework in which they were conceived necessarily puts military goals ahead of social and economic objectives, thus dooming the projects to failure, from a developmental perspective. However, the design of the projects and the determination of the military to support and expand them, despite the difficulties observed in promoting and maintaining them, are evidence of the significance attached by the armed forces to the process of controlled repopulation. Officials interviewed concerning this process consistently emphasized the particular view of the armed forces with respect to repopulation. Military strategists had seen control of the countryside—and thus of the rural population—as a necessary achievement, critical to the winning of the war. In practice, control of rural areas was primarily sought through the process of depopulation during the mid-1980s. Conflictive rural areas were cleared of civilians, through air and ground operations, for the purpose of separating FMLN combatants from all possibilities of civilian logistical support. This strategy did not result in the defeat of the FMLN, but the armed forces continued to regard the depopulation of areas where FMLN forces are active as a significant achievement. Nonetheless, they soon moved on to the stage of promoting the repopulation of these areas. This stage, however, was conceptualized in explicitly military terms under the auspices of both the National Plan and UPR. It was seen as a means to secure strategic territories through the reconstruction of population centers inhabited only by those who could demonstrate their support for the armed forces. Thus, within the framework of this long-term strategy, the armed

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forces see the independent repopulation of conflictive zones as a military setback. This view explains the relentless hostility that the military reserves for the repopulations organized by the CNR and the repatriates. The fact that the FMLN had voiced support for the repopulation movement, even accepting government-sponsored projects within its area of influence, simply reinforced the military's view. In the face of repression, however, the independent repopulation movement has continued to grow, through collective and individual returns. The refugees and the displaced see their very survival in their places of origin as an accomplishment of some magnitude, given the degree of official opposition they face. Their construction of a network of national and international support is also seen as an organizational triumph. In contrast to the official projects, which aim toward rebuilding the status quo ante, the returnees tend to create microcosmic socioeconomic systems that show promise of more equitable access to means of subsistence. These projects are in fact the only projects in which the residents themselves actually address the inequalities that led to civil war. After arrival, however, the actual reconstruction of abandoned villages had to be confronted. At several sites, little remained of the original community buildings. Roads were overgrown, houses were either partially or completely destroyed, and water systems were inoperable. At most sites, there were no work animals initially, and everything had to be hauled by hand. Nor was heavy farming equipment available. Even so, the communities grew. By the end of 1988, most had constructed permanent housing; rebuilt rudimentary infrastructure; organized production; established regular education, health, and pastoral services; and elected governing bodies. In no case has an independently repopulated community been reabandoned. Obstacles to continued growth remained, however. When asked, the repatriates and CNR returnees consistently identified the same problems. Their proximity to military operations has been a primary concern, and the incursions of government soldiers into their villages a source of fear. The legal aid office of the Archdiocese of San Salvador, which records these types of incidents in the repopulated villages, compiled a list of hostile encounters and attacks on the repatriates' communities in the first six months after repopulation. These incidents included group detentions, beatings, helicopter and mortar attacks, random gunfire, house-to-house searches, and robbery.1 Data compiled for the period between October 1987 and August 1988 documenting human rights abuses by the armed forces in the independently repopulated villages and camps for the displaced included eighty-seven detentions, sixteen killings or disappearances, and eleven casualties.2 Because the victims of repression tend to be community leaders, teachers, and health workers, it appears that the

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armed forces are attempting to eliminate grassroots leadership in order to demoralize the independent communities. The fact that in most cases of detention, individuals are released after a short period suggests that the arrests are designed solely to intimidate the detainee. Moreover, victims frequently report suffering physical and psychological abuse during their detention.3 What appear to be isolated incidents attributed to the FMLN have occurred in two of the repopulation sites. On January 11,1988, armed men killed two residents of Santa Marta and detained two others. The two who were detained were later released and returned to Santa Marta, but in the end they fled the area. Two months later, in March, a couple at Las Vueltas was detained and killed by the FMLN. All six people were allegedly spies for the Salvadoran military who were denouncing others in the villages to the security forces, according to the residents. After the ARENA party won the presidential election in March 1989, repression directed at the independent repopulations increased. In April, the Treasury Police and troops of the First Infantry Brigade invaded the offices of CRIPDES and the CNR in San Salvador, along with the headquarters of other popular organizations. According to spokespersons for the organizations, soldiers and police ransacked the offices, clubbed some of those inside, and arrested seventy-five people, most of them displaced peasants who had come to the offices seeking assistance. Those detained were taken to the headquarters of the Treasury Police. As of May 1989, six of the CRIPDES/CNR leadership remained in prison. Those who had been released reported that all of those captured had been mistreated, but that the leadership had been particularly singled out and that the women had been ferociously tortured.4 In spite of the repression, CRIPDES and the CNR have continued to function as organizations, and the returnees have remained at the repopulated sites. Because their determination to stay was evident early on, the armed forces developed alternative tactics designed to control the repatriates and the CNR repopulators. Of paramount concern from a human rights perspective is the restriction of access to the sites and the confiscation or delay of material aid destined for the repopulations. Like the initial depopulations of these areas, the restrictions of access and aid are a violation of international law regarding the rights of civilians in a war zone. Specifically, Protocol II Additional to the Geneva Conventions of 1949 prohibits attacks on goods indispensable to the survival of civilian populations. Nonetheless, the Red Cross has repeatedly reported that its shipments have been detained or turned back at military checkpoints. This embargo is especially effective in the first months following repopulation, a period during which a community is not yet reestablished and has few resources. Additionally, restricted access continues to impose hardships

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on communities, even after they have been established for some years, because certain essential goods (medications, clothing, and farm equipment) must be imported. Between December 1987 and August 1988, the Roman Catholic and Lutheran churches reported that more than fortyfive truckloads of food and supplies destined for the repatriates at Santa Marta, Las Vueltas, Copapayo, Guaijila, and San Antonio Los Ranchos had been either delayed or turned back by the armed forces of El Salvador.5 Access to the repopulation sites has also been denied by the military to representatives of international humanitarian organizations in an attempt to control information and assistance. For example, the archbishop of San Salvador was explicitly instructed to restrict the number of international religious people in the repopulated villages. In a letter of January 8, 1988, Colonel Juan Orlando Zepeda wrote to Archbishop Rivera y Damas asking that the archbishopric use its good offices to impede or restrict the great numbers of foreign priests and nuns in the conflictive places or areas of the country. They frequently interfere in the military operations of the armed forces against the delinquent terrorists of the FMLN, who use the masses for cover, as a source of logistical supplies, and as a source of recruitment. The armed forces are not against the humanitarian aid that the Catholic Church is giving to displaced Salvadorans, nor can they be against the Church's evangelizing work. But they question any kind of manipulation, either material or spiritual, of our people. 6

The letter revealed the attitude of the military not only toward international observers in these villages but also toward the repopulators themselves. They are seen as cover for the insurgency and as manipulable objects and dupes in the struggle for control of territory and population. A third means of controlling the independent repopulations is the withholding of identity documents, which is also a violation of international law. Because by law each person must hold an identity card that states his or her name, address and personal characteristics and present it upon request by a public official, anyone without a cédula is subject to arrest. Moreover, because members of the FMLN are typically without documents, an individual without a cédula may be accused of being a subversive. The majority of the displaced and virtually all of the repatriates are without cédulas. Most lost them in flight or were unable to renew them because the local town hall had been destroyed or was inaccessible to them. In the case of children born since displacement, cédulas were never issued. In their communications with the government, the repopulators have consistently appealed for identity documents and cite the lack of

