The grave illness of El Salvador, this national stroke, was also finely calibrated and to a major degree funded, if not caused, by the United States. Our troops schooled the Salvadoran Army and its affiliated death squads, the Reagan Administration supported the hysterical fascism of the dictators, and our Special Forces and CIA taught the torturers their techniques. This was, in retrospect, spring training for Iraq.*

Like Iraq, with its own badly misunderstood history, El Salvador has problems that preceded US policy in the area. Beginning in the sixteenth century, the Spanish did an efficient job of creating an unholy trinity to preside over the poor in countries they colonized: army, church and oligarchy. El Salvador's oligarchy consisted primarily of fourteen families who controlled the economy and the rigid social ladder. The feudal system imposed by the Spanish persisted until the civil war brought about (some) land reform and (some) social mobility. The apparatus of class is exemplified today in fashionable neighborhoods by high walls topped with razor wire that protect the rich from the poor. Socioeconomic poles are so far apart, El Salvador could be a laboratory for the study of unfairness.

There is always the danger that a recovering patient can suffer a relapse, another stroke. Professor Benjamin Cuellar, director of the Institute for Human Rights at the University of Central America in San Salvador, sees a slightly modernized trinity blocking egalitarian progress the way the old Spanish one did. "We have the divine right of wealth here," he told me. "God the Father is the economic power of the rich families, the corporations and US interests. The Son is ARENA itself, which serves the rich, and the Holy Ghost is the media which support the rich and ARENA, who basically own them. No wonder human rights are threatened, not only by gangs but in the home."

On the question of the Central American Free Trade Agreement, currently before the US Congress, Cuellar is critical but fatalistic. "CAFTA is coming and it has provisions to expand the economy, but it will help only the rich," he said. "The government tells lies about how we will invade the United States with tamales and tortillas to drive out hamburgers. Our little industries can't really compete and will be flooded by American and Chinese products. The Salvadoran winners will be the bankers, the big landowners who build malls and own hotels, the Mercedes dealers. The poor will be the losers, as usual." CAFTA advocates say it will diversify the economy, bring jobs to El Salvador and industrialize the workforce. Crucial objections to CAFTA are that it provides no support for labor unions, does not guarantee even minimal working conditions, contains no protections for the environment and will put El Salvador's small farmers out of business by allowing cheaper corn and beans to come in from the north.

Like other Salvadorans of all classes, Cuellar sees the flow of immigrants to the United States as both a social escape valve and an indispensable part of the economy. "What would we do without 2.5 million Salvadorans in the United States? Simple: We'd collapse. Your government looks the other way on illegal immigrants, our government sends troops to Iraq, a total surrender to George Bush."

Illegal immigration led to the creation of Mara Salvatrucha, the gang that terrorizes urban El Salvador. It originated as a defense against Mexican gangs preying on Salvadoran immigrants in Los Angeles. When Mara Salvatrucha leaders were arrested and deported to El Salvador, they recruited new members, who headed north to the United States themselves, reinforcing what has become a 100,000-member international gang. The Department of Homeland Security catches those it can, sends them home and the recruiting cycle begins again among the dispossessed youth of El Salvador's poorest barrios.

___
* A recent New York Times Magazine report identifies several Americans who worked with Special Forces in El Salvador and elsewhere in Latin America to promote US interests. Two of them are James Steele and Steve Casteel (such names, such Bunyanesque allegory, could be improved upon only by making the second one Castiron), who cut their teeth--and no doubt a lot of other people's--in El Salvador (Steele) and the drug wars of the Americas (Casteel). Now they help bring Iraq's new army up to speed on the counterinsurgency tactics they first practiced in Latin America.

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