FACT.STREWN NOTEBOOK BLURS FROM TERROR.INDUCED SWEAT . .

a tourist guide manque; a surrealist docudrama; a withering indictment of American foreign policy; and apoetic explorationinfear . . . A CONSUMMATE POLITICAL ARTWORK . . . EX. CELLENT.'' -Chicago Ti,ibune Book World SALVADORANS ASSUME MOST POLIT: ICAL MURDERS ARE COMMITTED BY GOVERNMENT SECURITY FORCES-NEARLY 7,000IN ONE YEAR . . . Joan Didion writes with a muted outrage that appalls the mind and stiffens the spine." -Boston Globe "Bodies are found everywhere-in vacant lots, in garbage,in'rest rooms, in bus stations. . . bodies, bodies-and vultures to feed on them wherever they lie. . . ACHILLINGACCOUNT."
John Barkham Reviews

..DIDION'S

..THE

" SALVADORshineswith enlightening observation. No one has interpreted the place better . . . Its languageis lean and precise, in short what we have come to expectfrom Miss Didion."
-The New YorkTimesBook Review

"HORRIFYING . . . the daily appearance unexof plained corpses,the constantpresence weapons of in the handsof unidentifiablemen . . . EL SALVADOR HAS TRULY BECOME THE HEART OF DARKNESS.'' -Atlantic Monthly

Booksby Joan Didion Run River SlouchingTowards Bethlehem Play It as It Lays A Book of Common PraYer The White Album Salvador Publishedby WASHINGTON SQUARE PRESS

Most washington square PressBooksare availableat specialquantity premiums or fund discountsfortulk purchasesfor salespromotions, raising. Special books or book excerpts can dso be created to fit specific needs. For details write the office oI'the Vice Presidentol' SpecialMarkets, Pocket Books, l23O Avenue ol'the Americas,New York' New York 10020.

u
WSP lt
WASHINGTON SQUAREPRESS PUBLISHED POCKETBOOKSNEW YORK BY

Portions of this book were publishedin The New YorkReviewof Books in October 1982.
The author wishes to thank the following for their permission to reprint lines from:

The song "American Pie," written by Don McLean, published by Mayday Music and Benny Bird Company, A I97l . Used by permission. All rights resemed' The specified abridged excerpt from pp. 58-59 in The Autumn of the Patriarch Dy Translatedfrom the Spanish by Gregory Rabassa. Copyright @ 1975 by Gabriel Garcia Mdrquez. English translation copyright @ 1976 by Harper & Row, Publishers, Inc. Reprinted by permission of the publisher. Youth by Joseph Conrad. Reprinted by

Gabriel Garcia Mdrquez.

permission

The excerpt from "Heart of Doubleday

of Darkness" from & Company, Inc.

The lines from the poem by Roque Dalton Garcfufrom the book El Salvador: The Face ofthe Revolutionby Robert Armstong and Janet Shenk. Copyright A 1982, South End Press. Reprinted by permission of the publisher.

A WashingtonSquarePresspublication of Inc' POCKET BOOKS, a divisionof Simon & Schuster, Avenueof the Americas,New York, N'Y. 10020 1230 Copyright @ 1983by Joan Didion with Simon and Schuster Publishedby arrangement Library of CongressCatalogCard Number: 83-3?7 All rights reseryed,includingthe right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information addressSimon and Schuster,1230Avenue of the Americas, New York, N.Y. 10020 ISBN: 0-671-50174-7 First Washington Square Pressprinting November, 1983 10987654321 WASHINGTON SQUARE PRESS,WSP and colophonare registeredtrademarksof Simon & Schuster,Inc. Printedin the U.S.A.

I am indebted for generalbackgroundparticularly to ThomasP. Anderson'sMatanza: EI Salvador'sCommunist Revolt of 1932(University of NebraskaPress: Lincoln, l97l) and The War of the Dispossessed: Honduras and El Salvador, 1969(University of NebraskaPress:Lincoln, 1981); David Browning'sE/ to Salvador: Landscape and Society (Clarendon Press: Oxford, l97l): and to the ofrcers and staff of the United Statesembassyin San Salvador.I am indebted most of all to my husband,John Gregory Dunne, who was with me in El Salvador and whose notes on. memories about, and interpretationsof events there enlarged and informed my own perception of the place.

This book is for Robert Silvers and for Christopher Dickey

"All Europe contributed to the making of Kurtz; and by-and-byI learned that, most appropriately, the International Society for the Suppressionof Savage Customs had intrusted him with the making of a report, for its future guidance.And he hadwritten it, too. I've seenit. I've readit. It was eloquent,vibrating with eloquence.. . . 'By the simple exerciseof our will we can exert a power for good practically unbounded,'etc. etc. From that point he soared and took me with him. The peroration was magnificent, althoughdifficult to remember,you know. It gave me the notion of an exotic Immensity ruled by an august Benevolence. It made me tingle with enthusiasm. This was the unbounded power of eloquence-of words-of burning noble words. There were no practical hints to interrupt the magic current of phrases,unless a kind of note at the foot of the last page, scrawled evidently much later, in an unsteadyhand, may be regardedas the exposition of a method. It was very simple,and at the end of that moving appeal to every altruistic sentimentit blazed at you, luminous and terrifying, like a flash of lightning in a serene sky: 'Exterminateall the brutes!' " -Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness

/-n
three-vear-old El Salvador InternaI"" tional Airport is glassyand white and splendidly isolated, conceived during the waning of the Molina "National Transformation" as convenientlessto the capital (San Salvador is forry miles awlft until recently a drive of severalhours) than to a central hallucination of the Molina and Romero regimes, the proiectedbeachresorts,the Hyatt, the PacificParadise, tennis, golf, water-skiing, condos,Costa del Sol; the visionaryinvention of a tourist industry in yet another republic where the leading natural causeof death is infection. In the general absenceof gastrointestinal ghost touriits thesehotels havesincebeenabandoned, and resorts the empty Pacific beaches, to land at this on airport built to servicethem is to plunge directly into a statein which no ground is solid, no depth of field reliable, no perception so definite that it might not into its reverse. dissolve Immigration The only logic is that of acquiescence. in weapons, by is negotiated a thicket of eutomatic but whoseauthoriry the weaponsare brandished(Army or National Guard or National Police or Customs Policeor Treasury Policeor one of a continuing proliferadonof other shadowyand overlappingforces) is
J

13

JOAN DIDION

Documentsare a blurred point, Eye contactis avoided. upsidedown. Once clearof the airport, on scrutinized the new highway that slicesthrough green hills renby deredphosphorescent the cloud cover of the tropimainly underfedcattle and one cal rainy season, sees vans and trucks mongrel dogsand armoredvehicles, and Cherokee Chiefs fitted with reinforcedsteel and an bulletproofPlexigles inch thick. Suchvehiclesaree, fixed featureof local life, and are popularly associated There wasthe Cherokee and with disappearance death. crew killed seen following the Dutch television Chief in Chalatenango provincein March of t982.There was the red Toyota three-quafter-tonpickup sighted near the van driven by the four AmericanCatholic workers on the night they were killed in 1980.There were, in the the late springand summerof 1982, three Toyota paneltrucks,oneyellow, oneblue,andonegreen'none deat reportedpresent eachof the mass bearingplates, tendons (a "detention" is anotherfixed featureof local in life, and often precedesa "disappearance") the These are the deAmatepecdistrict of San Salvador. tails-the modelsand colors of armored vehicles,the the of and calibers weepons, particularmethods makes usedin particular and of dismemberment decapitation instances-on which the visitor to Salvadorlearnsimmediately to concentrate,to the exclusionof past or fugue. as future concerns, in a prolongedamnesiac

Terror is the given of the place. Black-and-white police carscruisein pairs,eachwith the barrel of a rifle r+

SALVADOR

extruding from an openwindow. Roadblocksmaterialize tt random, soldien fanning out from trucks and taking positions, fingers always on triggers, saferies clicking on and off. Aim is teken asif to pass time. the Every morning El Didrio de Hoy end La Prensd Grtfca c$ry czutionary stories. "UnA madre y flis dos hijos faeron dsesinados drma cortcnte (corao) con por ocho sujetosdesconocidos lunes en la noche": el A mother and her two sonshacked to death in their bedsby eight descanocidos, unknown men. The same morning's paper: the unidentified body of a young man,strangled, found on the shoulder a road.Same of morning, different story: the unidentified bodies of three young men, found on another road, their faces partially destroyedby bayoners,one faced cerved to rePresent cross. e It is largely from these repor$ in the newspepers that the United Statesembassycompilesits body counts, which are transmittedto Washington in a weekly dispatch referred to by embasy people as "the grimgrem." Thesecountserepresented a kind of torrured in codethat fails to obscurewhat is taken for grantedin El Salvador,that government forces do most of the killing. In a January I 5 1982 memo to Washington, for example,the embassy isued a "guarded" breakdown on its count of. 6,909 "reported" political murders betweenSeptember16 1980and Septemberlf 1981. these Of 6,909,according the memo,922were to "believed committed by security forces," 952 "beIieved committedby leftist terrorists," 136"believed committed by rightist terrorists," and 4,g9g "comt5

JOAN DIDION

mitted by unknown assailents,"the famous desconocidos favored by those San Salvador newspapers still publishing. (The figures actually add up not to 6,909 but to 6,899,leaving ten in a kind of official limbo.) The memo continued: "The uncertainty involved here can be seenin the fact that responsibility cannot be fixed in the majority of cases. We note, however, that it is generally believed in El Salvador that a large number of the unexplained killings are carried out by the security forces, officially or unofficially. The Embassy is aware of dramatic claims that have been made by one interest group or another in which the security forces figure as the primary agents of murder here. El Salvador'stangled web of attack and vengeance, traditional criminal violence and political mayhem make this an impossible charge to sustain. In saying this, however, we make no attempt to lighten the responsibility for the deaths of many hundreds, and perhaps thousands,which can be attributed to the security forces. . . ." The body count kept by what is generally referred to in San Salvador as "the Human Rights Commission" is higher than the embassy's,and documented periodically by a photographer who goes out looking for bodies. These bodies he photographs are often broken into unnatural positions, and the faces to which the bodies are attached (when they are attached) ere equally unnatural, somedmesunrecognizable ashuman faces, obliterated by acid or beaten to a mash of misplaced ears and teeth or slashedear to ear and invaded l6

SALVADOR

by insects."Encontddo en Antiguo Cuscatldnel dia 2J de Marzo 1982:camisonde dormir celester"the typed caption reads on one photograph: found in Antiguo CuscatldnMarch 2t 1982wearing a sky-blue nightshin. The captionsare laconic. Found in SoyaFoundin Meiic*anos pangoMry 21 1982, Junell 1982. Found at El Play6n Mry 30 1982,white shirt, purple pants,black shoes. The photograph accompanying that last caption the showsa body with no eyes,because vultures got to it before the photographerdid. There is a special kind of practicalinformation that the visitor to El Salvador acquiresimmediately,the way visitors to other placesacquire information about the currency rates, the hours for the museums. El Salvadorone learns In for that vulturesgo first for the soft tissue, the eyes,the exposed genitalia,the open mouth. One learnsthat an openmouth canbe usedto makea specificpoint, can be stuffed with somethingemblematic;stuffed, sx/, with a penis,or, if the point hasto do with land title, stuffed with someof the dirt in question.One learnsthat hair less deteriorates rapidly than flesh,and that a skull surroundedby a perfectcoronaof hair is a not uncommon sightin the body dumps. inducein the viewer a cerAll forensicphotographs tain protective numbness, dissociation more difis but ficult here.In the first placetheseare not, technically, sincethe evidence they docu"forensic" photographs, in ment will neverbe presented a court of law. In the secondplacethe disfigurement too routine. The lois cationsere too near,the datestoo recent.There is the of of the presence the relatives the diseppeared: women

r7

JOAN DIDION

office on the grounds who sit every day in this cramped waiting to look at the spiral-bound of the archdiocese, are photo albumsin which the photographs kept. These have plastic covers bearing soft-focus color albums photographsof young Americansin dating situations (strolling through autumn foliage on one album, reon cumbent in a field of daisies another), and the and womeq looking for the bodiesof their husbends them from hand and children,pess and sisters brothers to handwithout commentor expression. of elements the violent "One of the moreshadowy of Existence these the deathsquad. here [is] scene but not by many groupshaslong beendisputed, the . Salvadorens. . . Who consdtutes deathsquads We do not believe is yet enotherdifficult question. that these squadsexist as permanentformations but rather asad hoc vigilantegroupsthat coalesce according to perceivedneed.Membershipis also uncertain, but in addition to civilians we believe of that both on- andoff-dury members the security forces ere participants.This was unofficially conMai. Robeno firmed by right-wing spokesman D'Aubuisson who statedin an interview in early utilize the guise l98l that securiqyforce members of the death sguadwhen a potentially embarrasto sing or odioustaskneeds be performed." -From the confidntial but later declassified fanuary 15, 1982 memo preaiously cited, drafted for tbe StateDeparttnentby the poin litical sectionat the embassy SanSalaador.

l8

SALVADOR

The dead and piecesof the dead rurn up in EI Salvadoreverywhere,every day, astaken for granted asin a nightmare,or a horror movie.Vultures of course the of suggest presence a body. A knot of children on the the street suggests presence a body. Bodiesturn of up in the brush of vacantlots, in the garbagethrown down ravines in the richest districts, in public rest rooms, in bus stetions. Some are dropped in Lake Ilopango,a few mileseastof the city, and washup near the lakesidecottages and clubsfrequentedby what remains SanSalvador the sportingbourgeoisie. in of Some still turn up at El Play6n,the lunar lava field of rotting human flesh visible at one time or another on every television screen Americabut characterized June in in of tggz in the El Salaador Neuss Gazette,an Englishlanguage weekly editedby an American namedMario Rosenthal,as an "uncorroboratedstory . . . dredged up from the filesof leftist propaganda." Othersrurn up at Puerta del Diablo, aboveParqueBalboa,a national Turicenna describedas recently as the April-July 1982issueoI Aboard TACA, the magezine provided on passengers the national airline of Et Salvador,as "offering excellentsubiects color photography." for I drove up to Puertadel Diablo one morning in June of 1982, pastthe Casa Presidencial the camouflaged and watch towers and heavyconcentrations troopsand of arrnssouth of town, on up e narrow road narrowed further by landslides deepcrevicesin the roadbed, and a drive so insistentlypremonitory that after a while I began hopethat I would pass to Puertadel Diablo without knowing it, iust missit, write it off, turn around
t9

JOAN DIDION

it. and go back.There washoweverno way of missing Puerta del Diablo is a "view site" in an older and disan tinctly literary tradition, nature aslesson, immense rock through which half of El Salvadorsems cleft framed, a site so romantic and "mystical," so theatrically sacrificial in aspect,that it might be a cosmic landscape painting.The parody of nineteenth-century plece presentsitself as pathetic fallacy: the sky t'broodsot' of the stones"wep," a constantseepage weter weighting the ferns and moss.The foliage is thick and slick with moisture. The only sound is a of steadybuzz,,Ibelieve cicadas. Body dumps are seenin El Salvadoras a kind of visitors' must-do,difficult but worth the detour. "Of El courseyou haveseen Play6n," an aideto President t<r Alvaro Magafiasaidto me one day, and proceeded discussthe site geologically,as evidenceof the counHe made no mention of try's geothermalresources. me the bodies.I wasunsureif he was sounding out or simply found the geothermalespectof overriding interest. One differencebetween El Play6n and Puerta del Diablo is that most bodiesat El Play6n appearto else, and then dumped;at havebeenkilled somewhere ere to Puertadel Diablo the execudons believed cccur thrown over.Somein place,at the top, and the bodies the of timesreporterswill speak wanting to spend night at Puerta del Diablo, in order to documentthe actual no execution, at the time I wasin Salvador onehad. but The aftermath, the daylight aspect,is well documented. "Nothing fresh today, I hear," an embassy of6cer saidwhen I mentionedthat I had visitedPuerta
del Diablo. "Were there anv on 20 someone else

SALVADOR

asked. "There were supposedto have been three on top yesterday." The point about whether or not there had been any on top was that usually it was necessaryto go down to see bodies. The way down is hard. Slabs of stone, slippery with moss, are set into the vertiginous cliff, and it is down this cliff that one begins the descent to the bodies, or what is left of the bodies, pecked and of maggoty masses fesh, bone, hair. On somedays there have been helicopters circling, tracking those making the descent. Other days there have been militia at the top, in the clearing where the road seemsto run out, but on the morning I was there the only people on rop were a man and a woman and three small children, who played in the wet grasswhile the woman started and stopped a Toyota pickup. She appeared to be learning how to drive. She drove forward and then back toward the edge, apperently following the man's signals,over and over again. We did not speak, and it was only later, down the mountain and back in the land of the provisionally living, that it occurred to me that there was a definite question about why a man and a woman might choose a well-known body dump for a driving lesson. This was one of a number of occasions, during the two weeks my husbandand I spent in El Salvador,on which I came to understand, in a way I had not understood before, the exact mechanismof terror.