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them as an issue of primary concern, more urgent than all other necessities. Without documents, an individual is at risk for detention and is unable to work in a formal enterprise, travel, marry, register a birth, obtain a driver's license, vote, or receive any social service. By withholding these documents, the armed forces can curtail the movements and activities of individuals and arrest anyone at will. They can also influence elections and national policy by ensuring that large numbers of people who oppose the pursuit of a military solution to the conflict cannot vote. Appeals for documents have been made to the authorities, based on both national and international law. The laws of the international community are very clear on this point: A government may not assign illegal status to its own citizens by withholding required identity documents under any circumstances. Salvadoran national law is also clear about this issue. Article 128 of the Body of Diplomatic Law and Its Reforms specifies that consular offices in all countries must maintain a registry of Salvadoran citizens in the country and are empowered to issue identity documents to such persons at the time they are inscribed in the registry. The consular office in Honduras, however, has not maintained this registry, nor has it issued the required cedulas. Under Article 235 of the same body of law, consular officials are also empowered to issue provisional passports to "poor Salvadorans or repatriates" for the purpose of returning to their country.7 The Honduran consulate did not execute this explicitly assigned function either. Inside the country, the law provides that "In case of loss or damage to the cedula, the interested party may obtain a second one."8 Despite the explicit direction of the law, the government has been slow to issue the required documents. By March 1988, authorities estimated that of the more than 4,300 persons who had returned from Mesa Grande six months earlier, only 1,085 had been documented.9 In a report to the Ministry of the Interior, the causes of the delay were identified by officials of the vice ministry and the UNHCR. First, they cited a lack of cooperation from the mayors' offices in some of the municipalities. According to a documentation team of the UNHCR, the mayors of the repopulated towns of Arcatao, Las Vueltas, and Las Flores were not cooperating in the documentation effort. When this charge was investigated, it was discovered that in some cases, local civilian authorities had been forbidden to issue the documents by the military. The mayors claimed to have orders from the commander in charge of the First Military Detachment not to extend documents to people in the area under their control. When interviewed in January 1987, the acting commander admitted that these orders had existed, but stated that they had been lifted. The mayors in question, however, said that if the orders had been changed, they had not seen anything to that effect in writing and would therefore continue to refuse to cooperate.

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Next, the report to the Interior Ministry mentioned that officials assigned to document the returnees were sometimes denied access to the repopulations by military authorities. In an interview, one ministry official explained, "The problem is outside of our control. It is a military problem. Our workers have problems with them and have been detained for up to four hours by them. It is a problem beyond our reach; we cannot intervene in these decisions."10 Finally, the report identified the lack of personnel and typewriters in municipal offices as a cause for the delay in documentation.11 It appeared that the Office of Regional Development, the ministry department assigned responsibility for documentation, had been unable to cope with the process, and its personnel were in effect acting as assistants to the UNHCR in its efforts. The UNHCR, for its part, had actively tried to expedite the documentation process, but had encountered resistance from the military, a lack of political will at the higher levels of the civilian government, and bureaucratic delays resulting from a lack of personnel and equipment in the vice ministry. Despite physical repression, restricted access, and a lack of documentation, however, the refugees and the displaced continue to return to their places of origin in conflictive zones. Their numbers still represent only a fraction of those displaced by war, but their independent initiative has acquired a growing significance in the ongoing conflict. Repopulation of conflictive areas began as a response to a counterinsurgency campaign that deprived rural people of their means of subsistence, leaving them few alternatives to returning home. Survival during the intervening period, however, had required that they develop mechanisms of protection, social and political awareness, systems of communication, and networks of material aid. Some developed their organizational capability while they tried to survive the counterinsurgency in free-fire zones. The repopulators at El Barillo, for example, had weathered years of life in a war zone before they were displaced during Operation Phoenix in 1986. In Honduras, conditions in the camps and the proximity of repressive forces also required the development of effective democratic means of social cohesion and self-protection at the community level. Many people developed organizational skills and a determination to defend basic human rights as displaced persons without access to adequate food, shelter, or basic services. For both the displaced and the refugees, the fundamental disregard for the needs of rural people that forms both the ideological and operational core of the army's pacification campaign in the countryside ultimately created a social and economic situation that was intolerable. In response, the CNR was formed and the Committee for Repopulation at Mesa Grande subsequently developed. The offical reaction to the repopulation movement was adversarial from the beginning—in the inter-

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vening years, it has grown more repressive. After the ARENA party took control of the legislature in 1989 and assumed the presidency, popular organizations representing the displaced found their offices surrounded, their leaders in prison, and their membership seriously threatened. In June 1990, as the far right tightened its grip on the military and the civilian government, accessibility to the repopulation sites decreased, and reports of bombing incidents in and around the communities began to reach the United States. Even so, the repopulation movement flourishes. Rural people—determined to return home—are growing in an awareness of their power as communities, their rights as civilians, and their role as citizens in determining the future of their own society.

Epilogue

In March 1989, the ARENA party won the presidential elections in El Salvador. Since that time, repression directed at the popular movement organizations and the rural repopulated communities has increased, with but one example being the raid of the CRIPDES and CNR offices in March 1989 and subsequent detention of six of their leaders. In October 1989, the office of an important labor federation was bombed, and several people were killed, including internationally respected labor leader Febe Elizabeth Velasquez. One month later, on November 11, the FMLN launched its strongest offensive since the beginning of the war, taking positions in San Salvador and other major cities around the country. During this offensive, government aerial bombing of heavily populated areas around the capital killed large numbers of civilians, and on November 15, the Salvadoran army murdered six Jesuit priests, among them the rector and vice rector of the Central American University and the director of the Human Rights Institute (IDHUCA). Despite the ongoing war and continuing violations of human rights, Salvadoran refugees have continued to return and repopulate their places of origin. Since the initial, ground-breaking return of more than 4,000 people described in this book, approximately 14,000 refugees have collectively repatriated. • On August 13,1988,1,200 refugees from Mesa Grande returned to Teocinte and Guaijila in Chalatenango department. During their trip, the army detained fifteen trucks containing emergency food assistance supplied by the Catholic and Lutheran churches and destined for the new communities. • On October 29, 1988, 1,500 refugees traveled from the Mesa Grande camp to their homes in Santa Marta, Cabanas province. • On October 27, 1989, approximately 1,200 refugees from Mesa Grande returned to Teocinte, Tremedal, and Corral de Piedra near Guarjila in Chalatenango department. A two-week delay in the return, resulting in part from the Salvadoran government's initial refusal to permit a return to designated sites, produced tense confrontations between striking 137

