Speaker: Salvadoran Aid Should Be Conditional

The U.S. should make financial aid to El Salvador conditional upon the country's efforts to reduce human rights violations, a representative of the Salvadoran rebel group and political opposition told about 50 people at a Law School forum last night.

Oscar Orellana Garcia, a representative of the human rights arm of the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN)--which has fought a civil war in El Salvador throughout this decade--said U.S. support should be restricted to humanitarian aid and conditional upon the resolution of the country's political turmoil.

"Really what we are calling for is no military aid," he said.

Garcia, a lawyer who taught at the University of El Salvador before he fled the country for Mexico, said El Salvador has been torn by abuse and struggle for many years. He said the human rights violations began as "low-intensity warfare"--political imprisonment and the assassination of individuals who critcized the government.

Speaking in Spanish through an interpreter, Garcia said that the $4 billion the U.S. has sent to El Salvador, much of it in the form of military aid, has made it difficult for opposition groups to protect human rights.

"We do not speak of [the problems caused by U.S. aid] in order to say 'Oh my god, what a mess,'" Garcia said. "If we mention it, it is because we can avoid it...That can be achieved by force and by applying pressure of all kinds."

Garcia said that the right-wing party in El Salvador that won the country's national elections in March supports a policy of "total war" against FMLN. However, he said that FMLN's powerbase in the country has grown, giving the country opportunity for peace.

"We feel now is the moment to open this political space, this political momentum, without interference of any kind," Garcia said.

In defense of FMLN's guerilla-style opposition to the Salvadoran government, Garcia said that the country needed to respond to the "institutional violence" that has characterized the last two decades of Salvadoran politics. "Our people took the legitimate right to force," he said.

FMLN won about 4 percent of the votes in the March election, while the right-wing party, led by Alfredo Christiani, won more than 50 percent. Garcia said that the election was simply a tool of "low-intensity warfare" and did not represent the eligible electorate.