In the early '60s, many people became involved in demonstrations for disarmament. Into the midst of these demonstrations, alongside signs calling for an end to the arms race, appeared posters declaring, "End U.S. aid to south Vietnam."
By the end of the decade, a small, tropical, little-known country on the other side of the world had become a household word, a symbol of all that was wrong with the United States: its greed, imperialism, and willingness to sacrifice thousands of lives to stop the spread of communism.
This Lent at Sojourners, we are keeping a vigil each Thursday evening at the U.S. Capitol to maintain a presence in opposition to nuclear weapons. And on Fridays, we are participating in a vigil at the State Department for the people of El Salvador.
The connection is not coincidental. A U.S. policy of dominance backed by the strength of nuclear arms will inevitably find a stage on which to act itself out. We are entangling ourselves once again in the destiny of a small country which until now has received little attention.
There is no oil at stake in El Salvador--just coffee, sugar, bananas, and U.S. pride. And the lives of thousands of Salvadorans.
Their country has become an arena of mass murder. A Reagan administration official quoted in the Washington Post called the situation a "fortuitous combination of coincidences and circumstances." With the humiliations of Vietnam, Iran, and Nicaragua behind us but not forgotten, El Salvador provides the first testing ground for Reagan's tough policy on communism.
This time the U.S. has the home-court advantage. The history dating from the Monroe Doctrine is one of U.S. interference in Central America and the Caribbean basin, ample evidence of our grand design for those countries within our "sphere of influence."
The government is falling all over itself to deny that El Salvador will become another Vietnam, at the same time that it pumps $25 million in additional military aid and more advisers into the embattled country. Plans are being considered to send an additional $25 million in credits for purchase of weapons and to increase economic aid to the $100 million mark, making the total support going to El Salvador more than has been sent anywhere else in the hemisphere since 1965. The entire U.S. military assistance to El Salvador last year amounted to $5.4 million.
An adviser here, a helicopter there: These were the "humble beginnings" of the eventually all-out war in Vietnam. The parallels are many: policy based on mistaken assumptions about political realities; support of a corrupt and brutal government lacking popular support; escalation of a regional conflict into an international crisis; an unsuccessful "agrarian reform" program carried out with repression of peasants (named, as in Vietnam, "Land to the Tiller," and directed by a veteran of that pacification program); and, above all, the unshakable belief that wielding U.S. power is the only way to make things right.
Opposition to the increased aid is coming from a variety of sources. Among these is former ambassador to El Salvador, Robert White. White, who was relieved of his post by the Reagan adminstration, recently testified that the chief killer of the Salvadoran people is the government security forces; he also implicated them in the deaths of the four American religious women slain last December.
Several statements have been issued by the U.S. Catholic church and others calling for an end to the terror and to U.S. military involvement. Dissent has risen even within the ranks of the State and Defense Departments, the National Security Council, and the Central Intelligence Agency. A 29-page paper, leaked late last year, suggests that high-level officials have suppressed intelligence reports that would have contradicted the justification for increased military involvement in El Salvador.
Great attention is being given in this country to "hard evidence" of Cuban and Nicaraguan support and weapons which are being channeled into El Salvador. Overlooked, however, is the fact that the violence in El Salvador was initiated by the Salvadoran government's repression against its own people. The brutality of the government's uncontrollable security forces was escalated by U.S. weapons and training, which have far outweighed the amounts of aid coming to opposition forces. It should come as no surprise that the Nicaraguans, who have celebrated victory over a repressive military regime, would find themselves in solidarity with the Salvadoran people's struggle for self-determination and survival.
It is much easier to raise patriotic fever here and discredit the legitimate desires of the suffering people there--even to justify murder of the innocent--if we can conjure up the specter of communism. Reagan officials have traveled to other parts of the world to spread around their vision of ghosts and get assurances of support for U.S. policy. What we haven't yet learned is that if we support terror by governments against their people, those people will turn in desperation to whatever seems to hold promise of survival.
Secretary of State Alexander Haig, Jr. has pledged that "international terrorism will take the place of human rights" as a priority in the Reagan administration. An ironic choice of phrasing, given our increasing contribution to terrorism in the first two months of Reagan's rule. In its crackdown on terrorism, the administration appears to wear blinders when terrorism is of the "official" kind--including rape, torture, mutilation, and murder in El Salvador--that protects U.S. interests.
El Salvador" means, in Spanish, "the Savior." Our government's policies have indeed made that tiny country our Christ this Lent. We have forced it to bear our sins, driving nails of our ideology into the flesh of its children, sacrificing its poor on a cross of our greed.
Where is resurrection for this crucified land?
During Hitler's reign in Germany, a group of Munich students involved in the resistance chanted this chorus:
The time is coming when you'll be needed.
See to it that you're prepared and ready.
And into the fire that threatens to go up in smoke
Cast yourself as the final log that keeps the flame alive.
That same flame of hope, a light in the midst of great darkness, burns in the hearts of the faithful in El Salvador. The fire is continually being fed by those who understand the price of the call of the gospel and have chosen to stand with the poor.
It was understood by Archbishop Oscar Romero, by four American religious women, nine Salvadoran Jesuit priests, 10,000 others last year, and 2,000 in the first three months of this year. We too must fuel the flame of hope with our prayers and our energies directed toward opposing the cruel policies of our government.
The U.S. government has chosen its side. We must let this government know that it does not speak for all of us, that we choose to side with the suffering church of El Salvador.
Joyce Hollyday was on the editorial staff at Sojourners when this article appeared.
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