Reflections Behind the Retina

By John Guzman

Reflections Behind the Retina is an account of actual events during the civil war in El Salvador. A series of short stories records the political restrictions and rules of engagement placed on the U.S. military, as well as the dangers faced from the Salvadoran left and right political camps. The official denial by the United States government of the combat role and deaths of U.S. military personnel is exposed throughout the text. A brief Salvadoran military history prepares the reader for what follows. Except for national leaders, the names of the characters in the text have been changed.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Dec 22, 2011
• ISBN: 9781465309457

John Guzman

JOHN GUZMAN was born and raised in the Bronx, New York City. He retired from the US Army as a Chief Warrant Officer 3 with tours in Europe and Central America. His awards include the Meritorious Service Medal, Joint Meritorious Unit Award (El Salvador), two awards of the Joint Service Commendation Medal, Army Commendation Medal, Army Achievement Medal, Army of Occupation Medal, Good Conduct Medal, two awards of the National Service Medal, Armed Forces Expeditionary Medal and Air Crewman Badge. Upon retirement he worked for General Dynamics in the development, fielding and support of the SINCGARS radio.

Book preview

Copyright © 2011 by CW3 John Guzman, USA, Ret..

Library of Congress Control Number:       2011961276

ISBN:         Hardcover                               978-1-4653-0944-0

                   Softcover                                 978-1-4653-0943-3

                   Ebook                                      978-1-4653-0945-7

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This book was printed in the United States of America.

To order additional copies of this book, contact:

Xlibris Corporation

1-888-795-4274

www.Xlibris.com

[e-mail]

105126

Contents

Prologue

1

**Setting for a Revolution**

(Late 1800s-1970s)

2

**Some American Patriots**

(Late 1800s-Early 1970s)

3

**A Return to Central America**

(The 1970s)

4

**Welcome to the Military Group**

(1979-1980)

5

**The Mood in the United States.**

(1980-1981)

6

**The Technical Assistance Field Team**

(April 1981-July 1981)

7

**The TAFT Settles In**

(July 1981-September 1981)

8

**A Time To Be Merry?**

(September 1981-January 1982)

9

**El Salvador Votes**

(February 1982-March 1982)

10

**The TAFT Goes Home**

(March 1982-June 1982)

11

**At the Armor Support Battalion**

(June 1982-August 1983)

12

**Into Honduras**

(August 1983-December 1983)

13

**Out of Honduras**

(December 1983-March 1984)

14

**The 159th Maintenance (EW/CS) Detachment**

(March 1984-May 1985)

15

**One More MTT***

(May 1985-September 1985)

16

**A Turning Point**

(September 1985-October 1985)

17

**Germany! At last**

(November 1985-October 1989)

18

**Crises in El Salvador**

(November 1989-September 1991)

19

**The Peace**

(September 1991-January 1993)

20

**Time to Go**

(January 1993-June 1993)

Epilogue

**Glossary**

**Acronyms & Abbreviations**

A Response to

President Clinton’s Apology in

Guatemala City

Now, stand by your glasses, steady!

The world is a world of lies.

A cup to the dead already:

And hurrah for the next who dies!

—Bartholomew Dowling

Prologue

After almost three hundred years of harsh colonial rule, Central America gained independence from Spain in 1821. By then, the Spanish Conquest, la conquista , had dramatically reduced the original native population of the region. Another century was to pass before the populations of these small countries connecting the two American continents would reach their pre-Columbian numbers. El Salvador, a country toiling to come out of the old Spanish colonial days and into its own politically and industrially came briefly to the attention of most Americans in 1969 during a short but bloody war with neighboring Honduras. Just over ten years later, El Salvador made international news again with a brutal civil war that would not end for more than a decade. One could safely state that the violent history of today’s El Salvador is a product of the early colonial period.

By the early 1980s the United States was finding itself emerged in a political and ideological armed struggle in El Salvador, a country about the size and shape of the State of Massachusetts. What had been a small insurgency movement in the 1970s had grown into a civil war by the following decade. This insurrection was to remain in the American media for the entirety of the 1980s and into the1990s. With painful memories still fresh of another struggle in Vietnam, the American people did not want any military involvement that would result in American casualties again; nor did they want the huge expenditures of funds into another corrupt government. The ever-watchful media began to draw parallels between events in South east Asia and Central America leaving an American government and military establishment overly cautious as to how it would support the side it wanted to ultimately win in El Salvador.

Most Americans do not have a proper understanding of Latin American history nor of the corruption and brutality that is a part of it. Of the Americans that do, some have used that insight to further their own enterprises, whether legal or otherwise, often in cooperation with individuals in official capacities. Partly because of this, El Salvador and the United States enjoyed an official relationship that was little known outside of diplomatic circles and an unofficial relationship that was to be kept from the public at large as much as possible.

Early in the twentieth century, a very small minority of Salvadorans enjoyed the life style and power that they either inherited or achieved within their elitist system. A much greater majority of poor Salvadorans meekly accepted their lot, while others were willing to become activists to change the system. Still others were only interested in living out their lives while prospering humbly within the system, raising their families to remain aloof from the turmoil of internal politics. Most Salvadorans felt a sense of nationalism, of being salvadoreño, but very few felt any allegiance to its corrupt government or its loathsome security forces.