Whenever I had nothing better to do in San Salvador I would walk up in the leafy stillnessof the San Benito and Bcal6n districts, where the hush at midday is
2l

JOAN DIDION

broken only by the occasional crackle of a walkietalkie, the click of metal moving on a weapon. I recall a day in San Benito when I opened my bag to check an address,and heard the clicking of metal on metal all up and down the street. On the whole no one walks up here, and pools of blossomslie undisturbed on the sidein walks. Most of the houses SanBenito are more recent those in Escal6n, lessidiosyncratic and probably than smarter, but the most striking architectural features in both districts are not the housesbut their walls, walls built upon walls, walls stripped of the usual copa de genoro and bougainvillea, walls that reflect successive violence: the original stone, the additional eretions of five or six or ten feet of brick, and finally the barbed wire, somedmes concertina, sometimes electrified; walls with watch towers, gun ports, closed-circuit television cameras, walls now reaching twenty and thirty feet. San Benito and Escal6n appear on the embassysecurity maps as districts of relatively few "incidents," but they remain districts in which a certain oppressive uneasiness prevails. In the first place there are always and deaths and disappear"incident5"-dsfsntions ances-in the barrancds, the ravines lined with shanties with the walls and the that fall down behind the houses guards and the walkie-talkies; one day in Bcal6n I was introduced to a woman who kept the lean-to that served as a grocery in e barranca just above the Hotel Sheraton. She was sticking prices on bars of Camay and Johnson's baby sospr stopping occasionally to sell a plastic bag or two filled with crushed ice and Coca22

SALVADOR

Cola,and all the while shetalkedin a low voice about her fear, about her eighteen-yesr-oldson, about the boys who had beentaken out and shot on successive nights recently in a neighboringbarranca. In the secondplacethereis, in Fscal6n,the presence of the Sheraton itself, a hotel that hasfigured rather too prominently in certain local storiesinvolving the disappeerance deathof Americans.The Sheratonaland waysseems brighter andmoremildly festivethan either the CaminoReal or the Presidente, with children in the and flowers and pretty women in pastel dresses, pool but there are usually severalbulletproofed Cherokee Chiefsin the parking area,andthe men drinking in the lobby often cerry the little zipperedpursesthat in San Salvador sugge$ not passporrs credit cards but or Browning 9-mm. pistols. It was at the Sheraton that one of the few American desaparecidos, young free-lancewriter namedJohn r Sullivan, lastseen, December 1980. wasalso in was of It at the Sheraton, after elevenon the eveningof January that the two Americanadvisers agrarian 3 1981, on reform, Michael Hammer and Mark Pearlman, were killed, along with the Salvadoran director of the Institute for Agrarian Transformation, Josd Rodolfo Viera. The threewere drinking coffeein a dining room off the lobby, andwhoeverkilled them usedan Ingram MAGIO, without soundsuppressor, then walked and out through the lobby, unapprehended. The Sheraton heseventurned up in the investigation into the December 1980deaths the four American churchwomen, of Sisters Ford and MauraClarke,the two Maryknoll Ita
2'

JOAN DIDION

nuns; SisterDorothy Kazel, the Ursuline nun; and Jean Donovan, the lay volunteer.ln ]ustice in El Salaador: A CaseStudy, prepared and releasedin July of t98z in New York by the Lawyers' Committee for Internathis note: tional Human Rights, there aPPears "On December 19, 1980, the [Duarte government's] SpecialInvestigative Commissionreported that'a red Toyote t/4-tonpickup was seenleaving (the crime scene) at about 11:00 P.M. on Decem'a red splotch on the burned van' ber 2' and that of the churchwomen was being checked to determine whether the paint splotch'could be the result of a collision between that van and the red Toyota pickup.' By February 1981,the Maryknoll Sisters' Office of Social Concerns, which hasbeen actively monitoring the investigation, received word from a source which it considered reliable that the FBI had matched the red splotch on the burned van with a red Toyota pickup belonging to the Sheraton hotel in San Salvador. . . . Subsequentto the FBI's alleged matching of the paint splotch and a Sheraton truck, the State Department hasclaimed, in L communication with the families of the churchwomen, that'the FBI could not determine the source of the paint scraping."' There is alsomention in this study of a young Salvadoran businesman named Hans Christ (his father was a German who arrived in El Salvador at the end of World War II), a paft owner of the Sheraton. Ffans Christ lives now in Miami, and that his name should 2+

SALVADOR

have evencomeup in the Maryknoll investigation made many people uncomfortable, becauseit was Hans Christ, along with his brother-in-law, Ricardo Sol Meza,who, in April of 1981,was first chargedwith the murdersof Michael Hammerand Mark Pearlman andJosdRodolfo Viera at the Sheraton. Thesecharges were later dropped,and were followed by ^ series of othercharges, arrests, releases, expressions "dismay" of and "incredulity" from the American embassy,and in even, the fall of I9BZ,confessions rhe killings from to two former National Guard corporals,who testified that Hans Christ had led them through the lobby and pointedout the victims. Hans Christ and Ricardo Sol Mezahavesaidthat the droppedcase againsr them was a government frame-up,and that they were only having drinks at the Sheraton night of the killings, with the a National Guard intelligenceofficer.It was logical for HansChrist and Ricardo Sol Mezato havedrinks at the Sheraton because they both had interests the hotel, in and Ricardo Sol Meza, just openeda roller disco, had since closed, the lobby into which the killerswalked off that night. The killers were described witnesses by as well dressed, their faces covered. The room from which they walkedwas at the time I wasin SanSalvador no longer a restaurant,but the marks left by the bullets were still visible,on the wall facing the door. WheneverI had occasion visit the SheratonI was to apprehensive, and this apprehension came to color the entire Fscal6n district for me, even its lower reaches, where there were peopleand moviesand restaurants. recall being struck by it on the canopied I
25

JOAN DIDION

on neerthe Mexicanembassy, an porch of a restaurant or whenrain or sabotage habithadblackedout evening abruptly aware'in the light cast the city andI became by ^ passingcar, of two human shadows,silhouettes and then invisibleagain. illuminatedby the headlights windows of a One shadowsetbehind the smokedglass Chief parked at the curb in front of the Cherokee restaurent;the other crouched berweenthe pumps at the Fssostationnext door, carrying a rifle. It seemed and that my husband I were the to me unencouraging of on only peopleseated the porch.In the absence the the candleon our table providedthe only headlights light, andI fought the impulseto blow it out. We continued talking carefully. Nothing cameof this, but I of did not forget the sensation having beenin a single instant demoralized,undone, humiliated by fetr, to which is what I meantwhen I saidthat I came underof the standin El Salvador mechanism terror.

26

"3lJl81: RobertoD'Aubuison, a former Salvadoran ermy intelligenceofficer, holds a pressconference and saysthat before the U.S. presidential election he had beenin touch with a number of Reagan advisersand those contects have continued. The armedforcesshouldask the junta to resign, D'Aubuisson says.He refusesto name a date for the action, but says'March is, I think, a very interesting month.'He alsocallsfor the abandonmentof the economicreforms.D'Aubuisson had been accusedof plotting to overthrow the on government two previous occasions. Observers speculatethat since D'Aubuisson is able to hold the news conferenceand pass freely betweenSalvador and Guatemala, mustenjoy considerable he support among somesections the army.. .. of 3l+l8l: In SanSalvador, U.S.embassy fired the is upon; no one is infured. Charg6d'Affaires Fred'This incident has all the halleric Chapin sayso marks of a D'Aubuisson operation.Let me stete to you that we oppose coupsand we haveno intentionof beingintimidated."' -From the "Chronology of Eaents Relatedto SalaadordnSituation" preptred periodically by tbe United States embassy SanSohtodor. in
27

JOAN DIDION

"Since the Exodus from EgyPr, historianshave and struggledfor written of thosewho sacrificed the freedom:the standat Thermopylae, revolt of the Spartacus, storming of the Bastille,the Warin sawuprising World'War II. More recentlywe humanimpulsein of evidence this same haveseen nationsin CentralAmerica. one of the developing For months and months the world news media Day after day, coveredthe fighting in El Salvador. toward and film slanted we weretreatedto stories fighters battling oppressive the brave freedom forcesin behalf of the silent,suffergovernment of ing people that tortured country.Then oneday wereoffereda chance those silentsufferingpeople to vote to choosethe kind of governmentthey wanted.Suddenlythe freedomfightersin the hills were exposedfor what they really arci Cuban. backedguerrillas. . . On electionday the people an of El Salvador, unprecedented1.5million] of [ them, braved ambushand gunfire, trudging miles to vote for freedom." -President Reagan, hislune I 1982speecb in of both houses the Brttisb Parliament, before referring to the March 28 1982 election of afiich resuhed in tbe ascension Roberto presidency the Conof D'Aubuissonto the stituentAssembly. From whencehe shallcometo iudge the quick and speech Reagan's to I the dead. happened readPresident one eveningin San Salvadorwhen PresidentReagan
28

SALVADOR

wasin fact on television, with Doris Day, inThe Winning Team, a 1952 Warner Brothers picture abour the baseballpitcher Grover ClevelandAlexander. I reachedthe stand at Thermopylaeat about the time thateI salzt d or d. I Salaador beganstrin ng cranberries a e gi and singing"Old St. Nicholas"with Miss D"y. *Muy bcnita," he saidwhen shetried out a rocking chair in herwedding dress. "FelizNavidad,"they cried,and,in accented English, "Play ball!" As it happened "play ball" wasa phrase hadcometo I asociate El Salvador in with RobertoD'Aubuissonand hisfollowersin the Nationalist Republican Alliance,or ARENA. "It's a process letting certainpeopleknow of they're going to have to play ball," embassy people would say, and: "You take a guy who's young, and everything 'young' implies,you sendhim signals, he playsball, then we play ball." Americandiction in this situationtendstoward the studiedcasual, can-do, the asif sheer cool andBaileybridges could shape place the up. Elliott Abrams toldThe NeasYork Times in July of.tggz that punishment within the Salvadoran military could be "e very importantsignthar you can'r do this stuffany more," meaning the citizens. you clean kill "If up your act,all thingsarepossible," the way Jeremiah is O'Leary,a special asistantto U.S.nationalsecurityadviser William Clark, describedthe American diplometic effort in an interview given Tbe Los Angeles Times)ust after the March 28 1982election.He was speculating how Ambassador on DeaneHinton might be dealingwith D'Aubuisson."I kind of picture him saying, 'Goddamnit, Bobbie, you've got a problem

JOAN DIDION

and. . . if you're what everyone said you are, you're going to make it hard for everybody."' Roberto D'Aubuisson is a chain smoker, as were many of the people I met in El Salvador, perhaps becauseit is a country in which the possibility of achieving a death related to smoking remains remote. I never met Maf or D'Aubuisson, but I was always interested in the adiectivesused to describe him. "Pathological" was the adjective, modifying "killer," used by former ambassadorRobert E. White (it was White who refused D'Aubuisson a visa, after which, according to the embassy's "Chronology of Events" for June 30 1980, "D'Aubuisson managesto enter the U.S. illegally and spends two days in Washington holding Pressconferences and attending luncheons before turning himself in to immigration authorities"), but "pathological" is not a word one heard in-country, where meaning tends to be transmitted in code. In-country one heard "young" (the "and everything 'young' implies" part was usually left tacit), even imt'impetuousrt' "impulsiver" "impatientr" "nermature" l vousr" "volatile," "high-strungr" "kind of coiled-up," and, most frequently, "intense," or iust "tense." Offhand it struck me that Roberto D'Aubuisson had some reasonto be tense,in that General Jos6Guillermo Garcfa, who had remained a main player through several changes of government, might logically perceive him as the wild card who could queer everybody's ability to refer to his election as a vote for freedom. As I write this I realize that I have fallen into the Salvadoran mindset, which turns on plot, and, since half the players at 30

SALVADOR

any given point in the gameare in exile,on the phrase "in touch with." "I've known D'Aubuissona long time," I was told by Alvaro Magafla,the banker the Army made,over D'Aubuisson's rather frenzied obiections ("We stoppedthat one on the one-yardline," DeaneHinton told me about D'Aubuison's play to block Magafia), provisionalpresidentof EI Salvador.We were sitring in his office upstairsat the CasaPresidencial, ary en and spacious building in the tropical colonialstyle, and he was drinking cup after Limogescup of black coffee, smokingone cigarettewith each,carefully, an unwilling actorwho intended survivethe accident being to of castin this production. "Since Molina was president.I usedto come here to SeeMolina, D'Aubuison would be here, he was a young man in military intelligence, I'd seehim here." He grzedtoward the corridor thar opened onto the interior courtyard, with cannas, oleander,a fountain not in operation. "When we're alonenow I uy to talk to him. I do talk to him, he's coming for lunch today. He never callsme Alvaro, it's always usted, Sefror, Doctor, I call him Roberto. I say,Roberto, don't do this, don't do that, you know." Magafiastudiedin the United States, Chicago,and at his four oldest children are now in the United States, one son at Vanderbilt, a son and a daughterar Santa Clara,and anotherdaughternearSantaClara,at Notre Damein Belmont.He is connected money,educaby tion, and temperement oligarchal families.AII the to players here are denselyconnected: Magaffa'ssister, who livesin California,is the besrfriend of Nora Ungo,
31

JOAN DIDION

the wife of Guillermo Ungo, and Ungo spoke to Magaffa's sister in August of t9g2 when he was in which California raising money for the FMLNJDR, government is what the opposition to the Salvadoran was called this yeer. The membership and even the initials of this opposition tend to the fluid, but the broad strokes are these: the FMLN-FDR is the coalidon between the Revolutionary Democratic Front (FDR) and the five guerrilla groups ioined together in the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front These five groups are the SalvadoranCommunist Party (PCS), the Popular Forces of Liberation (FPL), the Revolutionary Party of Central American Workers (PRTC), the People's Revolutionary Army (FMLN). (ERP), and the Armed Forces of Nadonal Resistance (FARN). Within each of thesegrouPs' there are further factions, and sometimeseven further initials, as in the PRS andLP-28 of the ERP. During the time that D'Aubuisson was trying to stoP Magafia's appointment es provisional president' members of ARENA, which is supported heavily by other oligarchal elements, passed out leaflets referring to Magafia, predictably, as a communist, and, more interesdngllr as "the little J.*." The manipulation of anti-Semitism is an undercurrent in Salvadoranlife that and probably worth some study, is not much discussed since it refers to a tension within the oligarchy itself, the tension between those families who solidified their holdings in the mid-nineteenrh century and those later families, some of them Jewish, who arrived in El Salvador and entrenched themselvesaround 1900.I recall asking a well-ofi Salvadoran about the numbers of his 32

SALVADOR

acquaintances within the oligarchy who have removed themselves and their money to Miami. "Mostlv the he said. Jews," "In SanSalvador in the year 1965 the bestsellers of the three mostimportant book stores were: The Protocolsof the Eldersof Zion; a few booksby diarrheticSomerset Maugham ; a book of disagreeably obviouspoems by a lady with a European name who nonetheless writesin Spanish aboutour counffy and a collectionof Digestcondensed Reader's novels." -(($4n Salaador"by Roque Dalton, translated by EdusardBdker. The late Roque Dalton Garcfa was born into the Salvadoran in bourgeoisie 1935,spenr some years in Havana,cemehomein 1973to join the ERP, or the People's RevolutionaryArmy, and, in 1975,was executed, charges hewasa CIA agent,by his own on thar comrades. The actual executionerwas said to be JoaquinVillalobos,who is now aboutthirty yearsold, commander the ERP,anda key figurein the FMLN, of which,asthe Mexicanwriter GabrielZaid pointed out
55