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refugees, the Honduran military, the Salvadoran government, and the UNHCR. Three refugees died in the camp from exposure and illness during this period. • On November 18, 1989, approximately 1,200 refugees from the Colomoncagua camp repatriated to the town of Meanguera in Morazan department. They later renamed the town Ciudad Segundo Montes, after one of the Jesuit priests slain by the army three days earlier. This return took place with no assistance, either from the UNHCR or the Salvadoran government. • Between December 1989 and February 1990, the Colomoncagua camp, which had a former refugee population of more than 8,000, was completely vacated. The repatriates settled in Ciudad Segundo Montes, several villages of northern Morazan, including Quebrados, San Luis, Los Hatos, and Barrial. These repatriations took place with government approval and UNHCR assistance. On February 27,1990, the Colomoncagua camp was closed. • In January 1990, some 1,400 refugees living in the San Antonio refugee camp collectively repatriated and settled in Usulutan department. The San Antonio camp was subsequently closed. Reports of continuing human rights violations in the repopulated settlements continue. Government aerial bombing of the Corral de Piedra settlement on February 11, 1990, left six civilians dead, most of them children. A thirteen-year-old was injured in an aerial attack on Ciudad Segundo Montes on April 22,1990, and several people were detained by the army at the same time. In June, more bombing in the vicinity of repopulated communities in Chalatenango and the Copapayo community in Cuscatlan was reported.

Notes

Chapter 1 1. "Duarte, Prisoner of War," NACLA Report on the Americas, (January/March 1986), p. 23. 2. Segundo Montes, El Salvador 1986: En busca de soluciones para los desplazados (San Salvador: UCA, 1986). 3. Sara Miles, "The Real Wan Low-Intensity Conflict in Central America," NACLA Report on the Americas, (April/May 1986), p. 36. 4. Ibid. 5. Segundo Montes, El agro salvadoreño (1973-1980) (San Salvador: UCA, 1980), p. 127; Roy Prosterman, "Aspectos demográficos de la reforma Agraria en El Salvador," Polemica, no. 17/18 (1985): 94; Laurence R. Simon and James C. Stephens, Jr., El Salvador Land Reform, 1980-1981: Impact Audit (Boston: Oxfam America, 1982), p. 2. 6. Montes, El agro, pp. 38-47. 7. Tercer censo agropecuario, 1971, vol. 2, Dirección General de Estadística y Censos (San Salvador: 1975), Table 2. 8. Simon and Stephens, El Salvador Land Reform, p. 21. 9. Robert Armstrong and Janet Shenk, El Salvador. Hie Face of Revolution, (Boston: South End Press, 1982), p. 76. 10. Tercer censo agropecuario, Table 1. 11. Agricultural labor unions and peasant organizations have been prohibited by law since 1932. 12. Pablo Castro, "La participación del estado en la penetración capitalista de un estado atrasado de El Salvador El caso de Chalatenango (1960-1975)," unpublished thesis, Universidad de Costa Rica, 1976, pp. 197-201. 13. Napoleon Alvarado Lopez and Jesus Octavio Cruz Olmedo, "Conciencia y cambio social en la Hacienda Tres Ceibas, 1955-1976," unpublished thesis, Universidad de Costa Rica, 1978. 14. Tommie Sue Montgomery, Revolution in El Salvador Origins and Evolution, (Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 1982), p. 123. 15. Alvarado Lopez and Cruz Olmedo, "Conciencia y cambio."

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16. Vozpopular, (San Salvador), first week of November 1974 and first week of December 1974. 17. Enrique A. Baloyra, El Salvador in Transition (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina), pp. 85-87. 18. Philip L. Russell, El Salvador in Crisis (Austin, Texas: Colorado River Press, 1985), p. 89. 19. Martin Diskin, Agrarian Reform in El Salvador: An Evaluation (San Francisco: Institute for Food and Development Policy, 1985), p. 6. 20. Joseph R. Thome, "Reforma agraria en El Salvador," Boletín de ciencias económicas y sociales 7,4, p. 243. 21. Socorro Jurídico Cristiano, El Salvador: La situación de los derechos Humanos, (Mexico, D.F.: Consejo Mundial de Iglesias, 1986) and Americas Watch, Settling into the Routine, (Washington, D.C.: May 1986), p. 3. 22. Americas Watch, pp. 5-6.

Chapter 2 1. El Salvador: Guerra, política y paz (1979-1988), CIÑAS and CRIES (San Salvador: 1988), p. 15. 2. "El Salvador: The National Plan," U.S. Agency for International Development, mimeo, n.d. 3. El Salvador: Guerra, p. 52 4. Segundo Montes, "La Situación de los Salvadoreños Desplazados y Refugiados," Estudios Centroamericanos, no. 434 (1984): 905. 5. El Salvador 1985: Health, Human Rights, and the War, San Francisco Committee for Health Rights in Central America (San Francisco: 1985), p. 3. 6. International Committee of the Red Cross, Protocol I, Article 50, Protocols Additional to the Geneva Conventions of 12 August 1949, Geneva (1977). 7. International Committee of the Red Cross, Protocol II, Article 17, Protocols Additional to the Geneva Conventions of 12 August 1949, Geneva (1977). 8. Americas Watch, Settling into the Routine, (Washington, D.C.: May 1986), p. 27. 9. Ibid., p. 28. 10. "Salvadoran Civilians in the Crossfire," Los Angeles Times, April 11, 1986. 11. Segundo Montes, El Salvador 1985: Desplazados y refugiados (San Salvador: UCA, 1986). 12. Ibid. 13. El Salvador 1985: Health, Human Rights, and the War, p. 7. 14. Ibid., p. 7. 15. El Diario de Hoy (San Salvador), December 24,1985. 16. El Salvador 1985: Health, Human Rights and the War, p. 9. 17. Ibid. 18. Ibid., p. 5.

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19. Ibid., p. 12. 20. "Winning Hearts, Minds and Bodies," Resource Center Bulletin, no. 11 (Fall 1987). 21. Eva Gold, "The New Face of War in El Salvador: A View of Counterinsurgency Strategy" (Philadelphia: NARMIC, 1986), p. 7.

Chapter 3 1. Interview with FUND AS AL staff members at Tenancingo (August 1986). 2. "Memoria de Labores: 1985," (Ciudad Delgado: FUNDASAL, 1986), p. II-6. 3. Interview with returnees at Tenancingo (displaced to Santa Cruz Michapa in September 1983), April 1986. 4. Interview with FUNDASAL officials, San Salvador (August 1986). 5. "Lincamientos para la reconstrucción de la FUNDASAL, mimeo (Aprii 1985), pp. 39-41. 6. "Participatory Grassroots Development," Development, nos. 2/3 (1987). 7. Noticias, no. 5 (San Salvador: FUNDASAL, October/November 1985). 8. "Proyecto de repoblación y reconstrucción de Tenancingo" (San Salvador: FUNDASAL, March 1987), pp. 2-3. 9. Ibid. 10. Interview with FUNDASAL field staff at Tenancingo (August 1986). 11. Interviews with FUNDASAL staff members at Tenancingo (October 1986). 12. "Proyecto de repoblación," p. 15. 13. Ibid., Table 6. 14. El Diario de Hoy, (San Salvador) July 25,1986. 15. Interview with returnees at Tenancingo (June 1986). 16. El Diario de Hoy (San Salvador), May 7,1986. 17. El Mundo (San Salvador) June 13,1986. 18. Interview with returnees at Tenancingo (November 1986). 19. Interview with returnees at Tenancingo (November 1986).

