Reading Between the Lines

SOMETIMES I THINK I'm crazy when I hear the Fl Salvadorean and U.S. governments deny killings by the National Guard." Anne Nelson, a writer for The Nation says, "They say the violence didn't happen, and I say it did. I have to refer constantly to my memories of last October--peasants' bodies in fields, militarymen shooting unarmed peasants and placing guns in their hands--or else I too could be convinced."

Sister Jeanne Gallo, who visited El Salvador and now publicizes human rights violations in that country is more succinct: "It's their word against ours."

There are two opposing views regarding recent reports from a Honduran organization sympathetic to El Salvador's left of a massacre of nearly 1500 people. According to the reports, the National Guard opened fire on 700 women, 600 old persons, and 150 children who were trying to cross the border into Honduras on March 27. They state the killings occurred by some caves between Santa Flena and Hualicela. The Honduran group quotes accounts by survivors of the massacre and by peasants living nearby.

Yet the El Salvadorean government flatly dismisses the charges. So does the U.S. State Department and Embassy in El Salvador. "Maybe it happened," Donald Mathis of the State Department's Central America bureau says, "but I'm skeptical. I suspect the report is a fabrication of the left." He added that one couldn't trust "ignorant peasants" and that the witnesses were related to guerrillas.

Whether or not Mathis's assertions are correct, he and a U.S. Embassy official in San Salvador. Mark Dion, quoted in an April 13 Boston Globe article, display a disconcerting lack of familiarity with the claims. Both Dion and Mathis said they knew of no town named Santa Elena near the Honduran border, thus unaware of or ignoring reports which said the massacre also occurred near another town, Hualicela.

Mathis also quoted the El Salvadorean government's assertions that no cave existed named "La Pintada," nor could any cave in El Salvador hold 1500 persons. If they had read the report's updates more carefully, they would have learned that many of the victims were gunned down before they were able to seek temporary refuge in a series of caves named "La Sentada."

There is also some discrepancy between Mathis's and Dion's accounts of the U.S. role in the El Salvadorean government's "investigation." Dion said the U.S. was involved. Mathis stated it wasn't, for "the U.S. government can't do an investigation unless the El Salvadoreans ask us to. We just can't do in El Salvador what we want to."

Reports of massacres in the Morazon district alone are not new. Since security forces launched "clean-up operations" --offensives against leftist guerrillas in Morazon and Chalatenango provinces--last October, hundreds of innocent peasants have been murdered. A nun working in Morazon was quoted in the January 19, 1981 issue of Newsweek that 200 persons were killed every week.

The El Salvador Legal Aid Commission--a non-partisan organization established with the support of San Salvador Archbishop Oscar Romero (assassinated last year for his criticisms of the government)--states that the most recent "cleanup" offensive occured last month. According to their reports, 798 persons were killed in El Salvador between March 7 and March 13, 681 of whom were peasants attacked by government planes and helicopters in Chalatenango and Morazon. Since the offensive began, the government has periodically closed off the area to church groups and the press.

How reliable are these reports from nuns and human rights organizations? Are they really, as Mathis claims, "probably the creation of people trying to discredit the El Salvadorean government"? Most of these groups and individuals are non-partisan and far from leftist. They are simply concerned with violations of human life and rights, and the more outspoken members are often persecuted by security forces for their disclosures and condemnations.

JAMES HARNEY, an editor of Overview Latin America, says the El Salvadorean government "tries to cover up these embarrassing incidents as best it can." Regarding the March 27 massacre, Anne Nelson states that American church people doing relief work in El Salvador verify that "something" happened that day. However, she won't reveal their names and organization in order to protect them. Sister Jeanne Gallo also suspects something may have happened on the 27th. "The numbers may be exaggerated, but then again, you are dealing with illiterate peasants who often can't count," she says.

A representative of the national office of the Committee In Support of the People of El Salvador (CISPES) in Washington, D.C. agreed. "People don't make up stories like this. It would be political suicide and the FDR (Democratic Revolutionary Front) and its sympathizers are not that stupid."

The Globe article discrediting the reports quoted be reluctance of FDR members in Mexico City to substantiate the report. A representative from the New York-based Casa El Salvador explained his fear to confirm publically the claims: "Of course we trust our sources--we and the FDR believe that a massacre probably occurred. But since it is so difficult to get more details, we are reluctant to commit ourselves and say 'This is exactly what happened.' We have to be cautious, to protect the little credibility that we have in the States."

It is nearly impossible to obtain further details about the massacre report, to investigate the site and confirm the charges. The El Salvadorean government has prevented the Legal Aid Commission and other church groups from visiting the area. The regime justifies sealing off the region because it's dangerous to visit. A spokesman from the El Salvadorean embassy in Washington denied that the government had closed off the area because it had something to hide.

The region is also inaccessible to the press: few journalists are willing to risk their lives by crossing the military's road blockades. Harassment of reporters is so great that the Pan American Center called upon the El Salvadorean government to "end the persecution of foreign and local journalists and to secure the right to report."

This appeal did not effectively counter intimidation by military and paramilitary members. President Jose Napoleon Duarte went so far as to state publicly that the foreign press "collaborates with the left." Many reporters, including the New York Times's Alan Riding, have received death threats and cannot return to El Salvador. A writer for Mexico's Uno Mas Uno, Ignacio Rodriguez Terrazas, was murdered several months ago. Says Richard Meislin, who formerly covered Nicaragua for the New York Times. "Although I'd be interested in visiting El Salvador, I'm not so crazy as to be a reporter there now." The fact that most articles about El Salvador in the U.S. press are written from Washington, Mexico City, Managua, or Tegucigalpa, Honduras is testimony to this intimidation of journalists.

EVEN IF REPORTERS can't gain access to the site of the March 27 massacre, why has the American press been so reluctant even to mention the Honduran group's charges? While many major French. Canadian, Nicaraguan, Honduran and Mexican newspapers quoted the reports, only a handful of U.S. newspapers did the same. The answer several American journalists explained, is that most American papers are afraid to print anything which has not been confirmed by several sources. "To have your credibility on the line is hair-raising," says one editor. Adds Nelson, "Many editors are reluctant to seem extreme politically, to seem supportive of the left. But the problem with this 'non-extremism' is that it ends up seeming like you are supporting the right."

Nelson, Gallo, Casa El Salvador, and CISPES draw analogies between these recent reports of a massacre in Morazon, and a confirmed massacre at the River Sumpul on May 14, 1980, when security forces slaughtered 500 persons trying to cross the border into Honduras. Nelson, et al point out how slow confirmation of the Sumpul massacre was and how unreceptive the American press was to giving it prominent coverage--coverage that would discredit a regime that our government supports.

So the uncertainly about the March 27 killings will continue until someone other than the El Salvadorean government officials will be permitted to visit the caves. In the meantime, the State Department will continue to voice its skepticism, and people like Anne Nelson and Sister Jeanne Gallo will continue to talk about similar occurances they saw in Morazon six months ago. And the Legal Aid Commission will continue to conduct its clandestine investigations.

In the meantime, it will continue to be one person's word against another's. And it is up to the American public to evaluate the sources of information, to decide for themselves which account they choose to believe.