JOAN DIDION

in the winter 1982issueof Dissenf,has as one of its support groups the Roque Dalton Culrural Brigade. The Dalton execution is frequently cited by people that "the other sidekills peopletoo, who want to stress you know," an argumentcommonmainly emongthose, like the State Department, with a stake in whatever government is current in El Salvador,since, if it is taken for granted in Salvador that the government kills, it is also taken for granted that the other side kills; that everyonehaskilled, everyonekills now, and, any if the history of the place suggests pettern' everyone will continueto kill. here," "Don't say I saidthis, but there are no issues "There are I was told by a high-placedSalvadoran. He meant of coursenot that there only ambitions." in were no ideas conflict but that the conflictingideas by were held exclusively peoplehe knew, that, whator of everthe outcome enyfighting or negotiation couP would ultimately Presidencial the or countercoup, Casa and not occupied by campesinos Maryknollsbut by be entitled,by. GuillermoUngo or a Joaquin the already Villalobos or evenby Roque Dalton'sson' Juan Jos6 in Dalton, or by JuanJos6Dalton'scomrade the FPL, Jos6Antonio MoralesCarbonell,the guerrilla son of Jos6Antonio Morales Ehrlich, a former memberof the Duartejunta who had himselfbeenin exileduring the Romeroregime.In an open letter written shortly before his arrestin San Salvadorin June 1980,Josd his Carbonellhadcharged fatherwith Antonio Morales an insufficient appreciationof "Yankee imperialism." Jos6Antonio MoralesCarbonellandJuanJos6Dalton t+

SALVADOR

tried togetherro enrerthe United States the summer in of 1982,for a speaking engagement SanFrancisco, in but were refused visasby the American embassy in Mexico Ciry. Whatever the issu.swere that had divided Morales Carbonellandhisfather andRoqueDalton andJoaqufn Villalobos, the prominent Salvadoranto whom I was talking seemed be saylng,they were issues to that fell somewhere outside the lines normally drawn to indicate"left" and "right." That this man sa,w sitaacifin la asonly one more realignmentof power amongthe entitled, a conflict of "ambitions" rather than "issues,,' was,f recognized, what many peoplewould call a conventionalbourgeoisview of civil conflict, and offered no solutions,but the people with solutions ro offer were mainly somewhere else,in Mexico or Panama or Washington.

The place brings everything into question. One afternoonwhen I had run out of the Halazonetablets I dropped every night in a pitcher of tap water (a demented gringd gesnrre, knew eventhen, in a counI try where everyonenot born there wes ar leastmildly ill, including the nurse at the American embassy),I walked across streetfrom the Camino Real to the the Metrocenter,which is referred to locally as ,,Central America'sLargestShopping Mall." I found no Halazone^t the Metrocenterbut becameabsorbed makin ing notes aboutthe mallitself,aboutthe Muzak playing "I Left My Heart in SanFrancisco" and ,,American
3t

JOAN DIDION

be Pie" (". . . singing this'Lr)ill the day tbat I die . . .") called although the record store featured a cassette about the pdtd de foie gras for of Classics Paragu'a1, about the guard who did the salein the supermarket, weaponscheck on everyonewho enteredthe supermarket, about the young matrons in tight Sergio Vabehindthem and lente ieans,trailing maidsand babies beachtowels printed with mapsof buying towels,big about the Manhattan that featured Bloomingdale's; to number of things for sale that seemed suggesta evoke modishcockfashion for "smart drinking," to tail hours. There were bonles of Stolichneyl vodka and packagedwith glasses mixer, there were ice buckdesigR, ets, there were bar czrts of every conceivable with samplebottles. displayed the centerthat embodied future This wasa shopping for which El Salvadorwas presumablybeing saved, and I wrote it down dutifully, this beingthe kind of "color" I knew how to interpret,the kind of inductive iron/, the detail that was supposedto illuminate the that I wesno longer story.As I wrote it down I realized interestedin this kind of irony, that this wes e much story that would not be illuminatedby such details, that this was a story that would perhapsnot be ila evenless "story" luminatedat all,that thiswasperhaPs As than a true nocheobscura. I waited to crossback over the Boulevardde los Heroesto the CaminoReal herding a young civilianinto a van, I noticed soldiers their guns at the boy's back, and I walked straight not ahead, wanting to seeanythingat all.

36

"12/11/81: El Salvador's Atlacatl Battalionbegrns L 6-day offensive sweep against guerrilla

strongholds in Morezin."

-From

the U.S. Embassy"Chronology of Eaents."

"The departmentof Morazin, one of the country's most embattledareas, wes the sceneof another armed forces operationin December,the fourth in Morazin during 1981.. . . The hamlet of Mozote was completelywiped out. For this reason,the severalmassacres which occurred in the samearee at the sametime are collectively known as the 'Mozote massecre.' The apparent solesurvivor from Mozote,RufinaAmaya,thirtyeight years old, escaped hiding behind trees by near the housewhere sheand the other women hadbeenimprisoned. hastestifiedthat on FriShe day, Decemberll, troopsarrived and begantaking people from their homesar about 5 in the morning.. . . At noon, the men were blindfolded and killed in the rown'scenter.Among them was Amaya'shusband, who was nearly blind. In the eerly afternoon the young .womenwere taken to the hills nearbn where they were raped, then
37

JOAN DIDION

kilted and burned. The old women were taken next end shot. . . . From her hiding place,Amaya heard soldiers discusschoking the children to she death;subsequently heardthe children calling no shots.Among the children murfor help, but deredwere three of Amaya's,all under ten years that the villagers of age.. . . It shouldbe stressed in the area had been warned of the impending military operationby the FMLN and some did leave.Thosewho choseto stay,suchasthe evanthemand others,considered gelical Protestants in the conflict andfriendly with the selves neutral 'Because we army. According to Rufina Amaya, we knew theArmy people, feltsafe.'Herhusband, shesaid,had beenon good terms with the local 'a military and evenhad what shecalled military Amaya and other survivors[of the safe-conduct.' in nine hamlets which the killing took placel acthe Atlacatl Battalionof a maior role in the cused killing of civiliansin the Mozote LreL" -From tbe luly 20 1982Supplemm'tto the "Report on Human Rights in El Salaador" and prepmed AmericasWatcb Commi.ttee by tbe AmericanCivil LibertiesUnion.

At the time I was in El Salvador,six months after and the eventsreferred to as the Mozote messacre a 1982cerReagan's President month or so before July tification that sufficientprogresswas being made in specifiedereas("human rights," and "land reform," and "the initiation of a democraticpolitical process,"
38

SALVADOR

so phrases remote in situ as to render them hallucinatory) to qualify El Salvador continuing a maior for aid, offensivewas taking placein Moraz6n,up in the mean hill country between the garrison town of San Fran, ciscoGoteraandthe Honduranborder.ThisJune 1982 fighting wasreferred to by both sides the heaviest as of the war to date, but actual information, on this as on in all subjects SanSalvador, was hard to comeby. Reports drifted back. The Atlacatl, which wes trained by American advisers 1981,was definitely in up thereagain, were two other battalions, Atonal, as the trained,like the Atlacatl, by Americans El Salvador, in just back from training ar Forr andthe Ram6nBelloso, Bragg.Every morning COPREFA, the pressoffice at the Ministry of Defense,reported many FMLN casualties but few government. Every afternoon Radio Venceremos, clandestine the guerrillaradio station,reported meny government casualties few FMLN. but The only way to get eny sense what washappening of was to go up there,but Morazin was hard to reach: a key bridge betweenSan Salvadorand the easternhalf of the country, the Puente de Oro on the Rio Lempa, had beendynamitedby the FMLN in October 1981, and to reachSanFrancisco Gotera it was now necessaryeitherto cross Lempaon a railroadbridge or to the fly, which meant going out to the military airport, Ilopango, andtrying to ger oneof the seven-passenger that the Gutierrez Flying Serviceoperated prop planes Ilopango between andagrassy field outside Miguel. San At SanMiguel one could sometimes a taxi willing get to go on up to SanFrancisco Gotera,or a bus,the prob-

JOAN DIDION

lem with a bus being that even a roadblock that ended well (no one killed or detained) could take hours, while every pessengerwas questioned.Between san Miguel and Gotera, moreover, there was a further problem, another blown bridge, this one on the Rio Seco, which wussecoenough in the dry months but often impassable in the wet. June was wet. The Rio Seco seemed doubtful. Everything about the day ahead, on the morning I started for Gotera, seemeddoubtful, and that I ser out on such a venture with a real lightening of the spirit sugges$ to me now how powerfully I wanted to get out of San Salvador, to spend t dey free of its ambiguous tension, its overcast, its mood of wety somnambulism. It was only a trip of perhaps eighty miles, but getting there took most of the morning. There was, first of all, the wait on the runwey at llopango while the pilot tried to get the enginesto catch. "Cinco minu,tos," he kept saying, and, as a wrench was produced, "Mommtito." Thunderclouds were massingon the mountains to the east.Rain spattered the fuselage. at The plane was full, seven paying Passengers ninetyfive colonesthe round trip, and we watched the tinkering without comment until one and finally both of the enginesturned over. Once in the air I was struck, as always in Salvador, by the miniature aspect of the countrlrr an entire republic smaller than some California counties (smaller than San Diego County, smaller than Kern or Inyo, smaller by two-and-a-half times than San Bernardino), the very circumstance thet has encouraged the illusion +0

SALVADOR

that the placecanbe managed, salvaged, kind of pilot a proiect, Iike TVA. There below us in a twenry-fiveminute flight lay half the country, t landscape already denselygreen from the rains that had begun in May, intenselycultivated,deceptivelyrich, the coffeespreading down every ravine, the volcanic rangeslooming abruptly andthen receding.I watchedthe slopes the of for mountains signsof fighting but sawnone.I watched for the hydroelectricworks on the Lempabut sawonly the blown bridge. There were four of us on the fight that morning who wantedto go on to Gotera, my husband I and and ChristopherDickey from The Wdshington Post end Harmesfrom Neassq,pee, when the plane Joseph , and set down on the grassstrip outside San Miguel a deal was stmck with a taxi driver willing to take us ar leasr to the Rio Seco. We shared taxi asfar asSanMiguel the with a local woman who, although sheand I sat on a single bucket seat,did not speak,only staredstraight ahead,clutching her bag with one hand and trying with the other to keepher skirt pulled down over her black laceslip.When shegor out ar SanMiguel there remained the taxi a traceof her perfume, in Arplge. In SanMiguel the streets showedthe marksof January's fighting, and many sructures were boardedup, abandoned. There had been a passable motel in San Miguel, but the owners had managedto leave the country. There had beena passable placeto eat in San Miguel, but no more.Occasional roop trucks hurtled returning empty from the front, and pasqpresumably we all madenote of them, dutifully. The heat rose.
+L

JOAN DIDION

Sweat from my handkept blurring my tally of emPty painstaktroop trucks, and I copiedit on a clean Page, ingly, asif it mettered. The heat up here was drier than that in the capital, harsher,dustier, and by now we were resignedto ig resignedto the jolting of the taxi, resignedto the freon quent occasions which we were required to stoP, get out, presentour identification (carefully, reaching not slowly into an outer pocket,everymovecalculated barely many of whom seemed to startle the soldiers, with the M-16s), and wait while the taxi pubescent, wore cruSomeof the youngersoldiers was seerched. with bright yarn' the pink and green cifixes wrapped now with dustand sweat.The taxi of the yarn stained driver was perhapstwenty years older than most of a thesesoldiers, stocky, well-settledcitizen wearingexbut sunglasses, at eachroadblock,in a motion pensive he asto be almostimperceptible, would so abbreviated touch each of the two rosariesthat hung from the rearview mirror and crosshimself. By the time we reachedthe R(o Seco the question insignifiof whether or not we could crossit seemed distractionin a day that hadbegun cant, anotherminor at six and was now, beforenine,alreadylessa day than a way of being alive. We would try, the driver anthat day to nounced,to ford the river, which appeared be running shallow and relatively fast over an unPredictablebed of sandandmud.We stoodfor a while on and the bank and watcheda man with an earthmover winch try againand againto hook up his equipmentto Smallboysdove midstream. a truck that hadfoundered 42

SALVADOR

repeatedly with hooks,andrepeatedly surfaced, unsuccesful. It did not seementirely promising,bur there it was,and there, in due time, we were: in the river, first following the sandbar a wide crescenqthen off the in bar, stuck, the enginedead.The taxi rocked gently in the current.The water bubbledinch by inch through the floorboards. There were women bathing naked in the shallows, and they paid no attention to the eafthmover, the small boys, the half-submergedtaxi, the gringosinside it. As we waited for our turn with the earthmoverit occurred to me thet fording the river in the morning meantonly that we were going to haveto ford it rgain in the afternoon, when the earthmover might or might not be around, but this was thinking ahead, out of synchwith the dey at hand. and

When I think now of that day in Gotera I think mainly of waiting, hangingaround,waiting outsidethe ctnrtel ("ConneNDo," signsread on the gates,and the VERoES," with a greenberet) and waiting out"BorN.A.s sidethe church and waiting outsidethe Cine Morazah, where the posterspromised Fright and The Abominable Snowman end the open lobby was lined with .5O-caliber machine gunsand 120-mm. mobilemortars. There were soldiersbilleted in the Cine Morazdn,and a few of them kicked a soccerball, idly, among the mortars.Others fokedamongthemselves the corner, at outsidethe saloon,and flirted with the women selling Coca-Cola the stallsberweenthe Cine Morazdn and in the parishhouse. The parishhouseand the church and
43

JOAN DIDION

the stallsand the saloonand the Cine Morezin end the cunrtel all faced one another, acrosswhat was lessa squarethan a dusty widening in the road,an arrangeA.y asPect. ment that lent Goteraa certainproscenium carevent at all-the arrival of an armoredpersonnel outsidethe church: rier, say, or a funeral procession with instantly into an oPera, tendedto metamorphose all playersonstage:the Soldiersof the Garrison,the Young Ladiesof the Town, the Vendors'the Priests, as the Mourners,and, sincewe were onstege well, a and provocative element, the norteameridissonant conos,in norteamericanocostume,old Abercrombie there, a Lone Star Beer khakis here,Adidas sneakers caP. We stood in the sun and tried to avoid adverseatand madesurreptitious tendon. We drank Coca-Cola in notes. We lookedfor the priests the parishofficebut our found only the receptionist,a dwarf. We presented againand againat the cudrtel,trying to see credentials to the colonel who could give us permission go up the the fighting was, but the few kilometers to where colonelwasout, the colonelwould beback,the colonel The young officer in chargeduring the was delayed. but could not give us permission, he colonel'sabsence had graduatedfrom the EscuelaMilitar in one of the trained in the spring of l9aZ et Fort Benning classes ("Mar-vel-ous!" was his impression Fort Benning) of to at and seemed leastamenable us asAmericans.Possibly there would be a patrol going up. Posibly we could ioin it. In the end no patrol went up and the colonelnever +4

SALVADOR

cameback (the reasonthe colonelnevercameback is that he was killed that afternoon,in a helicopter crash nearthe Honduran border,but we did not learnthis in Gotera) and nothing cameof the day but overheard rumors,indefinite observations, fragmentsof information that might or might not fir into a pattern we did not perceive. One of the six A-37B Dragonfly attack that the United States delivered just that week had iets to llopangoscreamed overhead, low then disappeared. A companyof soldiersburst through the cuartel gates and double-timedto the river, but when we caught up they were only bathing sheddingtheir uniforms and splashing the shallowwarer.On the bluff abovethe in river work was being completedon a helipad that was saidto covertwo mess gra{esof deadsoldiers, the but were no longer apparent. graves The taxi driver heard, from the soldiers with whom he talkedwhile he waited (talkedand playedcardsand ate tortillas and sardines and listenedto rock-and-roll on the taxi radio), that nvo whole companies were mising in action, lost or dead somewherein the hills, but this was received information,and equivocal. In someweys the leastequivocal fact of the day was the singlebody we had seen thar morning on the road betweenthe Rio Secoand Gotera,nearSanCarlos,the nakedcorpse a manaboutthirty with a cleanbulletof hole drilled neatly between his eyes.He could have beenstrippedby whoever killed him or, since this was a country in which clotheswere too valuableto leave on the dead, someone by who happened pesr:therewas no way of telling. In any casehis genitals had been
45

JOAN DIDION

by coveredwith aleafy branch,presumably the campesinos who were even then digging a greve.A subaersiao, the driver thought, becausethere was no killed in family in evidence(to be relatedto someone is El Salvador a prima facie deathwerrant, and families to tend to vanish), but all anyonein Gotera seemed know was that there had been another body at Precisely that place the morning before, and five others before that. One of the priestsin Goterahad happened to seethe body the morning before,but when he drove past San Carlos later in the day the body had been wes buried.It wasagreedthat someone trying to make a point. The point was unclear.