Chapter 4 1. CRIPDES communication, mimeo (August 1986); CARECEN Speaks (October/November/December 1987). 2. CRIPDES communication, mimeo (n.d.). 3. CRIPDES, "Resumen," mimeo (November 1985). 4. CRIPDES, "Breve analisis," mimeo (1985). 5. Ibid. 6. Settling into the Routine, pp. 5-35. 7. Interviews with camp coordinator at Calle Real, San Salvador (February 1986).

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8. CRIPDES, "Tema Fundamental," mimeo (May 13,1986). 9. International Committee of the Red Cross, Protocol II, Article 17, Protocols Additional to the Geneva Conventions of 12 August 1949, Geneva (1977). 10. Alvarado Lopez and Cruz Olmedo, "Conciencia y cambio." 11. "Informe sobre como está la repoblación de la cooperativa San Antonio El Barillo" (January 21,1988). 12. Carta a las Iglesias, (August 16-21,1987), p. 11. 13. El Mundo, (San Salvador), July 28,1986. 14. Socorro Jurídico Cristiano, El Salvador: La situación de los derechos humanos (Mexico, D.F.: Casa Mundial de Iglesias, 1986).

Chapters 1. Kenneth Sharpe, "Rotten at the Corps: Officers' Mafia in El Salvador," The Nation, vol. 241, no. 12 (October 19,1985), pp. 371-376. 2. Interview with Rick Nelson, USAID official, San Salvador (February 1987). 3. Unclassified cable, U.S. Department of State (October 1986). 4. "Bankrolling Failure," Report to the Arms Control and Foreign Policy Caucus (Washington, D.C.: November 1987). 5. Wall Street Journal, September 14,1987. 6. El Mundo (San Salvador), March 9,1988. 7. "Campana Unidos para Reconstruir," press release from the Armed Forces of EI Salvador (September 1986). 8. La Prensa Grafica (San Salvador), September 6,1986. 9. "Campana Unidos para Reconstruir." 10. "Bankrolling Failure." 11. Ibid. 12. "Retorno de la Poblacion de Ichanqueso, Jurisdiccion de Suchitoto, Depto. Cuscatlan," CONADES-2806 (March 1987). 13. Interview with FINATA official, Suchitoto, El Salvador (August 1987). 14. "Retorno de la Poblacion."

Chapter 6 1. Francis W. Mulwa, "Participation of the Grassroots in Rural Development," Development, no. 2/3 (1987) p. 108. 2. Interview with Miguel Melgar, Suchitoto (November 13,1987). 3. Ibid.

Chapter 7 1. Reports of Tutela Legal, Archdiocese of San Salvador (February 1987).

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2. Interview with Colonel Juan Orlando Zepeda, intelligence section of the high command of the armed forces of El Salvador (June 1987). 3. "Salvadoran Refugees Return Home," (Washington, D.C.: CARECEN, January 1988), Appendix I. 4. Authors' interviews with twenty-six political prisoners in Mariona prison (San Salvador, March-September 1987). 5. Interview with Roberto Rodriguez, UNHCR representative in El Salvador (San Salvador, July 14,1987). 6. A resident of Santa Marta (Cabanas) whose son had been captured by the armed forces twice after returning individually from Mesa Grande said, "There will be more security when the Mesa Grande people return in a group. As it is now, we can be picked off one at a time and no one knows about it." Interview at Santa Marta (July 1987). 7. "Memorandum de entendimiento entre el Gobierno de Honduras y el Alto Comisionado de las Naciones Unidas para la Regulación del Tratamiento a los Refugiados," mimeo (June 3,1987). 8. In the early 1980s, the governments of Mexico, Costa Rica, Panama, Colombia, and Venezuela launched the Contadora Initiative in an attempt to secure peace in Central America through negotiations. An agreement between conflicting parties was never signed however, and by 1986the initiative was moribund. 9. The Central American Peace Plan was signed by the presidents of Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica in 1987. It was an attempt to secure a ceasefire in Nicaragua and El Salvador, negotiate solutions to the region's conflicts, and address some of the political and economic consequences of the protracted war. 10. Authors' interviews at the Mesa Grande Camp, Honduras (January 1987). 11. On March 28,1987, the refugee Committee for Repopulation submitted an extensive plan for repatriation to the UNHCR, the Salvadoran government, and the archdiocese of San Salvador. 12. "Plan de Repatriación," Committee for Repopulation, mimeo (March 28,1987).

Chapter 8 1. Esquipulas II Accords—Procedures to Establish Firm and Lasting Peace in Central America (August 1987). 2. Authors' interviews, September 1987, Santa Marta and San Salvador. 3. Interview with UNHCR official (San Salvador, September 1987).

Chapter 9 1. Report of Tutela Legal 5/311987, San Salvador. 2. El Mundo (San Salvador), October 13,1987. 3. Letter to President José Napoleon Duarte from the House of Repre-

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Notes

sentatives of the Congress of the United States (September 23,1987). 4. El Mundo (San Salvador), September 25,1987. 5. On October 6,1987, the Going Home delegation, headed by Lutheran Bishop Gus Schultz, met with the UNHCR's representative in Honduras. The delegation informed the representative that support groups were prepared to provide all logistical assistance necessary, should the UNHCR fail to do so. 6. Interview with a member of the Going Home delegation, Mesa Grande camp in Honduras (October 6,1987). 7. According to reports, the UNHCR, Jean-Pierre Hocke, personally telephoned Honduran President Jose Azcona and Salvadoran President José Napoleón Duarte to encourage them to allow the repatriation to take place. 8. Maijorie Miller, Miami Herald, October 12,1987. 9. Report of Tutela Legal (San Salvador: March 31,1988). 10. Interviews with UNHCR representative in El Salvador, San Salvador (February-March 1988). 11. La Prensa Grafica (San Salvador), November 15,1987. 12. For a discussion of the development of this strategy, see Sara Miles, "The Real War: Low-Intensity Conflict in Central America," NACLA Report on the Americas, vol. XX, no. 2, April/May 1986. 13. "La repatriacion: Una aspiracion de los refugiados," Archdiocese of San Salvador (San Salvador: n.d). 14. In addition to the five villages repopulated by repatriates from Mesa Grande, San Jose Las Flores was repopulated in June 1986, Hacienda El Barillo in July of the same year, and Panchimilama in January 1987.

Chapter 10 1. "Human Rights and Humanitarian Aid in the European Economic Community Supported Populations in El Salvador," Catholic Relief Services, mimeo (September 1988). 2. Ibid. 3. Authors' interviews with repatriate prisoners at Mariona and Ilopongo prisons (San Salvador, 1986 and 1987). 4. El Salvador on Line (Washington, D.C.: April 24,1989). 5. "Human Rights and Humanitarian Aid." 6. Letter to Archbishop Arturo Rivera y Damas from Colonel Juan Orlando Zepeda, Document no. 0040 (Dependencia C-II/C) (January 8,1988). 7. Ley organica del cuerpo diplomatico de la Republica de El Salvador con sus reformas, Article 128 and 235 (San Salvador: 1978). 8. Ibid. 9. Ministerio del Interior, report to Dr. Jose Antonio Herrera, Director, Regional Development (San Salvador: March 7,1988). 10. Authors' interview with Vice Minister of the Interior Carmen Amalia Barahona de Morales (San Salvador, November 18,1987). 11. Ministerio de Interior, report to Jose Antonio Herrera, March 7,1988, San Salvador, mimeo.

