Written for the Maine Times
Over the past many months, there has been a concerted effort to bring Senator Mitchell out of hibernation about the crisis in El Salvador. His December 22nd meeting with activists in Portland was reported in the February Progressive. Since that time, there have been a steady stream of delegations and visits to his offices throughout the state, a barrage of letters to the editor in state newspapers, paid quarter page ads in the Portland and Bangor papers, many letters and phone calls to both his Maine and Washington offices, petitions and statements of concern.
At the end of January demonstrations were held in his offices throughout the state. The message has been clear and unanimous: Speak out strongly against continued military aid to the ARENA government in El Salvador; speak strongly for a negotiated peace. Lead the majority, as befits your title, stop sniffing political winds and start generating them. And all of this in the context of widespread national and international protest of U.S. policy there.
On February 9th, I met with George Mitchell and his Central American advisor, Ed King, in Washington, D.C. to discuss again the situation in El Salvador. He had just met with Cristiani the previous week with five other Senators, Congress was back in session after its winter break when it witnessed widespread protest and civil disobedience about El Salvador as well as intense lobbying by churches.
While I was waiting in the Senator’s ante chamber, Ed King and I talked. Mr. King is an intense man who has a great deal of experience in Central America. He took part in the Palma negotiations between the FMLN and Duarte in the mid-eighties and certainly seemed to know the people within the Salvadoran military and the FMLN. It was a rapid and quickly shifting conversation. Mr. King said he thought we were pursing the wrong course with our pressure on Mitchell. Mitchell was with us he assured me several times. Why didn’t we go after Snowe and Cohen and Bush? I told him that I was glad to hear that the Senator was with us, that we would expect him then to act quickly to end military aid, that we expected to see him assume leadership on bringing about a change in U.S. policy, and to work for a negotiated settlement. The conversation kept taking turns at each such confrontation. I felt a bit like I was being examined for cracks that could be pulled apart, possibly Mr. King felt the same…
When we went in together to meet with Senator Mitchell, Ed King was silent and simply took notes on our meeting. It was a different George Mitchell than surfaced in his December meeting in Portland; he was more attentive and thoughtful by far. I was impressed with the Senator’s openness in the discussion; both rationally and emotionally there was room to meet. He listened carefully to an appeal for him to act as the Majority leader and as our representative about the issues in El Salvador.
Some themes were: You must speak out against present U.S. policy. Who is there to speak the truth? Many people had been moved by his concern for the Chinese students. The Chinese democracy movement had moved many of us by their dedication and suffering for new freedoms. Not to diminish their struggle, one must note that at least in China there is food to eat, land to farm, clothing to wear. In El Salvador, even these most basic of needs and rights have been denied. I went through the shocking statistics of poverty and starvation.
Who is there to speak the truth? As a member of the Iran Contra committee, he knew the deceit our own government has engaged in in Central America, from the fabrication of “clandestine” arms shipments by the Nicaraguans in the early 80’s to Reagan’s continual certifications to Congress that human rights were always improving. Amnesty International, America’s Watch, the Church and many groups throughout the U.S. had carefully documented the nightmare of terror that the U.S. has held up as the golden calf of democracy. Though he briefly defended the recent elections there, he yielded to the fact that 19% of the eligible population voting for Cristiani is hardly a landslide for freedom in a country where it is against the law NOT to vote, where identification papers (which every citizen must carry) are stamped upon voting, where people are routinely stopped and papers checked, where torture and disappearance by the army and police are common occurrences and the military and police act with complete impunity. Cristiani was the ARENA candidate, ARENA being the party directly tied to death squads and heavily funded by the wealthy elite. Was this Democracy? I went through personal stories told me by refugees of the climate of terror that affects everyday life, from teenage boys being hustled into the army while walking down the street to poor farmers being tortured simply for being there at all.
Certainly these were all things Senator Mitchell had heard before from more articulate and grounded sources. During the course of the nearly forty-five minute meeting, he seemed to teeter-totter slightly as to his own positions. His questions often seemed to spring from a fundamental conservatism, including a twice emergent raw anti-communism and yet, in the course of things, he would himself agree to the basic moral, political and practical failure of our policies in El Salvador. He was clearly moved at times by the legacy of suffering and injustice that the people of El Salvador have endured.
And from his side, the political dilemma. My colleagues have funded the Salvadoran government as the defender of democracy for ten years. They’re not suddenly going to say We Were wrong. No total aid cut can pass the Senate, there aren’t the votes. OR What would happen if we cut military aid? Wouldn’t the FMLN seize power or the Right go even more berserk? And other tactical kinds of questions.
Several times the Senator stated that he fundamentally agreed with those opposing U.S. policy in El Salvador. Disagreement was over tactics he said and I did feel that vacillation in him, as he would first talk about the in-house maneuvering and politics and then respond to the overwhelming moral and human cost extracted by U.S. policy and then back into the dark aisles of tactics and power struggles.
At one point, I talked about our own moral and spiritual decay as we continued policies that left U.S. bullets in the bodies of Jesuits and poor farmers and Archbishops and union organizers, and millions of dollars in the pockets of those who give the orders. In committing to use violence to accomplish our goals, we hurl our souls into an abyss where there is a very fine line between justice and tyranny. Without a profound commitment to examine minutely the effects of our violence from many perspectives, it can only result in tyranny.