We spentan hour or so that day with the priests,or with rwo of them, both lrish, and rwo of the nuns' one Irish and one American, all of whom lived together in the parish housefacing the cuartel in t situation that remainsin my mind as the one actual instanceI have but of witnessed gracenot simply underpressure under siege. Except for the American,SisterPhyllis' who had arrived only a few months before, they had rll been in Gotera a long time, twelve years,nine years,long e amongthemselves greve enoughto have established a companionableness, courtesy and good humor that made the courtyard porch where we sat with them seemcivilization'slast standin Moraz6n,which in certainwaysitwas. filtered The light on the porch wascool andaqueous, through ferns and hibiscus,and therewere old wicker
46

SALVADOR

rockers and L map of PennoeuH Sex FneNcrsco GorBna. a woodentablewith a typewriter,a canof and Planter's Mixed Nuts, copies of Liaes of the Saints: Ilhtstrated md The Rules of the Secular Franciscan Order.In the shadows beyondthe tablewesa battered refrigeratorfrom which, after a while, oneof the priests got bottles of Pilsenerbeer, and we sat in the sedative halfJight and drank the cold beer and talked in a desultory way about nothing in particular, about the situation,but no solutions. These were not peoplemuch given to solutions,to abstracts:their lives were grounded in the specific. There had beenthe funeral that morning of a parishionerwho haddiedin the night of cerebralhemorrhage. There had beenthe two children who died that week, of diarrhea,dehydration,in the squattercampsoutside town where some12,000 refugees were then gathered, many of them ill. There was no medicinein the camps. There was no weter anywhere, and had been none sincearound the time of the election, when the tank that suppliedGotera with water had beendynamited. Five or six weeksafter the tank was blown the rains had begun, which was bad in one way, because the rain washedout the latrinesat the camps,but good in enother, becauseat the parish house they were no Ionger dependententirely on water from the river, soupy with bacteriaand amoebaeand worms. "We have the roof water no'w," Sister Jean,the Irish nun, said. "Much cleaner.It's greenish yellow, the river water, we only useit for the toilets." There had been, they agreed,fewer dead around +7

JOAN DIDION

since the election, fewer bodies, they thought, than rn the capital, but as they began reminding one another of this body or that there still seemedto have been quite a few. They spoke of thesebodies in the matter-of-fact way that they might have spoken, in another kind of parish, of confirmation candidates, or casesof croup. There had been the few up the road, the two at Yoloaiquin. Of course there had been the forty-eight near Barrios, but Barrios was in April. "A gaardia wrc killed last Wednesday," one of them recalled. "Thursday." "Was it Thursday then, Jerry?" "A sniper." "That's what I thought. A sniper." We left the parish house that day only becauserain seemedabout to fall, and it was clear that the Rio Seco had to be crossed now or perhaps not for days. The priests kept a guest book, and I thought as I signed it that I would definitely come back to this porch, come back with antibiotics and Scotch and time to spend,but I did not get back, and some weeks after I left El Salvador I heard in a third-hand way that the parish house had been at least temporarily abandoned, that the priests, who had been under threats and pressurefrom the garrison, had somehowbeen forced to IeaveGotera. I recalled that on the day before I left El Salvador Deane Hinton had askedme, when I mentioned Gotera, if I had seenthe priests,and had expressedconcern for their situation. He was particularly concerned about the American, Sister Phyllis (an American nun in a parish under siege in a part of the country even then under attack from American A-378s was nothing the 48

SALVADOR

American embassyneeded in those last delicate weeks before certification), and had at some point expressed this concern to the comrndante at the garrison. The comandante, he said, had been surprised to learn the nationalities of the nuns and priests; he had thought them French, becausethe word used to describe them was always "Franciscan." This was one of those occasionalwindows that open onto the heart of El Salvador and then close, a glimpse of the impenetrable interior.

At the time I was in El Salvador the hostilities at hand were referred to by those reporters still in the country as "the number-four wer," after Beirut, IranIra{, and the aftermath of the Falklands. So many reporters had in fact abandoned the Hotel Camino Real in San Salvador (gone home for a while, or gone to the Intercontinental in Managua, or gone to whatever hotels they frequented in Guatemala and Panama and Tegucigalpa) that the dining room had discontinued its breakfast buffet, e, fact often remarked upon: no breakfast buffet meant no action, little bang-bang, a period of editorial indifference in which stories were filed and held, and film rarely made the network news. "Get an NBC crew up from the Falklands, we might get the buffet back," they would say, and, "It hots up a little, we could have the midnight movies." It seemed that when the networks arrived in force they brought movies down, and showed them at midnight on their ,, video recorders Apocaly pseN ott, and Woody Allen's Banands.

JOAN DTDTON

were there. "Are you Meanwhileonly the regulars going out today?" they would sey to one anotherat breakfast, and, "This might not be a bad day to look around." The Avis counter in the bar suppliedsigns with every car and reading"PRBNslINrBnNlcroNAL" with agreements a typed its insurance van,andmodified clauseexcluding damageincurred by terrorists.The transcriptsof deliveredtranslated American embassy Radio Venceremos, preparedby the CIA in Panama. The COPREFA office at the Ministry of Defensesent over "urgent" notices, taped to the front desk, anin nouncing eventsspecificallydevised, those weeks beforecertification,for the Americanpress:the ceremonial transfer of land titles, and the ritual display of "defectors,"terrifiedJookingmenwho were reported the in La PrensaGrifica to have"abandoned ranks of subversion, weary of somany liesandfalsepromises." A handful of reporters continued to cover these events,particularly if they were stagedin provincial and offered the posibiliry of action en route, garrisons but action was lessthan certain,and the situation less in accessible than it had seemed the daysof the breakwould talk to no fast buffet. The American advisers a one,although occasionally repofter could find a few drinking at the Sheratonon Saturdaynight and initiate a little generalconversation.(That the American adviserswere still billeted at the Sheratonstruck me as I somewhatperverse,pardcularly because knew that had moved its visiting AID people to a the embassy guardedhousein SanBenito, "FranklR I'd rather stay an at the Sheraton," AID man hadtold me. "But since t0

SALVADOR

the two union guys got killed at the Sheraton,they want us here.") The era in which the guerrillascould be found lust by going out on the highwayhadlargely ended;the only certain way to spendtime with them now was to crossinto their territory from Honduras, in through conta$ with the leadership Mexico. This that tended to discourage day-tripping, was a process and in any caseit was no longer a war in which the LrNBs,Er, dateline"SoprnwttnneBnsrNp Gupnnrr"r.e, Ser,veuon"wes presumedautomatically to illuminate much at all. Everyonehadalreadyspenttime, too, with the availplayers,most of whom had grown so ablegovernment in the process that their interviewswere now practiced less performances, apt to be reported than reviewed, and analyzedfor subtle changesin delivery. Roberto D'Aubuissonhad eventaken part, wittingly or unwittingly, in an actual performance: a sceneshot by a Danishfilm crew on location in Haiti and El Salvador for a movie about a foreign correspondenq which in the actor playing the correspondent"interviewed" D'Aubuisson, on camera,in his office. This Danish crew treated the Camino Real not only as a normal location hotel (the star, for example,was the only personI ever saw swim in the CaminoReal pool) but alsoasa story element, oneoccasion on shootinge scene in the bar, which lent daily life during their stay e peculiar extra color. They left San Salvadorwithout makingit entirely clear whetheror not they had ever told D'Aubuisson wasiust a movie. it

51

r twenty-two minutespast midnight on therewasa maior earthquake SaturdayJune lg, 1982, shacksand set off in El Salvador,one that collapsed hundredpeoplebut killed and landslides injured several (I say "ebout" a dozen because only about a dozen figures on this, as on everything else in Salvador, varied), surprisingly few for an earthquakeof this it intensity (Cal Tech registered at 7.0 one'sapparent on the Richter scale,Berkeley ^t 7.+) and length, For the severalhours that prethirty-seven seconds. by I cededthe earthquake had beenseized the kind of bad mood that my grandmother believed amorphous an adiunct of what is calledin California"earthquake an a weather," a sultriness, stillness' unnaturallight; the about iitters. In fact there wasno particularprescience weatherin my bad mood,sinceit is alwaysearthquake the iitters are endemic. and SanSalvador, I recall having comeback to the CaminoReal about ten-thirty that Friday night, after dinner in a Mexican restaurent on the PaseoEscal6n with a Salvadoran painternamedVictor Barriere,who hadsaid,when we met at a party t few daysbefore,that he was interested they because sooften czmeand in talkingto Americans of went with no understanding the country and its hist2

SALVADOR

tory. Victor Barrierecould offer, he explained, special a on he perspective the country and its history, because was a grandsonof the late GeneralMaximiliano Hern6ndezMartinez, the dictator of El Salvadorbetween 1931and l9+4 and the authorof what Salvadorans still the cill ld matonz,a, massacre, "killing" thoseweeks or in 1932 whenthe government killed uncountable thousandsof citizens, a lesson. ("IJncountable" because of estimates thosekilled vary from six or seventhousandto thirty thousand.Even higher figuresare heard but, asThomasP. Andersonpointed out in Salvador, in Matanza:EI Salvodor'sConnnunistReaoh of 1932, Iike medievalpeople,tend to us num"Salvadorans, bers like fifty thousand simply to indicate a great number-statistics are not their strongpoint.") As it happened had beeninterested someyears I for in GeneralMartinez, the spirit of whoseregimewould to seem haveinformed Gabriel GarciaMirquez's Tbe Autunm of the Patridrch. This originalpatriarch,who in wasmurdered exilein Honduras 1966, a rather in was sinistervisionary who entrenchedthe military in Salvadoranlife, was said to haveheld sdances the Casa in and Presidencial, conducted both the country'sand his own affairsalong lines dictated by eccentric insights, which hesometimes shared radiowith the remaining by citizens: "It is good that children go barefoot.That way they can better receivethe beneficial effiuvia of the planet,the vibrationsof the earth.Plantsand don't useshoes." animals
53

JOAN DIDION

But only five senses. "Biologistshave discovered in reality there are ten. Hunger, thirst, Procreation, urination, and bowel movementsare the not senses includedin the listsof biologists." this sideof GeneralMartinez I had first come across in the United States Government Printing Office's L Area Handbook f or El Safuador, generallystraight("designedto be useful to military forward volume who needa convenientcompilaand other personnel betweenthe facts") in which, somewhere tion of basic basic facts about General Martinez's progrem for factsaboutGeneral Marand buildingschools the basic there aPpears tfnez's program for increasingexports, "He kept bottlesof colored water that this sentence: including ascuresfor almostany disease, he dispensed and reliedon complexmagicancerand hearttroublen cal formulas for the solution of nationalproblems." springsfrom theArea Handbookf or El This sentence as Salaador if printed in neon,and is followed by one of evenmorearresting:"During an epidemic smallpox by to in the capital,he attempted halt its spread stringing the city with a web of coloredlights." in when I did not Not a night passed SanSalvador imagine strungwith thosecoloredlights,and I asked it Victor Barriere what it had been like to grow up as of the grandson GeneralMartinez.Victor Barrierehad at studied for e while in the United States, the San of Diego campus the University of California,and he spoke perfect unaccentedEnglish,with the slightly in of formal constructions the foreignspeaker, a fluted, 5+

SALVADOR

melodic voice that seemed always to suggest higher a reasonableness. generalhad been, he said, someThe times misunderstood.V.ry sffong men often were. had Certain excesses beeninevitable.Someone had to take charge."It wes sometimes strangegoing to school with boys whosefathersmy grandfatherhad ordered shot," he allowed,but he remembered grandfather his mainly asa "forceful" man,a man "capableof inspiring great loyalty," a theosophist from whom it had been to possible learn an appreciation "the classics," of "a sense history," "the Germans."The Germans of especially had influencedVictor Barriere'ssense history. of "When you've read Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, what's happened here,what'shappening here, well ." Victor Barriere had shrugged, and the subject changed, althoughonly fractionally, sinceEl Salvador is one of thoseplaces the world where thereis lust in one subfect, the situation, the problenn, its various facetspresented over andover again,ason a stereopticon. One turn, and the facet was former ambasador Robert White: "A real jerk." Another, the murder in March of tggOof ArchbishopOscarArnulfo Romero: "A real bigot." At first I thought he meantwhoever stood outsidean open door of the chapelin which the Archbishop was sayingmassand drilled him through the heartwith e .Z}-caliber dumdumbullet,but he did not: "Listening to that man on the radio every Sunday," he said, "was like listeningto Adolf Hitler or BenitoMussolini." any case: In "We don't reallyknow who killed him, do we? It could have been the right . . ." He drew the words out, cantabile. "Or . . .
55

JOAN DIDION

it could have been the left. We have to ask ourselves, who gained? Think about it, Joan." I said nothing. I wanted only for dinner to end. Victor Barriere had brought a friend along, a young man from Chalatenango whom he was teaching to paint, and the friend brightened visibly when we stood up. He was eighteen years old and spoke no English and had sat through the dinner in polite misery. "He can't even speak Spanish properly," Victor Barriere said, in front of him. "However. If he were cutting cane in Chalatenango,he'd be taken by the Army and killed. If he were out on the street here he'd be killed. So. He comes every day to my srudio, he learns to be a primitive painter, and I keep him from getting killed. It's better for him, don't you agree?" I said that I agreed. The rwo of them were going back to the house Victor Barriere shared with his mother, L diminutive woman he addressed as "Mommy," the daughter of General Martinez, and, after I dropped them there it occurred to me that this was the first time in my life that I had been in the presenceof obvious "material" and felt no professional exhilaration at all, only personal dread. One of the most active death squadsnow operating in El Salvador calls itself the Maximiliano Hernindez Mart(nez Brigade, but I had not askedthe grandson about that.