Glossary

ANEP

National Association of Private Enterprise.

ARENA

National Republican Alliance, Salvadoran political party.

asentamientos

Settlements.

buzones

Rudimentary bomb shelters dug out by residents in conflictive areas.

campesino

Peasant, farmer.

canton

Village.

CARNET

Central American Refugee Network: a U.S.-based network of refugee advocacy organizations.

CDHES

Salvadoran Human Rights Commission (nongovernmental).

cédula

National identity document required by law. All citizens over 18 years of age must have one in their possession at all times.

CNR

National Coordinator ofRepopulation.

colon

Salvadoran currency.

colonato

Land area allocated to resident workers on a hacienda for subsistence production.

colono

Sharecropper.

CONADES

National Commission for Assistance to the Displaced of El Salvador. 145

146

Glossary

CONARA

National Commission for the Restoration of Areas.

CONARE

Honduran National Commission on Refugees.

COPROSAL

Committee of Salvadoran Health Professionals.

CRIPDES

Christian Committee for the Displaced of El Salvador.

DIACONIA

Ecumenical institution for coordinating church-sponsored assistance programs, with members from the Catholic, Lutheran, Baptist, and Episcopal churches and two cooperative organizations.

DIDECO

Community Development Directorate of the Interior Ministry.

directiva

Community council.

desplazados

Displaced persons: individuals who have been forced to leave their places of residence because of violence and move to another area within the country.

El Mundo

Salvadoran daily newspaper.

FDR

Democratic Revolutionary Front: composed of opposition political parties allied with the FMLN.

FECCAS

Christian Federation of Salvadoran Peasants.

FINATA

National Fund for Agricultural Transformation: institution in charge of phase three of the agrarian reform program.

FMLN

Farabundo Marti Front for National Liberation: alliance of five guerrilla armies fighting the Salvadoran government.

147

Glossary

FUNDASAL

Salvadoran Foundation for Development and Basic Housing.

hacienda

Plantation.

hectare

Land measure equivalent to 2.47 acres.

IDHUCA

Human Rights Institute of the University of Central America.

masas

Term used by the Salvadoran civilian and military authorities to describe Salvadoran citizens living in conflictive areas and suspected of sympathizing with or aiding the FMLN. The term is often used to distinguish these citizens from the civilian population in general.

masivas

Local Salvadoran term for largescale collective repatriation/repopulation.

minifundio

(minifiindista)

Small landholding (holder).

ORDEN

National Democratic Organization: a primarily rural paramilitary network created to identify and eradicate individuals or groups considered to be in opposition to landowners and the authorities.

PDC

Christian Democratic Party.

refugiados

Refugees: individuals forced to flee their places of residence and seek refuge in another country.

refugio

Place of refuge, refugee camp.

repatriación

Return of a refugee to country of origin.

repoblaciones

Repopulation: a return of displaced persons to or near their places of origin.

148

Glossary

reubicaciones

Relocation project in which displaced persons are resettled in areas far from their original residence.

Tutela Legal

Legal aid office of the archdiocese of San Salvador one of the most widely respected human rights monitors recognized internationally.

UCA

University of Central America.

UCS

Salvadoran Peasants Union.

UPR

United to Reconstruct: counterinsurgency program initiated in 1986.

Bibliography

Alvarado Lopez, Napoleon, and Jesus Octavio Cruz Olmedo. "Conciencia y cambio social en la Hacienda Tres Ceibas, 1955-1976." Unpublished thesis, Universidad de Costa Rica, 1976. Americas Watch. Settling into the Routine. Washington, D.C.: May 1986. Archdiocese of San Salvador. "La repatriación: Una aspiración de los refugiados." San Salvador n.d. Armstrong, Robert, and Janet Shenk. El Salvador: The Face of Revolution. Boston: South End Press, 1982. Baloyra, Enrique A. El Salvador in Transition. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina, 1985. "Bankrolling Failure." Report to the Arms Control and Foreign Policy Caucus. Washington, D.C.: November 1987. "Campana Unidos para Reconstruir." Armed Forces of El Salvador press release. San Salvador: September 1986. CARECEN Speaks (October/November/December 1987). Carta a las Iglesias (August 16-11,1987). Castro, Pablo. "La participación del estado en la penetración capitalista de un estado atrasado de El Salvador: El caso de Chalatenango (1960-1975)." Unpublished thesis, Universidad de Costa Rica, 1976. Catholic Relief Services. "Human Rights and Humanitarian Aid in the European Economic Community Supported Populations in El Salvador." Mimeo, September 1988. Comision Nacional para los Desplazados (CONADES). "Retorno de la poblacion de Ichanqueso, Jurisdicción de Suchitoto, Departamento de Cuscatlan." Mimeo, March 1987. Comité Cristiano para los Desplazados de El Salvador (CRIPDES). "Tema Fundamental." mimeo, May 1986. . "Resumen," Mimeo, 1985. . "Breve Analisis," Mimeo, 1985. Diskin, Martin. Agrarian Reform in El Salvador: An Evaluation. San Francisco: Institute for Food and Development Policy, 1985. El Diario de Hoy. San Salvador (July 25,1986; May 7,1986; December 24,1985). El Mundo. San Salvador (March 9,1988; October 13,1987; September 25,1987; July 28,1986; June 13,1986). El Salvador on Line (April 24,1989). FUNDASAL. "Proyecto de repoblación y reconstrucción de Tenancingo." San Salvador: March 1987. . "Memoria de Labores: 1985." Ciudad Delgado: 1986. . Noticias, no. 5 (October/November 1985).

