Local Group Sends Aid to Salvadoran University

A group of Boston-area college students and other activists yesterday loaded a truck with money and medical supplies to help rebuild the ravaged National University of El Salvador.

During the next week, the New England Central American Health Rights Network hopes to solicit from New England colleges another $18,000 worth of supplies to aid the university, which the U.S. government has denied aid arguing that it poses a threat to El Salvador's American-backed regime, organizers said.

In addition to $1000 in checks, the group has collected textbooks, lab equipment, typewriters, paper, pens and copy machines for the university, which supports El Salvadoran rebels, said organizer Douglas A. Calvin, a sophomore at the the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.

The supplies were donated by Boston University Medical School and local doctors and stored in the Old Cambridge Baptist Church, across the street from the Freshman Union.

Organizers said they plan to ship the supplies to El Salvador from Washington, D.C. next week. There will be U.S. citizens--perhaps college students--to ensure that the supplies arrive at the university, Calvin said.

Despite the group's efforts, one State Department member who requested anonymity said he doubts the supplies will reach the university.

"A thousand and one things could happen between here and El Salvador, and it may not be safe for Americans to walk on the campus," he said.

The national university was closed by the Salvadoran government in 1980 because of its support of the guerilla opponents of the Jose Napoleon Duarte government which still holds power. El Salvador's military destroyed buildings, burned libraries and sold the university's equipment before allowing it to reopen in 1984, said Calvin.

The university is "a training ground for insurgency," said William B. Wood, State Department country officer for El Salvador.

"The students risk their lives every day to go to classes. How many students would go to B.U. if they had to risk their lives to go?" Calvin said.

A member of the U.S. Embassy was murdered on the national university's campus in 1983, Wood said.

The relief effort comes a year after Cambridge became a sanctuary city for Central American political refugees. The sanctuary movement tries to give the approximately 15,000-18,000 refugees living in the Boston area protection from extradition efforts.

The church where the group stored the supplies houses an El Salvadoran refugee.