In spite of or perhaps becauseof the fact that San Salvador had been for more than two years under an almost constanr state of siege,a city in which arbitrary 56

SALVADOR

detentionhad beenlegalized (Revolutionary Governing Junta Decree 507), curfew violations had been known to end in death,and many peopledid not leave their houses after dark, a certain limited frivoliqy still obtained.When I got back to the CaminoReal after dinner with Victor Barriere that Friday night there was for examplea private parry at the pool, with live music,dancing,an acrual congaline. There were alsoa numberof peoplein the ber, many of them watching, on televisionmonitors,"SefioritaEl Salvador7982,"the selectionof El Salvador's entry in "SefioritaUniverso 1982,"scheduled July 1982in for Lima. Somethingabout "Sefiorita flniverso" struck a familiar note,andthen I recalledthat the MissUniverse conte$itselfhadbeenheldin SanSalvador 1975, in and had endedin what might havebeenconsidered prea dictable welr with student protes$ about the money the government was spendingon the contest, pnd the government's predictable response, which wasto shoot some the students rhe streetand disappear of on others. (Desaparecer, "disappear," is in Spanishboth an or intransitiveand a transitiveverb, and this flexibiliry has beenadoptedby thosespeaking Englishin El Salvador, asinlohn Sullh,tan disappeared was fram the Sberatan; tbe goaemmentdisappedred students, the there being no equivalent situation,and so no equivalent word, in English-speaking cultures. ) No mentionof "Sefiorita [.Iniversolg7S" dampened "SefioritaEl Salvador1982,"which, by the time I got upstairs, reached point when eachof the finalhad the ists was askedto pick a question from a basket and
57

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had answerit. The quesdons to do with the hopesand and the answersran to of the contestants, dreams wearA "Diosr" "PAzr""El Salvador." localentertainer bow tie ing a white dinner iacket and a claret-colored The iudges sang"The Imposible Dream,"in Spanish. and begantheir deliberations, the moment of decision El Salvador1982would be Sefforita arrived: Sefiorita San Vicente, Miss JeannetteMarroquinn who was inchestaller than the other finalists,and more several gringa-looking.The four runners-up reacted, on the whole, with rether lessgrace than is the custom on and theseoccasions, it occurredto me that this was a contestin which winning meantmore than a scholarship or a screentest or a new wardrobe; winning here could mean the difference between life and casual death, a provisional safe-conductnot only for the winner but for her entire family' ribbons,heshowed "God damnit, he cut inaugural in public taking on the risks himself large as life of power as he had neverdone in more peaceful of games times,what the hell, he played endless dominoeswith my lifetime friend General Rodrigo de Aguilar and my old friend the minister of healthwho were the only oneswho . . . daredask him to receive in a specialaudiencethe beauty queen of the poor, an incredible creature from that miserablewallow we call the dogfight district. . . . fil not only receive her in a special the but audience I'll dance first weltz with her,by he God, havethem write it up in the newsPaPers,
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ordered,this kind of crap makes big hit with the a poor. Yet, the night after the audience,he commentedwith a ceftain bitterness GeneralRodto rigo de Aguilar that the queenof the poor wasn't evenworth dancingwith, that shewasescommon as so meny other slum Manuela Sdnchezes with her nymph's dres of muslin petticoatsand the gilt crown with artificial iewels anda rosein her hand under the watchful eye of a morher who looked after her as if shewere madeof gold, so he gaveher everythingshewantedwhich wasonly electricity and running water for the dogfight district. . . ." That is Gabriel Garcfa Mirquez, The Autumn. of the Patriarch. On this evening that began with the of grandson GeneralMaximilianoHern indez Martinez and progressed "Sefiorita El Salvador1982" and to ended,at 12222 t.u., with the earthquake, beganto I seeGabriel Garcia Mirquez in a new light, asa social realist.

There were a numberof metaphors be found in to this earthquake, not the least of them being that the one mafor building to suffer exrensivedamagehappenedalso to be the maior building mosr specifically and elaboratelydesigned withstandearthquakes, to the American embassy. When this embassy was built, in 1965,the idea was that it would remainfluid under stress, deeppilings shifting and sliding on Teflon its

JOAN DIDION

pads, but over the past few years, as shelling the embassy came to be a favorite way of expressing dissatisfaction on all sides,the structure became so fortified-the steel exterior walls, the wet sandbagsaround the gun emplacements on the roof, the bomb shelter dug out underneath-as to render it rigid. The ceiling fell in Deane Hintonrs office that night. Pipes burst on the third floor, fooding everything below. The elevator was disabled, the commissery a sea of shattered glass. The Hotel Camino Real, on the other hand, which would appear to have been thrown together in the insouciant tradition of most tropical construction, did a considerable amount of rolling (I recall crouching under a door frame in my room on the seventh floor and watching, through the window, the San Salvador volcano appear to rock from left to right), but when the wrenching stopped and candles were found and everyone got downstairs nothing was broken, not even behind the bar. There was no electricity, but the glasses there was often no electricity. There were sporadic bursts of machine-gun fire on the street (this had made getting downstairs more problematic than it might have to been, since the emergency stairway was exPosed the street), but sporadic bursts of machine-gun fire on the street were not entirely unusual in San Salvador. ("sometimes it happenswhen it rains," someonefrom the embassy had told me about this phenomenon. as "They get excited.") On the whole it was business usual at the Camino Real, particularly in the discothdque off the lobby, where, by the time I got down60

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stairs, an emerg'ency generator seemedalready to have been activated, waiters in black cowboy hats darted about the dance floor carrying drinks, and dancing continued, to Jerry Lee Lewis's "Grear Balls of Fire."

Actual information was hard to come by in El Salvador, perhaps because this is not a culture in which a high value is placed on the definite. The only hard facts on the earthquake, for example, arrived at the Camino Real that night from New York, on the AP wire, which reponed the Cal Tech reading of T.A Richter on an earthquake cenrered in the Pacific some sixty miles south of San Salvador. Over the next few days, as damage reports appearedin the local pepers, the figure varied. One day the earthquake had been a 7.0 Richter, another day a 6.8. By Tuesday it was again a 7 in La Prensa Grdfica, but on a different scale altogether, not the Richter but the Modified Mercalli. All numbers in El Salvador tended to materialize and vanish and rematerialize in a different form, as if numbers denoted only the "use" of numbers, an intention, a wish, a recognition that someone,somewhere, for whatever reason,neededto hear the ineffable expressed asa number. At any given time in El Salvador a great deal of what goes on is considered ineffable, and the useof numbers in this context tends to frustrate people who try to understand them literally, rather than as propositions to be foated, "heardr" "mentioned." There was the case of the March 28 1982 election, about which there continued into that summer the
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rather scholasticargument first posed by Centrnl American Studies,the publication of the Jesuit university in San Salvador:Had it taken an averageof ballotbox Couldeach to 2.5minutes casta vote,or less? hold 500 ballots,or more? The numberswere eerily There were said to be 1.3 million people Salvadoran. eligibteto vote on March 28, but 1.5 million people were saidto havevoted.These1.5million peoplewere not 115percentof the 1.3 said,in turn, to represent eligiblevotersbut 80 Percent(or, on another million float, "62-68 percent") of the eligiblevoters,who accordingly no longernumbered1.3million,but a larger number. In any caseno one really knew how many or eligiblevoterstherewere in El Salvador, evenhow to necessary In any caseit had seemed meny people. the provide a number.In any case electionwas over' a la success, solacifinpacif'ca. Similarly, there wes the question of how much money had left the country for Miami since 19792 milestimated $74O DeaneHinton, in March of 1982, minister of planningestimated, lion. The Salvadoran the samemonth, twice that. I recall askingPresident to when he happened saythat he had goneto Magaffa, lunch every Tuesday for the Pastten years with the officers of the Central ReserveBank of El Salvador, which reviewsthe very exPortandimport ffansactions through which money traditionally leavestroubled how much he thoughtwasgone."You hear countries, figures mentioned," he said. I askedwhat figures he Tuesdaylunches. "The figure at heardmentioned these they mentionedis six hundred million," he said. He 62

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watched as I wrote that down, 600,000,000, cennal bank El Salaador."The figure the FederalReservein New York mentioned,"he added, "is one thousand million." He watched as I wrote that down too, 11000,000,000, NY. "Those peopledon't want to Fed stay for life in Miami," he said then, but this did nor entirelyaddress question, wasit meanrto. the nor Not only numbers names understood but are locally to haveonly a situationalmeaning,and the changeof a nameis meantto be accepted a change the naas in ture of the thing named.ORDEN, for example, the organizarion formally foundedin 1968to paramilitary function, along classicpatronagelines, as the governandears the countryside, longerexists ment'seyes in no as ORDEN, or the Organizaci6n Democr6tica Nacionalista, asthe Frente DemocrdticaNacionalista, but a transubstantiation noted only cryptically in the State Department's official"justification" for the January28 1982certification:"The Salvadoran government, since the overthrow of GeneralRomero, hastaken explicit ectionsto end humanrights abuses. The paramilitary 'ORDEN' has organization been oudawed,although someof itsf ormermembers may still beactiae.,'(Italics added.) This tactic of solving a problem by changing its nameis by no means limited to the government.The small office on the archdiocesegrounds where the scrapbooks the deadare kept is still called,by virof tually everyonein SanSalvador,"the Human Rights (Comisi6nde los DerechosHumanos), Commission" but in fact both the Human Rights Commission and
6'

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Socorro Juridico, the archdiocesan legal aid office, were ordered in the spring of tggZ to vacate the church propert/r and, in the local weft did so: everything pretty much stayed in place, but the scrapbooksof the dead were thereafter kept, officially, in the "Oficina de Tutela Legal" of the "Comisi6n Arquidiocesana de Justicia y PmJ' (This "Human Rights Commission," in any case,is not to be confused with the Salvadoran government's "Commission on Human Rights," the formation of which was announced the day before a scheduled meeting between President Magafia and Ronald Reagan. This official comisidn is a sevenmember panel notable for its inclusion of Colonel Carlos Reynaldo L6pez Nuila, the director of the National Police.) This renaming was refcrred to as a "reorganization," which is one of many words in El Salvador that tend to signal the presence of the ineffable. Other such words are "improvement," "perfection" (reforms are never abandoned or ignored, only "p.tfected" or "improved"), and that favorite from other fronts, "pacification." Language has always been used a little differendy in this part of the world (an apparent statement of fact often expresses something only wished for, or something that might be true, a storlr as in Garcia Mdrquez's mdny years later, as be faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Bumdia ru,asto remember that distant afternoon when his f ather took him to discwer ice), but "improvement" and "perfection" and "pacification" derive from another tradi-

6+

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tion. Language it is now usedin El Salvadoris the as language advertising, persuasion, product beof of the ing one or anotherof the solucianes crafted in Washingtonor Parlama Mexico,which is partof the place's or pervasiveobscenity. This language sharedby Salvadorans Ameriis and cans, if a linguistic deal had beencut. "Perhapsthe as most striking measure progress[in El Salvador]," of Assistant Secretary StateThomasEnderswasableto of sayin August of.tggZin a speech the Commonwealth at Club in San Francisco,"is the transformation of the military from an institution dedicated the statusquo to to one that spearheads reform and supportsconland stitutional democracy." Thomas Enders was able to say this precisely because Salvadoran the minister of defense,General Jos6 Guillermo Garcia, had so superior a dedication his own sratus to quo that he played the American card as Roberto D'Aubuisson did not, played the game,played ball, understood the importanceto Americans symbolicaction:the importance of of letting the Americanshave their land reform program,the importanceof letting the Americanspretend that while "democracy El Salvador" in may remain "a slenderreed" (that was Elliott Abramsin The New York Times), the situationis onein which "progress" is measurable ("the ministerof defense orderedthat has all violations of citizens' rights be stopped immediatelyi' the StateDepartmentnoted on the occasionof the July 1982certification,a happy ending); the impoftanceof giving the Americans acceptable an presi-

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dent, Alvaro Magafla, and of pretending that this acceptable president was in fact commander-in-chief of the armed forces, el generalisimo* la soluci6n. La solucifln chenged with the market. Pacification, although those places pacified turned out to be in need of repeated pacification, wx Ia soluci6n. The use of the word "negotiations," however abstract that use may have been, was la soluciiln. The election, although it ended with the ascensionof a man, Roberto D'Aubuisson, essentially hostile to American policf, was Ia solucifin for Americans. The land reform Program' grounded as it was in political rather than economic reality, was la soluci6n as symbol. "It has not been a total economic success," Peter Askin, the AID director working with the government on the program, told The Neat York Times in August 1981, "but up to this point it has been a political success.I'm firm on that. There does seem to be a direct correlation benot having tween the agrarian reforms and the Peasents become more radicalized." The land reform Program' in other words, was based on the principle of buying off, buying time, giving a linle to gain a lot, minifundismo in support of latifundismo, which, in a country where the left had no interest in keeping the peasentsless "radi cilized" and the right remained unconvinced that these peasantscould not simply be eliminated, rendered it a progrem about which only Americans could be truly enthusiastic, less a "reform" than an exercisein public relations. Even la verdad, the truth, was a degenerated phrase

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in El Salvador:on my first eveningin the country I wasasked a Salvadoran by womanat an embassy pafty what I hoped to find our in El Salvador.I said that ideally I hopedto find out la aerdad,and shebeamed approvingly.Other journalists, said,did not wanr she ld aerddd.She called over rwo friends,who also approved: no one told la aerdad.If I wrote la aerdadit would be good for El Salvador. realizedthat I had I stumbledinto a code, that thesewomen used/a aerdad asit wasusedon the bumperstickersfavoredthat spring and summerby ARENA people."JounNer,rsrs, Trlr, rHe Tnurs!" the bumper stickers warned in Spanish, and they meant the uuth according to Roberto D'Aubuisson.

In the absence information (and the presence, of often, of disinformation) even the mosr apparently straightforwardevent takeson, in El Salvador,elusive shadows, like a fragment of retrieved legend. On the afternoonthat I was in SanFranciscoGotera trying to seethe commanderof the garrison there, this contandante, ColonelSalvador Beltrin Luna,was killed, or wasgenerallybelievedto havebeenkilled, in the crash of a Hughes 500-D helicopter.The crash of a helicopterin a war zonewould seem lend itself to only to a limited numberof interpretations(the helicopterwas shot down, or the helicopter sufferedmechanicalfailure, are the two that cometo mind), but the crashof this particular helicopter became, like everything else

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in Salvador, an occasion of rumor, doubt, suspicion, conflicting reports, and finally a kind of listless uneasiness. The crashoccurred either near the Honduran border in Morazin or, the speculation went, actually in Honduras. There were or were not four people aboard the helicopter: the pilot, a bodyguard, Colonel Beltrin Luna, and the assistantsecretary of defense, Colonel Francisco Adolfo Castillo. At first all four were dead. A day later only three were dead: Radio Venceremos broadcast news of Colonel Castillo (followed a few days later by a voice resembling that of Colonel Castillo), not dead but a prisoner, or said to be a prisoner, or perhapsonly claiming to be a prisoner. A day or so later another of the dead materialized, or appeared to: the pilot was, it seemed,neither deadnor a prisoner but hospitalized,incommunicado. Questions about what actually happened to (or on, or after the crash of, or after the clandestine landing of) this helicopter provided table talk for days (one morning the newspaPersemphasizedthat the Hughes 500-D had been comprddo en Guatemala, bought in Guatemala, a detail so solid in this otherwise vaPorous story that it suggestedrumors yet unheard, intrigues yet unimagined), and remained unresolved at the time I left. At one point I askedPresidentMagaffa, who had talked to the pilot, what had happened. "They don't say," he said. Was Colonel Castillo a prisoner? "I read that in the paper, /s." Was Colonel Beltr6n Luna dead? "I have that impression." Was the bodyguard dead? "Well, the pilot said he saw someone lying on 68

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the ground, either dead or unconscious, doesn't he it know, but he believes may havebeenCastillo's securiry man, yes." Where exactly had the helicopter crashed?"I didn't ask him." I looked at Presidenr Mtgafia, and he shrugged."This is very delicate," he said."I havea problemthere.I'm supposed be the to so commander-in-chief, if I askhim, he shouldtell me. But he might sayhe'snot going to tell me,then I would have to arre$ him. So I don't ask." This is in many ways the standarddevelopmentof a story in El Salvador, and is also illustrative of the position of the of provisionalpresident El Salvador.

News of the outsideworld drifted in only fitfully, andin peculiardetails. LdPrensa Grif.ca carrieda regular column of news from San Francisco, California, and I recall readingin this column one morning that e man identified asa former presidentof the Bohemian Club had died, Lt a;geseventy-rwo, at his home in Tiburon. Most deys The Midnti Herald came in at somepoint, andsporadically The NeasYork Timesor The WasbingtanPost,but there would be dayswhen nothing camein at all, and I would find myself rifling back sportssectionsof,Tbe Miami Herald for installments of Cbrissie: My Oasn Story, by Chris Evert Lloyd with Neil Amdur, or haunting the paperback standat the hotel, where the collection ran mainly to romencesand specialtyitems, like The Worlils Best Dirty I okes, volumein which all the iokesseemed a to begin: "A midgetwent into a whorehouse. . ."