149

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Bibliography

. "Lincamientos para la reconstrucción de la FUND AS AL." Mimeo, April 1985. Gold, Eva. "The New Face of the War in El Salvador: A View of Counterinsurgency Strategy." Philadelphia: NARMIC, 1986. La Prensa Grafica. San Salvador (November 15,1987; September 6,1986). Ley organica del cuerpo diplomatico de la República de El Salvador con sus reformas, Articles 128 and 235. San Salvador: 1978. "Memorandum de entendimiento entre el Gobierno de Honduras y el Alto Comisionado de las Naciones Unidas para la Regulación del Tratamiento a los Refugiados." Mimeo, June 3,1987. Miami Herald (October 12,1987). Miles, Sara. "The Real War: Low-Intensity Conflict in Central America." NACLA Report on the Americas (April/May 1986). Montes, Segundo. El Salvador 1986. En busca de soluciones para los desplazados. San Salvador: Universidad de Centroamerica, 1986. . El Salvador 1985. Desplazados y refugiados. San Salvador: Universidad de Centroamerica, 1985. . El agro salvadoreño (1973-1980). San Salvador: Universidad de Centroamerica, 1980. Montgomery, Tommie Sue. Revolution in El Salvador: Origins and Evolution. Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 1982. Mulwa, Francis. "Participation of the Grassroots in Rural Development." Development, no. 2/3 (1987). North American Congress on Latin America. "Duarte, Prisoner of War." NACLA Report on the Americas (January/March 1986). "Participatory Grassroots Development." Development, no. 2/3 (1987). Prosterman, Roy. "Aspectos demográficos de la reforma agraria en El Salvador." Polemica, no. 17/18 (1985). Resource Center. "Winning Hearts, Minds and Bodies." Resource Center Bulletin, no. 11 (Fall, 1987). Russell, Phillip L. El Salvador in Crisis. Austin, Texas: Colorado River Press, 1985. San Francisco Committee for Health Rights in Central America. El Salvador 1985: Health, Human Rights, and the War. San Francisco: 1985. Sharpe, Kenneth. "Rotten at the Corps: Officers' Mafia in El Salvador." The Nation, vol. 241, no. 12 (1985). Simon, Laurence R., and James C. Stephens, Jr. El Salvador Land Reform, 1980-1981: Impact Audit. Boston: Oxfam America, 1982. Tercer censo agropecuario, vol. 2. San Salvador: Dirección General de Estadística y Censos, 1975. Thome, Joseph R. "Reforma Agraria en El Salvador." Boletín de ciencias económicas y sociales 7,4 (1982). Voz popular. San Salvador (first week of November 1974;firstweek of December 1974).

Index

administrative councils, establishment of, 37-38. See also community councils advertisements, 104-105; public relations, 121 Agrarian Reform Law of 1980,14 Agrarian Transformation of 1972,54 agriculture: assistance for, 75; diversification of, 8-9, 12; importance of, 7; modernization of, 3,7,14-15, 17,54 Alcoholics Anonymous, 38 Alvarado, Margarito Arturo: imprisonment of, 48 American Convention on Human Rights, 95 American Institute for Free Labor Development (AIFLD), 13 Americas Watch, 15; work of, 19, 20, 117 amnesty program (Decree #805), 90 Anaya Sanabrian, Herbert: death of, 103 Arcatao, repopulation of, 94 Archdiocese of San Salvador, 15,59,85, 130; assistance from, 33,47,52,56, 100,104,115 ARENA party. See National Republican Alliance (ARENA) party armed forces, 4, 49, 105; assistance from, 72-73; census by, 41; depopulation campaign of, 78; FMLN sympathizers and, 62; identity cards and, 117; intimidation by, 30, 35, 44, 45, 76, 77, 80, 89,117119,122-123; negotiations and, 33; occupation by, 40-42,45,58,118119; offensive by, 103; repopula-

tion and, 22, 41, 71, 80, 98, 129; repression by, 54-55, 66,131; size of, 92 asentamientos, 48,49,54 assistance, 81,128,137; agricultural, 75; controlling, 119-120, 131-132; cutting off, 15;financial,94; forms of, 75; refusing, 120; sources of, 56, 71-73; ulterior motives of, 73, 80; unrestricted, 93; war-related, 92 Association of Private Enterprise (ANEP), 66 Barerra, Ramon: quote of, 1 BarriaL, repopulation of, 138 "beans and bullets" system, 122 Belloso Battalion, 40 Blandon, Adolfo O., 40,67; UPR and, 66 Body of Diplomatic Law and Its Reforms, 133 Bolsa de Trabajo, 37; work of, 35-36 bombings, 18,20,29,50,62,87,93,97, 104,122,124,130,135,138 Canjura, Benjamin, 115,118 Canton Ichanqueso project: assessment of, 71-76,79; description of, 68-69; grassroots leadership and, 79-80.Seealso Ichanqueso Caritas (Santa Rosa de Copan), work of, 91 Carranza, Orlando, 40 Carranza, Oscar Armando, 40 cash crops, 8-9,37,68. See also farms Catholic Church: negotiations by, 44; repopulation and, 121-122; support from, 30, 100, 107, 111-112, 118,132,137

151

152 Catholic Relief Services, 47; support from, 30,104 cedulas. See identity cards census, 41,55,117 Central American Peace Plan, 90,124; refugees and, 92,96,104, 106-107, 109,116,121 Central American Refugee Network (CARNET), advertisement by, 105 Chavez Mena, Fidel: on displaced persons, 21 Christian Committee for the Displaced of El Salvador (CRIPDES), 61, 114, 129,137; criticism by, 67-68; displaced persons and, 48-50, 64; Hacienda El Barillo and, 54-55; hostility toward, 131; National Council of, 47-48; work of, 48,5051,53,127 Christian Democratic party (PDC), 14; platform of, 12 Christian Federation of Salvadoran Peasants (FECCAS), organization of, 13 Ciudad Segundo Montes, establishment of, 138 civil defense, 49,64,104,105,129; joining, 59,73-74,93,119 civil rights. See human rights Claramount, Rudolfo Ajitonio Castillo, 121 CNR. See National Coordinator of Repopulation collaborators, 15,20,35,41 Colomoncagua camp, 86; attack at, 91; closing of, 127,138 colonato, 10,14 colonos, integration of, 9-10 commercialization, 8,9 Committee for Repopulation, 96,102, 104,106,112,134; letter from, 83; work of, 92-94,103 Committee of Salvadoran Health Professionals (COPROSAL), 21 Committee of the Displaced of Tenancingo, formation of, 30 community: community within, 6,21,78 community councils, 76,115; assistance for, 72; civil defense and, 74; election of, 38, 55; problems for, 39, 72-73; work of, 38,56,80

Index Community Development Directorate (DIDECO), 62,69 community structures, development of, 56-57 CONADES. See National Commission for Assistance to the Displaced of El Salvador CONARA. See National Commission for the Restoration of Areas conflictive zones: depopulation of, 129; repopulation of, 24-25, 31,49,63, 65, 76, 85, 101, 122-124, 127-128, 130,134 Congress, U.S.: investigation by, 64; report by, 66-67 consumer prices, increase of, 11-12 Contadora Initiative, 92 Copapayo: bombing of, 138; repopulation of, 94 Corral de Piedra, bombing of, 138 corruption, 13,61,64,67 cost of living, increase of, 11-12 counterinsurgency, 4-7,43,97-98,123; depopulation and, 61-62; description of, 17,50-51; positive aspects of, 78-79; repopulation and, 49, 79-80,134 credits, 36,39,43,57; access to, 58,77; application for, 38; source of, 3537 CRIPDES. See Christian Committee for the Displaced of El Salvador Cruz, Octavio, 107 Cuscatlan, repopulation of, 31 death squads, 3,22,60,103; killings by, 15-16,30,54 Department Joint Coordination Committees, 67 depopulation, 7, 19, 22-23, 53, 129; counterinsurgency and, 61-62; CRIPDES and, 50; government, 65, 78; strategy of, 61-68. See also repopulation DIACONIA, 100 DIDECO. See Community Development Directorate disappearances, 54,103,123-124 disease, incidence of, 21-22 displaced persons: CRIPDES and, 4849, 51, 64; human rights and, 24; number of, 18,47; official view of,