On my way down to Washington, I had been reading a biography of Archbishop Romero. In his final weeks, he had received numerous death threats, the church’s radio station had been bombed, repression against the church and the popular movement had intensified. In his last public sermon, he addressed those in the military and in the oligarchy:
My brothers...You are killing your own brothers and sisters...In the name of God, in the name of this suffering people, whose cries rise to heaven each day more despairingly, I beg you, I plead with you, I order to in the name of God: Stop the repressing.
This was essentially our plea with him, I said, as our representative, as majority leader, as a man of conscience able to comprehend and act on the issues we had presented. Who will speak the truth?
As I left Mitchell’s office, Ed King came into high gear again. He argued tactics and strategy for fifteen minutes as we walked through the Capitol hallways. The FMLN is every bit as ruthless and untrustworthy as the military. If military aid is cut, they will attempt to seize power. When I responded that we could always restore aid, the conversation turned again. If we cut military aid, the right will pull out the stops and kill everyone. And on, twisting down the long dark corridors of strategy and tactic even as we took the turns through the hallways of Congress. We parted a bit like fox and hound I thought. Mr. King said Good luck as he measured me once more with his gaze and disappeared.
Outside, the day was warm and full of spring. Crocuses were blooming, even azaleas in places. I was disturbed by my final repartees with King. The Senator, though he had seemed open and available, had gone right on to the next meeting. He had come out to greet several elegantly dressed men that had been kept waiting while we met, and was off running in a new direction. When would he even get time to think through things in El Salvador again? Ed King had seemed much less open to the moral and human tragedy of El Salvador; he was certainly competent, aye gifted, in his perception of tactics and pressure points. But, I wondered, Who will speak the truth?
POSTSCRIPT
With our policy in Central America, deception has been an organized and a determined part of that policy. We will in time destroy our own abilities to lead or serve under such degradation. Though we try to look as little as possible, we are nonetheless flooded by the damage. Iran-gate; condemnation by the World Court and often by the international community; the murder and torture of priests and religious workers by U.S. trained and equipped soldiers; the overwhelming debt our neighbors find themselves in to us, even as we harvest more and more of their crops, resources and labor; the plummeting cycle of poverty that leaves hundreds of thousands of people – the largest percentage children – starving on our doorstep as their croplands are turned into cattle ranches to supply beef to our fast-food industry or into flower farms to provide us with bittersweet bouquets; the widespread distribution by U.S. companies of products and chemicals which have been banned for safety reasons in our country; the need to rewrite or hide the murderous abuses of power that are commonplace amongst our “allies”; our turning back tens of thousands of refugees fleeing this utter depravity while trying to rearrange the truth about what they flee – all of these things stem from our own complicity with the oppressor.
Who will speak the truth? When I met with Senator Mitchell in February, we seemed to talk in two veins – principles and politics. What we both seemed to agree has been a failure of U.S. policy in El Salvador is fundamentally a failure in principles as well. As in the story of the Emperor’s New Clothes, our government and the media have agreed to honor specious assumptions about U.S. involvement in Central America, though time and time again we are forced to restructure history and claim that we see things which aren’t there or that we cannot see what is there. In the fable, a small child is the only one to speak the obvious. In El Salvador it is the cried of the children who die of malnutrition or see their parents killed or their teachers abducted by soldiers, the cries of children who see MADE IN USA on the canisters of white phosphorus bombs that have destroyed their villages, who see the blood of their pastors smeared on the cries – their cries speak the obvious: ARENA’s cause in not a just cause; the preservation of the oligarchy is not a just cause; U.S. intervention has fed, clothes and armed the tyrant.
It is not time simple to reassess whether military aid to the Cristiani government needs stricter conditioning, it is time to end our complicity with the oppressor, to reassess our fundamental involvement. The discussion about what is achievable and which tactic to take continues the myth of the Emperor’s Clothes. We must start with the truth or the tactics are irrelevant.
If U.S. agenda is truly to encourage democracy and justice, we will not seek a military solution. Our million dollars a day will not be spent to preserve the privilege of the few nor to prod “development” which lands Salvadoran resources increasingly on our tables. We must work with groups such as OXFAM, CRIPDES, the church and the unions to seek sustainable self-development. We must foster negotiations between the oligarchy and the popular movement, the military and the FMLN to end hostilities. We should encourage U.N. efforts and offer to send volunteer peace brigades to accompany both the right and the left and to help support a neutral human buffer, if it is necessary, to encourage and safeguard all parties in their pursuit of peace. I think of how many tens of thousands of peace activists in the U.S. have spent years working on Central American issues and think that several thousand could be found to join such non-violent peace brigades and work in concert with both sides on the pressing social and economic issues, besides providing accompaniment.
In Central America, we have consistently sided with governments who are at war with the poor in their own countries. Not only do our policies continue and expand the poverty and violence that tears those countries apart, they also tear at our souls. While non-violent goals my seem naive or impossible given the day-to-day policies we now have in place, I think that they are finally our only way out of the hell that we have helped construct. They will take all our courage and soul force to pursue. They will take dedication of scarce resources and even scarcer leadership. But, in lieu of those goals, the continuing degradation of the Salvadoran people and of our out people is assured.
We continue out plea with Senator Mitchell: Stop the repression. You must lead the way, Senator, or get out of it.