JOAN DIDION

In fact the only news I wanted from outside increasingly turned out to be that which had originated in El salvador: all other information seemed beside the poinq the point being here, now, the situation, the problema, what did they mean the Hughes 500-D was comprado en Guatemala, was the Rio Seco passable, were there or were there not American advisers on patrol in Usulut6n, who was going out, where were the roadblocks, were they burning cars today. In this context the rest of the world tended to recede. and word from the United States seemed profoundly re_ mote, even inexplicable. I recall one morning picking up this message,from my secretary in Los Angeles: "JDD: AlessandraStanley from Ti.me, Zlj /27 l:-tl lr0. They heard you were in El Salvador and wanted some input from you for the cover story they're preparing on the women's movement. Ms. stanley wanted their correspondent in Central America to contact you_I said that you could not be reached but would be calling me. She wanted you to call: Jay Cocks 212/g4l_ 2633." I studied this message a long dme, and tried for to imagine the scenario in which a"Time stringer in El Salvador received, by Telex from Jay Cocks in New York, a request to do an interview on the women's movement with someone who happened to be at the camino Real Hotel. This was not a scenario that played, and I realized then that El salvador was as inconceivable to Jay cocks in the high keep of the TimeLife Building in New York as this messagewas to me in El Salvador.

70

was told in the summerof tg8z by both Alvaro Magafia and Guillermo Ungo that although eachof courseknew the other they were of "different generations."Magafia was fifty-six. Ungo was fiftyone.Five yearsis a generation El Salvador,it being in a placein which not only the rest of the world but time itself tendsto contractto the hereand now. History is ld matanz,a, then current events,which reand cede even as they happen: General Jos6 Guillermo Garciawasin the summer 1982 of widely perceived as a fixtureof long standing, immovable an obiect through several and governments shiftsin the nationaltemperament, a survivor. In context he was e survivor, but the contextwas iust three years,sincethe Maiano coup. All eventsearlierthan the Mafanocoup had by then into uncertainmemory,and the coup itself, vanished which took placeon October 15 1979, was seenasso distantthat there was commontalk of the nextjuaentud militar, of the cyclical readiness rebellion of for what was always referred to as"the new generation" of young officers. "We think in five-year horizons," the economic officerat the Americanembassy told me oneday."Anything beyondthat is evolution."Ffe was talkingaboutnot havingwhat he called"the luxury of

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the long view," but there is a real sense which the in five-yearhorizons the Americanembassy of constitute the longestview takenin El salvador,either forward or back. one reason onelooksback is that the view could no only dispirit: this is a nationalhistory peculiarlyresistant to heroicinterpretation. There is no ribertadorto particularly remember. Public statues SanSalvador in tend toward representations abstracts, winged of the Liberty downtown, the Salaadordel Mundo at the junction of AvenidaRoosevelt and paseo Escal6nand the santaTecla highway;the expressionist strainspirit ing upward, outsized handsthrust toward the sky, at the Monument of the Revolution up by the Hotel Presidente. the country'shistory asa republicseems If devoidof shared purpose unifying event,a recordof or insensate ambitions and their accidental consequences, its three cenruries a colony seem as blankerstili: spanish coloniallife wascenrered corombiaand panama in to the southand Guatemala the norrh, and salvador to lay between, e neglected frontier of the Captaincy Generalof Guatemala from l52i until lg2l, the year Guatemaladeclaredits independence from spain. so attenuated was El Salvador's sense itself in its moof ment of independence that it petitioned the united statesfor admission the union asa stere. to The united States declined. In fact El Salvadorhad alwaysbeena frontier, even before the spaniards arrived. The grearMesoamerican culturespenetreted far southonly shallowly.The this great South American cultures thrust this far north 72

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only sporadically.There is a sense which the place in remainsmarked by the meanness discontinuity of and all frontier history, by a certain frontier proximiqy to the cultural zero. Some aspectsof the local culture were imposed.Others were borrowed. An instructive moment: at an exhibition of native crafts in Nahuizalco, near Sonsonate, was explained to me that a it traditional native craft was the making of wicker furniture, but that little of this furniture wasnow seen becauseit was hard to obtain wicker in the traditional wly. I asked what the traditional way of obtaining wicker had been. The traditional way of obtaining wicker, it turned out, had been to import it from Guatemala. In fact there were a number of instructive elements aboutthis day I spentin Nahuizalco,a hot Sundayin June.The eventforwhich I haddriven down from San Salvador wasnot merelya craft exhibit but the opening of a festival that would last severaldays,the sixth annual Feria Artesanalde Nahuizalco,sponsored the by Casade la Cultura progremof the Ministry of Education aspart of its effon to encourageindigenousculture. Sincepublic policy in El Salvadorhasveeredunerringly toward the elimination of the indigenous this population, oficial celebrationof its culture seemed an undertakingof someambiguitR particularly in Nahuizalco:the uprisingthat led to the 1932matdnzdbeamong Indian workerson the coffee ganand ended the in this part of the country, and Nahuizalcoand fincas the other Indian villages around Sonsonate an enlost tire generation the mdtanz,a. the early sixtiesestito By
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matesof the remainingIndian populationin all of El Salvadorrangedonly between four and sixteenPeras cent; the restof the populationwas classified ladino, denoting rather than an ethnic designation, a cultural only Hispanization,including both acculruratedInand dians rnd mesrtzas, reiectedby thoseupper-clas of members the populationwho preferredto emphasize ancestry. their Spanish thirty-two wes a year around Nahuizalco Nineteen when Indians were tied by their thumbs and shot againstchurch walls,shot on the road and left for the dogs, shot and bayonetedinto the massgravesthey by wasabandoned the had themselves dug.Indian dress ws no longer Indian language, survivors.Nahuatl, the the spokenin public. In many ways race remeins inefat the heart of this particular darkness: fable element even as he conductedthe mutdnzf,,GeneralMaximiliby ano Hernindez Martinez was dismissed, many of by he interests wasProtecdng the very oligarchs whose killing Indians,as"the little Indian." On this hot Suninof day frfty yearslater the celebrants Nahuizalco's bY digenousculture would arrangethemselves, noon, into two distinct cemps,the ladinossitting in the shade of the schoolyard,the Indians squatting in the brutal sun outside.In the schoolyardthere were trees,and where the Queenof the Fair, who hada wicker tables, set crown and Europeanfeatures, with the local gudrweapon, sidearm, a didrerchofwhom hadan automatic The'guardiadrmkbeer andplayedwith anda bayonet. The Queenof the Fair studiedher oxtheir weapons.

7+

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blood-red fingernails.It took twenry centavos enter to and theschoolyard, a certainculturalconfidence. There had beenIndian dances that morning. There had been music. There had been the "blessingof the market": the statueof SanJuan Bautistacarried, on a platform trimmed with wilted gladioli, from the churchto the markeqthe school, homes the bedthe of ridden. To the extent that Catholic mythology has beenover four centuries successfully incorporatedinto local Indian life, this blessing the market was ar least of part of the "actual" indigenous culture, but the dances and the music derived from other traditions. There wasa SupremaBeersoundtruck parkedin front of the Casade la Cultura office on the plaza,and the music that blared all day from its loudspeakers "Roll Out was the Barrel," "LL Cucarachar" "Everybody Salsa." The provenanceof the danceswas more complicated.They were Indian, but they were lessremembered than recreated, and as such derived not from local culture but from a learnedidea of local culture, an official imposition made particularly ugly by the cultural impotence of the participants.The women, awkward and uncomfortablein an approximationof native costume, movedwith difficulqy into the dusty' sueet and performed a listlessand unpracticeddance with baskets. Whatevermen could be found (mainly little boys and old men, since those young men still alive in placeslike Nahuizalcotry not to be noticed) hadbeendressed "warrior" costume:headdreses in of crinkled foil, swordsof cardboardand wood. Their

75

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hair was lank, their walk furtive. Someof them wore The sunglasses. othersavertedtheir eyes.Their role in the fair involved stampingandlunging and brandishing their cardboard weapons,a displry of warriot machismo,andthe extentto which eachof themhadbeen unmanned-unmanned not only by history but by u factor lessabstract,unmannedby the real weaponsin rifes with which the by the schoolyard, the G-3 assault guordia played while they drank beer with the Queen of the Fair-rendered thisdisplaydeeplyobscene. the I had begunbefore long to despise day, the dirt, smellof rotting meat,the sun,the pervasive the blazing absenceof even the most rudimentary skill in the handicraftson exhibit (therewere sewnitems,for exfabric, ample,but they were sewnby machineof sleazy were crooked),the brutalinng seams and the simplest music from the sound truck, the tedium; had begun conthe most of all to despise fair itself, which seemed an trived, pernicious,a kind of official opiaten attemPt to recreateor perpetuateaway of life neithereconomiin cally nor socially viable.There was no pleasure this deal of ioylessmilling. There day. There was e great with in was someshade the phze, from treesplastered posters,but nowhere to sit. There was e ARENA fountain paintedbright blue inside,but the dirty weter by wassurrounded barbedwire, andthe signread:"Sn AeuI," no sittingallowed. SBNrensr PnoHrnB I stood for a while and watched the fountain. I and stood bought a John Deerecap for sevencolones in the sun and watched the little ferris wheel,and the to merry-go-round,but there seemed be no children
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with the money or will to ride them, and after a while I crossed plazaand went into the church, avoiding the the bits of masonrywhich still fell from the bell tower damagedthat week in the earthquakeand its aftershocks. the church a mass In baptismwastaking place: thirty or forry infants and older babies, and probably a few hundred mothers and grandmothers and aunts and godmothers. The altar was decoratedwith asrers in condensed milk cans. The babies fretted, and several of the mothersproducedbagsof Fritos to quiet them. A pieceof falling masonrybouncedoff a sgaffoldin the back of the church, but no one looked back. In this church full of women and babies therewere only four men present.The reasonfor this may have been cultural, or may have had to do with the time and the and place, the G-3sin the schoolyard.

During the week before I flew down to El Salvador a Salvadoren woman who works for my husbandand me in Los Angelesgaveme repeeted instructionsabout what we mustandmustnot do. We mustnot go out et night. We must stay off the street wheneverpossible. We must never ride in busesor taxis,never leave the capital,neverimaginethat our passporrs would protect us. We must not even considerthe hotel a safeplace: peoplewere killed in hotels.Shespokewith considerablevehemence, because two of her brothershad been killed in Salvador Augustof l98l, in their beds. in The throatsof both brothershad beenslashed. Her father had beencut but stayedalive. Her mother had been

JOAN DIDION

beaten.Twelve of her other relatives, aunts and uncles and cousins,had been taken from their housesone night the sameAugust, and their bodies had been found some time later, in a ditch. I assuredher that we would remember, we would be careful, we would in fact be so careful that we would probably (trying for a light touch) spend all our time in church. She became still more agitated, and I realized that I had spoken es a norteamericana: churches had not been to this woman the neutral ground they had been to me. I must remember: Archbishop Romero killed saying massin the chapel of the Divine Providence Hospital in San Salvador. I must remember: more than thirty People killed at Archbishop Romero's funeral in the Metropolitan Cathedral in SanSalvador.I must remember: more than twenty people killed before that on the stepsof the Metropolitan Cathedral. CBS had filmed it. It had been on television, the bodies ferking, those still alive crawling over the dead as they tried to get out of range. I must understand: the Church was dangerous. I told her that I understood, that I knew all that, and I did, abstractly, but the specific meaning of the Church sheknew eluded me until I was actually there, at the Metropolitan Cathedral in San Salvador, one afternoon when rain sluiced down its corrugated plastic windows and puddled around the supports of the Sony and Phillips billboards near the steps.The effect of the Metropolitan Cathedral is immediate, and entirely literary. This is the cathedral that the late Archbishop Oscar Arnulfo Romero refused to finish, on the premise that the work of the Church took precedence 78

SALVADOR

over its display, and the high walls of raw concrete bristle with suuctural rods, rusting now, staining the concrete,sticking out at wrenched and violent angles. The wiring is exposed. Fluorescent tubeshangaskew. The great high altar is backedby warped plyboard. The cross the altaris of bareincandescent on bulbs,but the bulbs,that afternoon,were unlit: there wasin fact no light at all on the mainaltar,no light on rhe cross, no light on the globe of the world that showedthe northern American continent in gray and the southernin white; no light on the doveabovethe globe,Saloador del Mundo. ln this vast brutalist specethat was the the cathedral, unlit altar seemed offer a singleinelucto tablemessage: this time and in this placethe light of at the world could be construed out, off, extinguished. as In many ways the Metropolitan Cathedralis an authentic piece of political arr, e starement El Salvafor dor as Guemica was for Spain.It is quite devoid of sentimental relief. There areno decorativeor architectural references familiar parables, fact no stories to in at all, not eventhe Stationsof the Cross.On the afternoon I was there the flowers laid on the altar were dead.There were no tracesof normal parish activity. The doorswere opento the barricadedmain sreps, and down the stepsthere was a spill of red paint, lest anyoneforget the blood shedthere.Here and there on the cheap linoleum inside the cathedral there was what seemed be actualblood, dried in spots,the kind of to spotsdroppedby a slow hemorrhage, by a woman or who does not know or does nor care that she is menstruating.

JOAN DIDION

There were severalwomen in the cathedralduring the hour or so I spent there, a young woman with a baby, an older woman in houseslippers,a few others' all in black. One of the women walked the aislesas if and back,croonup by compulsiono and down, across ing loudly asshewalked. Another knelt without moving at the tomb of Archbishop Romero in the right the crude ffansept. "LooR e MoNseNonRonnERor" needlepointtapestryby the tomb read,"Praiseto Monsignor Romero from the Mothers of the Imprisoned, and the Murdered," the Comit{ de the Disappeared, y Desdparecidos, Aseside y Famitiares Presos, Madres PoliticosdeEI Salaador. nados and petiwith offerings The tomb itself wascovered from greeting tions, notes decoratedwith motifs cut I cardsand cartoons. recallonewith figurescut from e and anotherwith a pencil drawing Bogr Bunny strip, to of a baby in a crib. The baby in this drawing seemed receiving medication or fluid or blood intravebe nously, through the IV line shown on its wrist. I studiedthe notesfor a while and then went back and looked againat the unlit altar,and at the red paint on to from which it was possible seethe the main steps, on the balcony of the National Palace guardsmen are hunchingbackto avoidthe rain.Many Salvadorans which is ai offended by the Metropolitan Cathedral, remainsperhapsthe the it should be, because place a in politicalstatement El Salvador, only unambiguous in the ultimatePowerstation. bomb metaphorical

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". . . I had nothing more to do in San Salvador. I had given a lecture on the topic that had occurred to me on the train to Tapachula: Linleknown Books by FamousAmerican AuthorsPudd'nheadWilson, The Deail'sDictionary, The WildPalms.I hadlookedat the university;andno one could explainwhy therewasa mural of Marx, Engels,and Lenin in the university of this rightwing dictatorship." -Paul Theroux, The Old Patagonian Express. The universityPaulTherouxvisitedin SanSalvador westhe National University of El Salvador.This visit (and, given the context, this extraordinarylecture) took plecein the lareseventies, periodwhen the Naa tional University was actuallyopen.ln 1972the Molina government had closed forcibll, with tanksand it, artillery and planes, and had kept ir closedunril 1974. In 1980the Duarte governmentagainmoved ffoops onto the campus,which then had an enrollment of about30,000, leavingfifty deadandofficesand laboratoriessysrematically smashed. the time I visitedEl By Salvador few classes a were being held in storefronts aroundSanSalvador, no one other than an occabut sionalreporterhad beenallowedro enter the campus sincethe day the troops camein. Those reportersallowed to look had describedwalls still splashed with the spray-paintedslogansleft by the students,floors littered with tangledcomputertapeand with copiescf what the National Guardsmen chargecharacterized in es subversiao pemphlets, examplea reprint of an for
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from The Ne|d) article on inheritedenzymedeficiency EnglandI oumal of Medicine. In someways the closing of the National University in situations which of anorher thosesalvadoran seemed wasmadeto bleed no onecameout well, and everyone left the National Guardsmen bea little, nor excluding by gringo rehind to have their ignorance exposed porters. The Jesuit university, UCA, or La Universihad dad Centroamericana Jos6Sime6nCafias, emerged asthe mostimportant intellectualforce in the country, but the Jesuitshad been so widely identified with the would not attendlectures left that somelocal scholars (ThoseJesuits held on the UCA camPus. or seminars had in fact beenunder a categorical still in El Salvador threat of deathfrom the White Warriors Union since Roforced President 1977.The Carter administration and on the day the killing mero to protect the Jesuits, the to havebegun,July 22, 1977, NationalPolice was in are saidto havesat outsidethe Jesuitresidence San with UZIs.) In any case on Salvador their motorcycles, enrollmentof only about5,000. an UCA couldmanage The scientific disciplines,which never had a particufrom hold locally, had largely vanished larly tenacious local life. Meanwhilemany peoplespokeof the National Unior as tense, if it still existed, asif its versity in the present closing were e roudne event on somelong-term academic calendar.I recall talking one day to a former member of the faculty at the National University, a womenwho had not seenher officesincethe morning outsideand left it. She shenoticed the trooPsmassing 82