Index 63; problems for, 21,23,44-45,4850; return of, 5-6,24; UPR and, 61, 65-66. See also refugees displacement, 7,17; forced, 3-4; growth of, 50-51; military objective of, 77; trauma of, 22 Doctors Without Borders, medical care by, 91 documentation. See identity cards Duarte, José Napoleón, 54,66,67,96, 103,113; depopulation campaign and, 50; election of, 92; letter to, 83, 105-106,108; public relations campaign by, 121; repopulation and, 43,109-110

153 FUND ASAL. See Salvadoran Foundation for Development and Basic Housing

earthquake, description of, 49 economy: rebuilding, 23,35-36,75; subsistence, 7-8,21 El B arillo. See Hacienda El Barillo elections, 38; influencing, 15, 133; municipal, 41-42 El Mundo, 106; advertisements in, 105

Garcia Turcios, Abraham, 107-108; work of, 87 Geneva Convention, 19,20,50,53,95, 116,131 Gersony, Robert, 90 Going Home: An Interfaith Campaign in Support of Salvadoran Refugees Returning from Mesa Grande, 105; support for, 101,120; work of, 108-110 Golcher, Reynaldo, 109,115 Gomez, Medardo: work of, 100 grassroots movements, 23-24, 78-80, 123 Guardian, The: quote from, 20 Guaijila, occupation of, 118-119 Guatemala, refugees from, 86 Guazapa, depopulation of, 65 guerrilla warfare, advent of, 18

Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN), 18,34,43,49, 6869, 87, 97,101,124,129,132; collaboration with, 35, 41, 62, 73; formation of, 3; growth of, 17,64, 92; human rights abuses by, 98, 131; negotiations and, 33, 44, 92, 107; offensive by, 4, 15, 29, 137; refugee camps and, 89-90; repopulation and, 58,98,130; success of, 4, 61; in Tenancingo, 41; visits by, 42,45 farms: collective, 37,78; number of, 8-9; size of, 8; subsistence, 10,37,68,78; support for, 35-36 FDR, 107; negotiations with, 92 FEDECREDITO, corruption at, 64 FINATA. See National Fund for Agricultural Transformation First Infantry Brigade, repression by, 131 Flores, Saul: imprisonment of, 48 FMLN. See Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front food-for-work program (USAID), 76, 115 Fourth Infantry Brigade, questionnaire by, 113

Hacienda El Barillo, 65, 68, 70, 134; assessment of, 59-60; bombing of, 124; community structures at, 5657; C R I P D E S and, 54-55; grassroots initiative in, 78-79; interviews at, 55-56, 58; repopulation of, 52-55,80,102,123; social progress in, 78; surveillance of, 58 harassment. See intimidation health care, 57,68,91,128 Hernandez, Leopoldo A., 40 Hernandez, Mauricio, 20 High Command, 89; civil defense and, 74; depopulation and, 61-68. See abo armed forces Histadrut, 13 Honduran army: attacks by, 86-87,9091,108 Honduran government: refugees and, 86-87,91,95 Honduran National Commission on Refugees (CONARE), 87 Honduran National Security Council, 87-88 human rights, 6,52,59,77-79,87,105, 112,124; abuse of, 14, 19,25, 53, 98, 103-104, 130-131, 137; CNR and, 53; improvement in, 24,121;

Index

154

malnutrition, 20-22,87 management, cooperative, 79 Ichanqueso: difficulties at, 80-81; Mariona Prison, 89 FINATA and, 70-71; repopulation masas. See collaborators of, 68-70, 81. See also Canton masivas. See repopulation, collective Mejia Cruz, Miguel Antonio: imprisonIchanqueso project ment of, 48 identity cards: appeals for, 133-134; control of, 110-111,115 -118,124, Mejia Miranda, Luis: corruption by, 64 Menjivar, Armando: imprisonment of, 132-134 48 Ilopango Prison, 89 imprisonment, description of, 89-90 mental health problems, description of, income, decline of, 10-12 22. See also health care industrialization, 3 Mesa Grande camp, 6-7, 89, 133; Catholic Church and, 100; condiinformants network, 41-42; joining, 119 tions at, 86-88; establishment of, Interamerican Development Bank, 119 17; problems at, 128-129; return Interamerican Foundation, support from, 5-6, 24, 85, 92-93, 103-113, from, 30 122-123, 127, 137; security conInternational Commission of the Red cerns in, 128; UN and, 93 Cross, 47 International Committee of the Red migration, economic, 3-7 Cross, 34,85,103,131; assistance military coup, 14 minifundios, 29 from, 33,56 International Covenant of Civil and minifundistas, 13,53; transformation of, 9-10 Political Rights, 95,96 international observers, 55,128; control minimum wage law, violation of, 14 Ministry of Culture and Communicaof, 87,132; work of, 97 tions, public relations campaign International Protocols, Honduras and, by, 121 86 Ministry of the Interior, 69,97,119; aid interrogations, description of, 90 from, 62-63; identity cards and, intimidation, 22,58,90,105-106; military, 117, 133-134; refugees and, 112115-120,122-124, 131-132 113,116 land: access to, 38; distribution of, 3,7-8, Model Villages project, 63 14,54; income and, 10-12; renting, Molina, Arturo Armando: reform program of, 14 9-10,14,75,80 Municipalities in Action program, 67 landlessness, 7-9 landowners, 72; claims of, 75; evictions by, 14; problems for, 44,53-54,79, National Commission for Assistance to the Displaced of El Salvador 80; renters and, 37; return of, 42 (CONADES), 47,62,69,74,88,96; Las Vueltas: killings in, 131; repopulaassistance from, 51, 71,127; creation of, 94 tion of, 17; report of, 70 Lempa River, massacre at, 86 National Commission for Community loans. See credits Lopez Portillo, Jose Angel: disapDevelopment, study by, 10 pearance of, 123-124 National Commission for the RestoraLos Hatos, repopulation of, 138 tion of Areas (CONARA), 18,62, Los Ranchos, repopulation of, 94 66,67,69; corruption at, 64 Lutheran Church, support from, 52, National Coordinator of Repopulation 100,104,112,132,137 (CNR), 24,37,54,55,59,61,68,78, Lutheran World Federation, support 79,94,106,124,129,137; challenge from, 52,101 of, 81; formation of, 45,51,65,134; monitoring, 47,61,130-131,134