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lost her books and her research and the uncompleted manuscriptof the book shewas then writing, but she described this serenely, and seemed find no immeto diatecontradictionin losingher work to the Ministry of Defense the work shedid later with the Ministry and of Education.The campusof the National University is said to be growing over, which is one wey conrradictionsgeterased the tropics. in I was invited one morning to a gatheringof Salvadoran writers, a kind of informal coffeehour arrenged by the American embassy. For somedays there had beena questionaboutwhere to hold this caf6 literario, sincethereseemed be no singlelocationthat was not to considered offJimits by at leastone of the guests, and at one point the ambassador's residence put forth was asthe mostneutralsetting.On the day beforethe event it was finally decidedthat UCA was the more appropriateplace ("and iust nevermind," asone of the embassy peopleput it, thar somepeoplewould not go to UCA), andat ten the next morningwe gathered there in a largeconference room anddrankcoffeeandtalked, at first in platitudes, thenmoreurgently. and Theseare someof the sentences spokento me that morning: It'snot possible speok intellecnnt lif e in to of El Salaador. Every ddy aselosemore. We ore regressing constantly.Intellectual lif e is drying up. you are Iooking at the intellectudllife of Et Sahtador. Here. In this room. We are the only suraiaors.Some of the othersareout of the ccuntry, othersarenot v;riting because they ore mgdgedin political actiaity. Somehave beendisappeared, nuny of the teachers havebeen dis83

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if Teacbingis aery drngeroas, a studentmis' appeared. may be then the teacher interpretsa:hat a teachersays, exile,the restare dead.Los nruerSomeare in arrested. tos,yoa knou? We are the only onesleft. There is no oneafter usrnoy oungones.Itis all m)er,y ou know? Art noon there was an exchangeof books arndcurcicula said that aitae,The cultural attach6from the embassy like to seetlttscaf6 literario closeon she,for one,would provided one: it was a a hopeful note, and someone end' centroameri' hopeful note that norteamericanos This is what passed cnnoscould havesuch a meeting. in for a hopeful note in SanSalvador the summerof 1982.

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of Ambassador the united statesof

America in El Salvador,DeaneHinton, received on of his deskevery morning in the summer tggZ a list of in-country that day. Americanmilitary Personnel the The numberon this list, I wastold, wasneverto exceed 55.Somedaystherewere asfew as 35.If the number to got up to 55, and it was thought essential bring in else,then a trade was made: the incoming someone an Americanwas juggled against outgoingAmerican, but in one normally stationed Salvador shunteddown to to Panamafor as long as necessary maintain the magicnumber. Everything to do with the United StatesMilitary as Group, or MILGP, ws treatedby the embassy a circumscribed by kind of magic, a totemic Presence to The AmericanA-378spresented EI potent taboos. were actually flown up in Salvador June of that year from Panamanot by Americansbut by Salvadorans SouthernAir Commandin trainedat the United States Panamafor this expresspurPose.American advisers could participatein patrols for training purposesbut could not participate in patrols in combat situations. When both CBS and Tbe Ne'u York Times, one day rwo or three American that June,reportedhavingseen

JOAN DIDION

as in advisers what the reportersconstrued a combat in Usulutin province,ColonelJohn D. Wasituation was called back ghelstein,the MILGP commander, from playing tennisin Panama(his wife had met him allowed in El there being no dependents in Panama, in Salvador) order,ashe put it, "to dealwith the press." to I happened arrive for lunch at the ambasador's reportedin from just residence asColonelWaghelstein Panama that day, and the rwo of them,alongwith the embassy public affairs ofFcer,walked to the far end of the the swimmingpool to discuss day'sproblemout of my hearing. Colonel Waghelstein is massivelybuilt, almosta carcrew-cut,tight-lipped,and very tanned, and American military Presence, the notion toon of the to that hehadcomeup from Panama dealwith the press was novel and interesting,in that he had made,during his tour in El Salvador,a pretty tersepoint of not dealSomemonthslater in Los AngelesI ing with the press. in sawan NBC documentary which I noticedthe special effort Colonel Waghelsteinhad madein this case. to had actually beenmadeavailable American advisers NBC, which in turn adopted a chiding tone toward CBS for the June "advisersin action" story. The total effect was mixed, however, sinceevenas the advisers on complained cameraabout how "very few people" askedthem what they did and about how some reporters "spend all their time with the other side," the face was such that no adviser's seemed angles camera were other points in this NBC distinctly seen.There a documentarywhen I thought I recognized certain official hand, for examplethe mention of the "some86

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times cruel customs" of the Pipil Indians in El Salvador.The customin question wasthat of flaying one another alive, a piece of pre-Columbian lore often tenderedby embassypeople as evidencethet from a human-rightspoint of view, the trend locally is up, or at any rateholding. ColonelWaghelsteinstayedat the ambassador's that day only long enough for a drink (a Bloody Mary, which he nursedmorosely),and,after he left, the ambasador and the public affairsofficer and my husband and I sat down to lunch on the coveredterrace. We watched a lime-throated bird in the garden. We watched the ambassador's English sheepdog bound across lawn at the sound of shots,rifle practice at the the Fscuela Militar beyond the wall and down the hill. "Only time we had any quiet up here,"the ambasador saidin hishigh Montana twang, "waswhen we sentthe whole school up to Benning." The shots rang our again.The sheepdog barked. "Quieto," the houseman crooned. I havethought since about this lunch a grear deal. The wine was chilled and poured into crystal glasses. The fish was servedon porcelainplatesthat bore the Americaneagle. The sheep dog and the crystal and the Americaneagle togetherhadon mea cerreinanestheric effect, temporarily deadeningther receptiviry to the sinisterthat afiicm everyonein Salvador, and I experiencedfor a momentthe official Americandelusion,the illusion of plausibility, the sensethat the American undertakingin El Salvadormight turn out to be, from the right angle,in the righr light,.just another difficult

JOAN DIDTON

missionin anotheruoubled but possible but possible country. DeaneHinton is an interesting man. Before he rehe placedRobert White in SanSalvador had servedin Europe,SouthAmerica,andAfrica. He hadbeenmarried twice, once to an American, who bore him five children before their divorce, and once to a Chilean, who had died not long before,leavinghim the stePfather of her five children by an earlier marriage-At his the time I met him he had iust announced engagenamedPatriciade Lopez.Somement to a Salvadoran one who is about to marry a third time, who thinks of himselfasthe father of ten, andwho hasspentmuch of SanKinshasa, his careerin chanceyposts-Mombasao who believes tiago, SanSalvador-is apt to be someone in the possible. Robert White, was relieved of the His predecessor, in in embassy February1981, whet White SanSalvador a purge,by the new ReaganPeoas later characterized ple, of the State Department'sentire Latin American madeDeaneHinton seem' section.This circumstance of the to menyin the United States, bearer the adminisbut tration's big stick in El Salvador, what DeaneHindiffered from what ton actually saidabout El Salvador morein style than Robert White saidabout El Salvador as DeaneHinton believed, Robert White in substance. was bad, terbelieved,that the situation in El Salvador rible, squalidbeyond anyone'sPower to understandit it. without experiencing DeaneHinton alsobelieved,as Robert White believed to a point, that the situation

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would be, in the absence one or another American of effort,stillworse. in DeaneHinton believes doingwhat he can. He had goften arres$ on the deaths of the four American churchwomen. had even("by yelling somemore," He he said) goften the governmentto announcethesearrests, smallaccomplishment, no sinceEl Salvadorwas a counffy in which the "announcement" an arrestdid of not necessarily follow the arrestitself.In the case the of murdersof Michael Hammer and Mark Pearlmanand for it Jos6Rodolfo Viera at the Sheraton, example, was not the governmentbut the Americanembassy which announced leasttwo of the varioussuccessive at arres$, thoseof the former guardsmen Abel Camposand Rodolfo OrellanaOsorio. This embassy "announcement" wasreportedby the Americanpress September on 15 1982,and was followed immediatelyby another ennouncemnt: September 1982, police spokes16 on "a men" in SenSalvadorannounced the arest but the not "release" the same of suspec$, after what was described ase monthin custody. To persistin so distinctly fluid a situationrequired a resistance. personalityof considerable Deane Hinton was eventhen working on getting new errestsin the Sheraton murders.He was eventhen working on getting trialsin the murdersof the four Americanwomen, a trial being anotherstep thet did not, in El Salvador, necessarily follow an errest.There had been progress. There hadbeenthe election,a potentsymbol for many Americansand perhapsevenfor someSalvadorans, al-

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though the symbolic content of the event showedup "There rather better in translationthan on the scene. shootingin the morning," I recallbeingtold wassome priestabout electiondayin his district,"but by a parish it quieted down around nine e.pr. The army had a truck going around to go out and vote-Ta Voto Es La Solucifin,you know-so they went out and voted. They wanted that stamp on their identity cards to show they voted. The stempwas the proof of their good will. Whether or not they actually wanted to you'd haveto saythey were vote is hard to say.I guess so of morescared the army than of the guerrillas, they voted." Four monthsafter the fact. inThe NeasYork Times Robert White wrote Magazine, former ambassador aboutthe election: "Nothing is moresymbolicof our than the Adminiscurrent predicamentin El Salvador recast D'Aubuisson in a tration's bizarre ettempt to more favorablelight." Even the fact that the election had resultedin what White called "political disaster" with a turn of the mirror, posicould be presented, could be another's tively: one men'spolitical disaster democraticturbulence,the birth pans of what Assismnt Secretary of State Thomas Enders persisted in calling "nescent democratic institutions." "The democrac/," Enderswas saying five new Salvadoran monthsafter the election,not long after Justiceof the PeaceGonzalo Alonso Garcfa, the nventieth prominent Christian Democrat to be kidnappedor killed sincethe election,had beendraggedfrom his housein ltepequeby fifteenarmedmen,"is doing SanCayetano 90

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to what it is supposed do-bringing a broad spectrum of forces and factions into a functioning democratic system." In other words even the determinationto eradicate couldbeinterpretedasevidence the the opposition that model worked. There was still, moreover,a certain to obeisance the land reform program, the lustrousintricaciesof which were understood so few that alby could be construed posible. mostany interpretation as "About 207, 207 alwaysappliedonly to 1979,that is what no oneunderstands,"hadbeentold by President I Magefiewhen I tried at one point to get straight the actualstatus Decree207,thelegislation of meantto implement the "Land-to-the-Tiller" program by providing that title to all land farmed by renants transbe ferred immediately thosetenants. to "There is no one than a smallfarmer," PeterShiras,a more conservative former consultantto the Inter-American Development Bank,had quotedan AID official assayingabout 207. like "We're going to be breedingcapitalists rabbits." Decree207hadbeenthe sourceof considerable confusion and infighting during the weeksprecedingmy arrival in El Salvador, suspended not suspended, but on andoff andon again, I hadnot beforeheardenybut one describeit, asPresidentMagafiaseemed be deto scribing it, asa propositionwound up to self-destruct. Did he mean,I askedcarefully, that Decree 207, implementing Land-to-the-Tiller, applied only to tgTg because landowner, practice,would work against no in his own interests allowing tenantson his land after by 207 took effect?"Right!" President Magaffa had said,
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asif to a slow student."Exactly! This is what no one There were no new rental contractsin understands. or No 1980 1981. onewould rent out landunder207, they would haveto be$Lzy to do that." What he said was obvious,but out of line with the with PresidentMagaf,a rhetoric, and this conversation aboutLand-to-the-Tiller,which I had hearddescribed of through the spring as e centerpiece United States had poticy in El Salvador, beenone of many occasions based seemed when the Americaneffort in El Salvador a dreamworkdevisedto obscure on auto-suggestion, This any intelligencethat might trouble the dreamer. and I was struck, a few months impression persisted, in later, by the suggestion the repoft on El Salvador on released the Permanent by Select Committee Intelli(U.S. Intelligenceof the House of Represenmtives gencePerformtnce in CennalAmerica:Achiarcments and SelectedInstancesof Concern) that the intelligence was itself a dreamwork, tending to support policy, the report read, "rather than inform it," providing "reinforcementmore than illumination,""'ammunition'ratherthananalysis." A certain tendency to this kind of dreamwork, to improving upon rather than illuminating the situation, may have been inevitable,sincethe unimproved situation in El Salvadorwas such that to considerit was to considermoral extinction."This time they won't get awey with it," RobertWhite wasreportedto havesaid of ashe watchedthe bodies the four Americanwomen draggedfrom their common grave,but they did, and This is a country that cracks White wasbrought home. 92

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Americans,and DeaneHinton gavethe sense a man of determinednot to crack. There on the terrace of the official residenceon Avenida La Capilla in the San Benito district it was all logical. One stepfollowed another, progresswas slow. We were Americans, we would not be demoralized. was not until late in the It lunch, at a point betweenthe saladand the profiteroles, that it occurredto me that we were talking exclusively about the appearances things, abour how the situof ation might be madeto look better, about trylng to get the Salvadoran to government "appear"to do what the neededdonein order to make Americangovernment it "appear"that the Americanaidwasiustified. necessery stop Roberto D'AuIt was sometimes to buisson the one-yardline" (Deane "on Hinton's phrase about the ARENA anempt to commandeer presithe dency) because Roberto D'Aubuissonmadea negative in appearance the United States, madethings, as Jeremiah O'Leary, the assistant nationalsecurity adviser to William Clark, had imagined Hinton advisingD'Auafter the election, buisson "hard for everybody."What made a positiveappearance the United States,and in things easierfor everybody, were elections,and the announcement arrestsin cases of involving murdered Americans,and ceremonies which tractablecampein sinos land titlesby army officers, the wereawarded and TreasuryPolicesaton the platform,and the president came, by helicopter. "Our land reform program," Leonel G6mez,who had worked with the murdered Institute of Jos6 Rodolfo Viera in the Salvadoran Agrarian Transformation, noted in Food Monitor,
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"gave them en opportuniry to build up points for the next U.S.AID grant." By "them" LeonelG6mezmeant not his compatriotsbut Americans,meent the AmerimeantRoy can Institute for Free Labor DeveloPment, Prosterman,the architect of the Land-to-the-Tiller and in progrems both El Salvador Vietnam. In this light the American effort had a distinctly circular aspect(the aid was the card with which we got to to the Salvadorans do it our wtlr andappearing do it got our way was the card with which the Salvadorans the effort was being of the aid), and the question why to It madewent unanswered. was possible talk about Nicarague, and by extension the Soviet Cuba and (Jnion, and national securiry,but this seemed only to a momentumalreadyunderway: no one could iustify doubt that Cuba and Nicaraguahad at various points govsupportedthe armedoppositionto the Salvadoran could anyonebe surprisedby this, ernment,but neither or, given what could be known about the players,be unequivocally convinced that American interestslay on one sideor enotherof what evenDeaneHinton referred to asa civil war. to It was certainly possible describesomemembers of the opposition,es DeaneHinton had, as "out-andout Marxists," but it was equally possibleto describe other membersof the opposition,as the embasy had at the inception of the FDR in April of 1980,es "a broad-basedcoalition of moderate and center-left groups." The right in El Salvadornever madethis distinction: to the right, anyonein the oppositionwas a communisqalong with most of the American press,
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the Cetholic Church, and, as time went by, all Salvadoran citizens not of the right. In other words there remaineda certein ambiguiry about political terms es they were understoodin the United Statesand in El Salvador,where "left" mey meen, in the beginning, only a resistance seeing to one'sfamily killed or disappeared.That it comeseventually to mean something elsemay be, to the extent that the United Stateshas supported the increasingpolarization in El Salvador, theProcrustean we made bed ourselves. It wasa situationin which Americaninterests would seem havebeen bestservedby attempting to isolate to ('out-and-out the Marxists" while supporting the "broad-basedcoalition of moderate and center-lefr grouprs,"discouraging the one by encouraging the other, co-opting the opposition;but American pnlicy, by accepting the invention of "communism," as definedby the right in El Salvador, e daemonic as element to be opposed eventhe most draconiccosq had in at fact achieved the reverse."We believe in gringos," Hugh Barrera, an ARENA contender for the presidency, told Laurie Becklund of The Los Angeles Timeswhen sheasked April of 1982if ARENA did in not feer losing American aid by trying to shut the ChristianDemocratsout of the government."Congress would not risk losing a whole country over one parq.. That would be turning against U.S. ally and encoura esng Sovietinterventionhere.It would not be intelligent." In other words "anti-communism"was seen, correctly, as the bait the United States would always take.
9t