155

Index

fund raising by, 57-58; hostility for, 52, 131; human rights and, 53; repopulation by, 102, 127, 130; UNHCR and, 102; work of, 23, 51-52 National Democratic Organization (ORDEN), 73; founding of, 12-13, 53; impact of, 13 National Fund for Agricultural Transformation (FINATA), work of, 70-71,80 National Guard, 13 National Joint Coordination Committee, 67 National Plan, 63-65, 129; description of, 4,18 National Police, 49 National Republican Alliance (ARENA) party: election of, 131, 135,137; repopulation and, 41-42 nation building, description of, 4,6 negotiations, 33-34,44,92,103-107 NGOs, 104; support from, 100-101 Nicaragua, refugees from, 86 noncombatants: attacks on, 66; rights of, 53,62,74,116,122, 127,131

psychological operations (psyops), description of, 66 Public Health Commission, U.S., 22 public relations campaign, government, 111, 120-121 public works program. See Boisa de Trabajo Quebrados, repopulation of, 138

ranching, support for, 36 reconstruction, 32,34-35,120,130 Red Cross. See International Committee of the Red Cross Refugee Protocols, 95 refugee reception program, 91; development of, 88-89 refugees, 4, 24, 54; death of, 17, 138; determination of, 121-123; flow of, 86; intimidation of, 5,89-90,9798,119-120; return of, 5-6,85,8788. See also displaced persons relief programs, description of, 23-24 relocations, 87; Americas Watch and, 20 repatriation, 85,86,90-95,99,101,102, 104, 107, 124, 128-130, 137-138; Office of Regional Development, idencontrol of, 111-112, 120, 129; tity cards and, 134 FMLN and, 98; independent, 123, Operation Chavez Carreno, 50,52 127,130,132; individual, 88-91,93, Operation Concordia, 103 129; negotiations for, 92-94, 103Operation Phoenix, 51-54, 56, 58, 60, 107; opposition to, 95-98,108-110, 62,65,134; description of, 20,50; 130,134-135; refugee plans for, 95Ichanqueso and, 69; Tenancingo 96; support for, 88,95-96,101,104and, 42 105; voluntary, 88,98-99,121 ORDEN. See National Democratic Or- repopulation, 4-7, 23-24, 49-52, 63; ganization ARENA and, 42, armed forces and, 22-23,71,80,129; counterinsurgency and, 79-80, 134; FMLN pacification, 64,67,124,129,134 and, 58; independent, 25, 79; obPanchimilama, repopulation of, 52,102 jectives of, 30-33,39-40,70; phases passports. See identity cards of, 33-35; political co-optation of, political awareness, growth of, 6,79,81, 42-43. See also depopulation, 93,104,123,134,135 repression, 39,54-55,63,66,79,92,123, Popayan, repopulation of, 111 128-129,131; escalation of, 14-15, popular participation, importance of, 103,137-138; fear of, 22,40,80-81 31-33,38,44,60 lifting of, 107 popular support, winning, 65-66 project administration: authoritari- resettlement, showcase, 111. See also anism of, 39-40; criticism of, 77 public relations campaign Protocol II, 19,50,53,116,131 returnees: control of, 115-116,131-134; Proyecto Mil, 63-65 independent, 134; individual, 130;

156 problems for, 72-73, 75-76, 115116,130 reubicaciones. See repopulation Rivera, Francisco: killing of, 115-116 Rivera y Damas, Arturo, 42, 54, 107, 110,116; letterto, 132; work of,30, 33,100,104 Rodriguez, Roberto: mission of, 88 Romero, Oscar Arnulfo, 113; assassination of, 15 Rosa Chavez, Gregorio, 109, 111, 112 Rosales, Salvador: imprisonment of, 48 Salvadoran Christian Base Communities, 104 Salvadoran constitution, refugee rights in, 95-96 Salvadoran Foundation for Development and Basic Housing (FUNDASAL): authoritarianism of, 77-78; donors to, 30; failure of, 33, 35, 40, 43-44; loans from, 37, 43; work of, 23,30-32,34-36,38-39,44, 77 Salvadoran Human Rights Commission (CDHES), 94 Salvadoran Peasants Union (UCS), 13 San Antonio camp, 86; closing of, 127; repatriation from, 138 San Antonio Los Ranchos, repopulation of, 123 Sanchez, Carlos, 101 San Jose Las Flores, 124; repopulation of, 52,102,123 Santa Cruz Michapa, 34,41,43 Santa Marta: bombing of, 97; description of, 114; killings in, 131; return to, 94,110,113,114,137 Santa Rosa de Copan, talks at, 97 Santa Tecla camp, description of, 22 schools, 60, 68, 72,128; establishment of, 56-57 Schultz, Gus, 109 scorched-earth operations, description of, 50 security, 87, 91-92,101, 113; concerns about, 21,58-59,128 self-determination, lack of, 44 self-protection, 134 self-sufficiency, 70,76,86,92,129 social cohesion, 78,81; 134; lack of, 39,

Index 74-75 social transformation, 44,78-79 standard of living, 60, 75; decline of, 11-12,15, 87; description of, 127128 Suchitoto, 53-54,69,114 Sumpul River, massacre at, 17,86 technology, access to, 38,44 Tenancingo: armed forces at, 40-41; credits for, 36; depopulation of, 6, 29-33; description of, 27, 29; FMLN in, 41; Operation Phoenix and, 42; problems in, 33, 39-43; project at, 24-25, 43-45, 77; repopulation of, 7,23,30-32,34-35, 77; social progress in, 78; UPR and, 34 Teosinte, repopulation of, 123 Third U.S. Public Health Commission, report of, 21-22 Tierra Virgen, repopulation of, 68 torture, description of, 90 Treasury Police, 131 Tripartite Commission, work of, 93-94, 97,109-110 Tutela Legal, 103,115,116,118 unions, support from, 104 United Nations, 85, 93; human rights and, 19 United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), 17, 24, 85, 96,119,122,133,138; budget cuts for, 91, 128-129; CNR and, 102; criticism of, 91, 99, 104; identity cards and, 117, 134; individual repatriation and, 88-92; refugees and, 86-89,99; support from, 106, 108,111-112; uncertainty of, 98-99 United to Reconstruct (UPR), 24, 77, 105; description of, 67-69; displaced persons and, 61, 65-66; report on, 66-67; Tenancingo and, 34; work of, 23,62,73,80-81 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 95 University of Central America (UCA), analysis by, 18 UPR. See United to Reconstruct Urioste, Ricardo, 107 USAID, 69,119; assistance from, 23,63,

Index 66; corruption and, 64; food-forwork program of, 76 Valle Verde, repopulation of, 111 Velasquez, Febe Elizabeth: murder of, 137 Vice Ministry of Social Development, 62,69 Wall Street Journal, 64 wealth, concentration of, 3

157 Weil-Being for San Vicente campaign, 64 work plans, establishment of, 115 World Bank, support from, 30 World Council of Churches, support from, 112 World Relief, 69,74; support from, 71, 72 Zepeda, Juan Orlando: letter from, 132

About the Book and the Authors

In Central America, as in other regions where protracted wars have caused large-scale forced migration, the issues of repatriation and repopulation are of growing interest and concern. Places of Origin is the first detailed account of the collective return of refugees and displaced persons, despite a continuing civil war, to the villages they once fled in rural El Salvador. This increasingly significant popular movement represents a unique and complex development in the history of the region's conflicts. The authors' analysis of the repopulation of conflict zones in El Salvador chronicles the Salvadoran army's displacement operations, the hardships associated with displacement both inside and outside the country, the mechanics of popular organization, the negotiating skill of grassroots groups that led to successive collective returns, and the stance of the Salvadoran government and armed forces with respect to repopulation. The book is based on two years of on-site research among the displaced, as well as on extensive interviews with civilian authorities, the military, and nongovernmental organizations in El Salvador. Beatrice Edwards is a consultant with the Center for Applied Research in Washington, D.C. Gretta Tovar Siebentritt is an independent consultant and human rights monitor with extensive field experience in Central America.

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