JOAN DIDION

That we hadbeendrawn, both by a misapprehenston of of the local rhetoric and by the manipulation our into a geme we did not own rhetorical weaknesses, understand,a play of power in a political tropic alien In and apparent, yet therewe remainedto us, seemed this light all argumentstended to trail off. Pros and equally off the point. At the heart of the cons seemed of American effort therewassomething the familiar inbut effable,asif it were taking placenot in El Salvador the of El Salvador, mirageof a society not in a mirage unlike our own but "sick," a temporarilyfeveredreneeded of public in which the antibodies democracy had stable in only to be encoureged, which words north and south ("election," sa/, and "Marxmeanings ist") and in which there existed,waiting to be tapped by our support,somelatent good will. A few daysbern fore I arrived in El Salvadorthere appeared Diario of by leaders placed de Hoy a full-page advertisement the Women's Crusadefor Peaceand Work. This adin the vertisementaccused United States, the personof Deane Hinton, of "blackmailing us its ambassador, with your miserableaid, which only keepsus subfuso gatedin underdevelopment that powerful countries like yours cen continue exploiting our few riches and having us under your boot." The Women's Crusade of for Peaceand Work is an orgaruzeaon the right, how latent with links to ARENA, which may suggest that goodwill remains.

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This "blackmail" motif, and its arrestingassumpdon from killing one anthat trying to keep Salvadorans other constituteda new and panicularly crushingimbeganturning up more andmore frequently. perialism, in were appearing By Octoberof 1982advertisements the SanSalvadorpapersallegingthat the blackmailwas by resultingin a "betrayrl" of El Salvador the military, At who were seenas "lackeys" of the United States. a of Commercemeeting in late San SalvadorChamber October, Deane Hinton said that "in the first two weeksof this month at leastsixty-eight human beings were murdered in El Salvador under circumstances which are familiar to everyone here," stressedthat American aid was dependentupon "progress" in this largely area,and fielded somefifty written questions, hostile,one of which read, "Are you trying to blackmailus?" by I was readthis speechover the telephone an embassyofficer, who describedit as "the ambasador's sffongeststatementyet." I was puzzledby this, since had the ambassador made most of the semepoints, at lower pitch, in a speech February 11, on a somewhat advancebe1982;it was hard to discern a substantive which could tween,in February,"If thereis oneissue reduceits to force our Congress withdraw or seriously for El Salvador, is the issue humanrights," it of support and, in October: "If not, the United States-in splte of our other interests,in spite of our commitment to the struggle againstcommunism,could be forced to to deny assistance El Salvador." In fact the speeches

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eventskeyed to the seemed almost cyclical, seasonal particular rhythm of the six-month certification process;midway in the certification cycle things appeer "bad," and are then made, at least rhetorically, to appeer "better," "improvement" being the k.y to certification. on I mendonedthe February speech the telephone, did officer to whom I wasspeaking not but the embassy seethe similarity; this was,he said,a "stronger" stetement, and would be "front-page" in both The Washington Post and The Los AngelesTimes. In fact the of story did appearon the front pages both The Washington Post end The Los Angeles Times, suggesting that every six months the news is born anew in El Salvador.

now of one or anspeak WheneverI hear someone other solucihn for El SalvadorI think of particular Americanswho have spent time there, each in his or her own way inexorably alteredby the fact of having beenin a certain placeet a ceftain time. Someof these Americanshave since movedon and others remain in Salvador, but, like survivorsof a common netural disaster,they are equally markedby the place. a,lot of optionsthat aren'eplayable. "There arre We could come in militarily and shapethe place up. That's an option, but it's not playable,because of public opinion. If it weren't for public opinion, however, El Salvadorwould be the ideal labora98

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tory for a full-scalemilitary operetion.It's small. cultural There are hemispheric It's self-contained. similarities." -A oficer in SanSalaaUnited Statesembassy dor.

"June l5th wasnot only a greatday for El Salvador, receiving$5 million in additionalU.S. aid for the private sectorand a fleet of fighter planesand their correspondingobservationunits, but also a greatday for me.Ray Bonner lof The Neru York Timesl actually spoke to me at Ilopango airport and took my hand and shook it when I offered it pulled to him. . . . Also, another correspondent me asideand said that if I was such a punctilious iournalist why the hell had I written something about him that wasn't true. Here I made no attempt to defend myself but only quoted my source.Later we talked and ironed out some wrinkles. It is a greet day when journalistswith opposing pointsof view cenget togetherandlearn from eachother,after all, we areall on something the sameside. I even wrote a note to Robert E. White (which he ignored) not long ago after he that I hadnot publishedhis Letter to the protested Editor (which I had) suggestingthat we be The only enemy is totalitarifriendly enemies. capianism,in any guise:communistic,socialistic, Man is uniquebecause has he talisticor militaristic. When this is free will andthe capacityto choose.

JOAN DIDION

suppressed is no longer a men but an animal. he That is why I say that despitediffering points of view, we are noneof us enemies." -Mdrio Rosentbal, editor of the El Salvador News Gazette,in his lune 14-20 1982 colu//tn, "A Great Day.t'

"You would have had the last interview with an obscureSalvadoran." -An American reporter to whom I had mentioned that I had been trying to see Colonel Behrdn Luna on the day he died in Sal,uador a helicopter crash.

"ft's not as bad asit could be. I was walking to the political risk people at one of the New York banks and in 1980 they gave El Salvador only a ten percent chance of asmuch stabilityin 1982 aswe have now. So you see." -The sameembdssyoffi.cer.

"Normally I wouldn't have a guard at my ievel, but there were death threats against my predecessor, he wes on a list. I'm living in his old house.In fact something kind of peculiar happened today. Someone telephoned and wanted to know, very urgent, how to reach the Salvadoranwoman with whom my predecessorlived. This person on the phone claimed that the woman's family neededto reach her, a death, or illness, and she had left no
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addres. This might have been true and it might not have been true. Naturally I gave no information." -Another embas ofi.c er. sy

"AlasAss,aoon Wnrrr: My embassyalso sent in several months earlier these captured documents. There is no doubt about the provenance of these documents as they were handed to me directly by Colonel Adolfo Majano, then a member of the lunta. They were taken when they captured exMajor D'Aubuisson and a number of other officers who were conspiring againstthe Government of El Salvador. Please continue, Mr. SBNeron ZoruNsrv: Ambassador. ANrsessnnon WsrrE: I would be glad to give you copies of these documents for your record. In these documents there are over a hundred names of people who are participating, both within the Salvadoranmilitary as active conspirersagainstthe Government, and also the names of people living in the United States and in Guatemala City who are actively funding the death squads.I gave this document, in Spanish,to three of the most skilled political analysts I know in El Salvador without orienting them in any way. I just asked them to read this and tell me what conclusionsthey came up with. All three of them ceme up with the conclusionthat there is, within this document, evidence that is compelling, if not 100 percent conclusive, that D'Aubuisson and his group are r101

JOAN DIDION

sponsiblefor the murder of Archbishop Romero. SnNeron CneNsroN: What did you say? Responsible for whose murderl AnanassaponWHrrn: Archbishop Romero

-From the recordof hearings ore the Combef mittee on Foreign Relations,U.S. Senate, April 9, 1981, tu,o montbs after Robert Wbite left SanSohtador. I Of all theseAmericansI suppose think especially of Robert White, for his is the authentic American voiceaffiictedby El Salvador: Youwill find one of the pdges uith Monday underlined and qaitb quotation marks,he saidthat April day in 1981about his documents,which were duly admittedinto the record and, asthe report of the HousePermanent SelectCommittee on Intelligencelater concluded, ignored by the CIA; and he talkedabout OperationPineapple, blood suger, in and257Robertsguns,aboutaddresses Miami, about Starlight scopes;about documentsbanded to him directly by ColonelMdjano,aboutcmnpellingifnot conclusiaeeaidence activitiesthat continuedto fall upon of the earsof his auditors assignals from space,unthinkable,inconceivable, impulses dim from a black hole.In the serene light of Washingtonthat spring deyin 1981, two monthsout of SanSalvador, Robert White's distance from the place was alreadylengthening: in San Salvador might havewondered, final turn of the he the mirror, ,uhat Colonel Majano had to gain by handing hirn thedocuments.

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That the texture of life in such a situation is essenclearto me only recently, tially unranslatablebecame when I tried to describeto a friend in Los Angeles an incidentthat occurred somedaysbeforeI left El Salvaand enother Ameridor. I had gone with my husband can to the San Salvadormorgue,which, unlike most morgues in the United States,is easily accessible, through an open door on the ground floor around the back of the court building. We hed beentoo late that morning to see the day's bodies (there is not much emphasis embalming in El Salvador,or for that on matter on identificadon,and bodiesare dispatchedfast for disposal), the manin chargehadopenedhis log but seven to showusthe morning'sentries, bodies,all male, none identified, none believedolder than twenty-five. Six hadbeencertified deadby armnde fuego, firearms, and the seventh, who had alsobeenshot,of shock.The slabon which the bodieshadbeenreceivedhad already been washeddown, and water stood on the floor. There were many fies, and an electricfan. The other American with whom my husband and I had gone to the morgue that morning wes a newsunidentifiedbodies paperreporter,and sinceonly seven bearingevidenceof.armade fuegodid not in SanSalvadorin the summerof 1982constitutea newspaper srory worth pursuing, we left. Outside in the parking lot there were a number of wrecked or impounded cars, meny of them shot up, upholsterychewedby bullets, windshieldshattered,thick pastes congealedblood of on pearlized hoods, thiswasalsounremarkable, but and

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it was not until we walked back around the building to the reporter's rented car that each of us began to sense the potentially remarkable. Surrounding the car were three men in uniform, two on the sidewalk and the third, who was very young, sitting on his motorcycle in such Lwly asto block our leaving. A second motorcycle had been pulled up directly behind the car, and the spacein front was occupied. The three had been joking among themselves, but the laughter stopped as we got into the car. The reporter turned the ignition.on, and waited. No one moved. The two men on the sidewalk did not meet our eyes. The boy on the motorcycle stared directly, and caressed the G-3 propped berween his thighs. The reporter askedin Spanishif one of the motorcycles could be moved so that we could get out. The men on the sidewalk said nothing, but smiled enigmatically. The boy only continued staring, and began twirling the flash suppressoron the barrel of his G-3. This was a kind of impasse. It seemed clear that if we tried to leave and scraped either motorcycle the situation would deteriorate. It also seemed clear that if we did not ffy to leave the situation would deteriorate. I studied my hands. The reporter gunned the motor, forced the car up onto the curb far enough to provide a minimum space in which to maneuver, and managed to back out clean. Nothing more happened, and what did happen had been a common enough kind of incident in El Salvador, a pointless confrontation with aimlessauthority, but I have heard of no soluci6n this local vocation for terror. that precisely addresses 104

SALVADOR

Any situation can turn ro rerror. The most ordinary errand can go bad. Among Americansin El Salvador there is an endemic apprehension danger in the of apparently benign. I recall being told by a network anchorman that one night in his hotel room (it was at the time of the election,and because Camino Real the wasfull he had beenpur up ar rhe Sheraton)he took the mattressoff the bed and shoved it against the window. He happened havewith him severalbulletto veststhat he had brought from New York for proof the cameracrew, and before going to the Sheraton lobby he put oneon. Managers American companies of in El Salvador (Texas Instrumentsis still there, and Cargill, and some others) are replaced every several months,and their presence kept secret.Some comis bury their menagers a number-rwoor numberpanies in three post. American embasy officers are driven in armored and unmarkedvans(no eagle, seal,no CD no plates) by Salvadorandrivers and Salvadoranguards, because, was told, "if someone I getsblown away, obviously the StateDepartmentwould prefer it done by a local security man,then you don't get headlines saying 'American Shoots SalvadoranCirizen."' These local security men cerry automaticweaponson their laps. In such a climate the fact of being in El Salvador comes seema sentence indeterminatelength, and to of the prospectof leaving doubtful. On the night before I wasdueto leaveI did not sleep, awakeandlistened lay to the music drifting up from e party at the Camino Realpool, heardthe band play "Malaguena"ar three
l0t

JOAN DIDION

and at four and again at five A.M., when the party to seemed endandlight broke and I couldget uP.I was picked up to go to the airport that morning by one of and vens, a few blocksfrom the hotelI was the embassy seizedby the conviction that this was not the most direct way to the airport, that this was not an embassy guard sitting in front with the Remington on his lap; That the van turned out in else. that this wassomeone van, detouring into SanBenito fact to be the embassy to pick up en AID official, failed to relax me: once at the airport I sat without moving and averted my eyesfrom the soldierspauolling the empty departure lounges. When the nine e.rvr.TACA flight to Miami was announcedI boardedwithout looking back, and sat rigid until the plane left the ground. I did not fasten my seatbelt. I did not lean back. The planestopped that morning at Belize, setdng down on the runway lined with abandonedpillboxes and rusting camouto flagedtanksto pick up what seemed be every floater on two continen$, wildcatters, collectorsof informaEven a team of tion, the fantastsof the hemisphere. got s$dent missionaries on at Belize,sallow children from the piney woods of Georgia and Alabamawho had been teaching the people of Belize, as the team member who settled down next to me explained,to know Jesus their personalsavior. as He was perhapstwenty, with three hundred years of American hill stock in his features,and as soon es the planeIeft Belizehe beganfilling out a questionnaire there, laboriously printing out the on his experience
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in phrases, obedienceto God, opportunity to renea) ccnmiffltent, most reanrding part of my experience, part. Somewhereover the Keys I most disbeortening askedhim what the most disheartening part of his exhad been.The most disheartening of his perience part he experience, said, had been seeingpeople leave the Crusadeas empty as they came.The most rewarding had beenrenewing his commitpart of his experience ment to bring the Good News of Jesusas personal saviorto all thesedifferent places. The difierent places to which he wes committed to bring the Good News were New T,ca,lc;nd, Iceland, Finland, Colorado, and El Salvador. This wrc la solucidnnot from Washington or Panama Mexico but from Belize,and the piney or woods of Georgia. This flight from San Salvadorto Belizeto Miami took place at the end of June 1982. In the week that I am completing this report, at the end of October 1982,the officesin the Hotel Camino Real in SanSalvadorof the Associated Pres, United PressInternational, United PressInternational Television News, NBC News, CBS News, and ABC News were raidedandsearched members the El Salvaby of dor National Police carrying submachine guns;fifteen leaders legally recognizedpolidcal and labor groups of opposing the government of El Salvadorwere disappeared SanSalvador;DeaneHinton saidthat he in was "reasonably certain" that thesedisappearances had not been conducted under Salvadorangovernment orders; Salvadoran the Ministry of Defense announced that eight of the fifteen disappeared citizenswere in fact in government custodl; and the StateDepartment r07

JOAN DIDION

announced that the Reagan administration believed that it had "turned the corner" in its campaign for political stability in Central America.

r08

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