This view contrasted sharply with the mind-set of most American families of the period where answering the call to national service was seen as a patriotic duty. But the Americans of the 1980s were the inheritors of the Vietnam experience. Some, mostly from the left of center political camp, objected to any US involvement in Central America. Others, raised on patriotic fervor and a willingness to serve their country, did their utmost to uphold American ideals no matter what the risks. Along with these feelings, a new factor in patriotism, if it could be called patriotism at all, revealed itself in El Salvador as the "patriots for profit’’.

The complacency with the status quo was being conveniently ignored by certain groups in the United States and El Salvador.

Then, something started to go wrong. The more the United States became involved in El Salvador’s civil war, the more the media reported on the warring factions and political extremes. Lies and misrepresentations became the norm from all concerned. The Salvadoran government did not care much about its public image as long as it maintained its ruling power base intact. The government of the United States chose to slight whatever happened in El Salvador for the same reason. As for some American soldiers that served as trainers in El Salvador, soul-searching questions mingled with performance of duty.

Even if emotions did set in, rationale, obedience to orders, and dedication to mission were always the standard. The American trainers’ performance was unwavering and sterling. Answering their country’s call to duty, these soldiers, sailors, marines, and airmen were placed in a highly charged political environment with an ill-defined mission to train a corrupt foreign military force that was already engaged in a civil war. To be sure, the mission and duty conditions were unique to the US servicemen. The responsibilities these men bore were great while the restrictions placed on them were extremely demanding as they kept a low profile from everyone, especially the news media. As if that weren’t enough, there were those within Pentagon circles, that, while wanting to see a successful military effort in El Salvador, were not very appreciative of the trainers’ roles. But the trainers stood up like real soldiers and performed what was expected of them. To deny or disregard the tasks of the US Military Group, El Salvador, under actual combat conditions, and thereby its proper recognition of combat duty, became the ultimate act of neglect to those that served; truly, to those that sacrificed their all.

Except for the propaganda works extolling ideological views and for the military articles written in professional periodicals dealing with the logistics of war, what actually happened in Central America during those years has been largely ignored. Those writings are concerned only with results, the bottom line on the last page. To fill in the missing lines, even the missing pages, one arrives at the present by going back in history, deep into the hearts of those that make the last page possible. These are some of those missing lines.

There will never be a bottom line or a last page.

1

**Setting for a Revolution**

(Late 1800s-1970s)

Before becoming a so-called banana republic, El Salvador had been a backwater of the old Spanish Empire. Spanish colonial rule had left an elite-dominated, structured life style that was controlled by a landed oligarchy. In the 1800s el Presidente Rafael Zaldívar abolished Indian communal lands, further concentrating the ownership of the land to a favored few. This became very prominent by way of holdings of large coffee-growing cafetales and fincas . To guarantee the safety and order of these large-scale land holdings, a rural police force was formed.

Early into the twentieth century, Pedro Medina Alfaro could stand to feel a little proud as he looked around the landscape of the beautiful river valley in eastern El Salvador. In the mid-1880s when he was only eleven years old, his father, also named Pedro, had moved his family from the eastern mountain town of Sesori to this area, the valley of el río Lempa. The older Pedro was looking for opportunities to better the lot of his family. He was smart enough to know the river valley was fertile; the land was available, and there was not much intervention from government authorities. Yes, there were possibilities for his kin, indeed for other salvadoreños, to prosper in this region.

As he surveyed the Lempa River valley below him, Pedro reflected on the Indian and peasant revolts of years before, some as close as the turn of the century. The revolts had only served to entrench the oligarchy even more in their determination to defend their lands and excessive lifestyle.

There had also been international disputes during those times; even a costly war with Guatemala which served to build up a somewhat professional Salvadoran army or at least one better than that of the immediate adversaries. But if an army was needed to guard against exterior threats, a professional security force was needed to maintain the internal status quo and guard against dissent. A Guardia Nacional was formed to perform the duties of a rural police, to safeguard the land holdings of the oligarchy, and keep an eye on the peasants. An academy for Salvadoran military officers was also founded. The beginnings of the military elite may have seemed humble but under German and Chilean tutelage it produced a corps of fine infantry, artillery, and cavalry officers that was composed almost entirely of criollos, those of European but mostly Spanish descent.

Pedro did not want to compete with the oligarchy for the richness of the land. He just wanted a little of it for his family. The Lempa valley was good for growing cotton and even a little freshwater fishing. There was room to grow, and with time, his offspring could even acquire more land, maybe go further east into the mountains and move into the coffee industry or raise cattle in the range lands near the river valley and beyond. Just don’t move too quickly, he thought. But moving they were. Pedro made every effort to see that his family received a sound basic education and from there seek out higher learning. With education, aspirations grew for a better stake in life. Some moved away from el Lempa to San Vicente, Apasteque, Mercedes Umaña, but all were near el río Lempa. Oh yes,—from the beautiful Lempa, Pedro was surrounded by his relatives as they slowly climbed the economic ladder without causing a stir with the gentry. The last war with Guatemala caused a desire for some Salvadorans to move away from the western regions of El Salvador. The Gravina family was such a family waiting for the right time to make the move. The area around Santa Ana, near Guatemala, was the prime coffee-growing country with many cafetales, haciendas, and fincas. The area, like most of the departamentos or provinces in the west, was heavily patrolled by soldiers and guardsmen, los soldados y la guardia. The Gravina family had been witness to some abuses by la Guardia in the repression of rural dissent but reasoned that as long as they were not involved with any of the talk challenging the large land owners or the government, they would continue with their lives in Santa Ana just a while longer. That was about to change in the 1930s.

Though there had been some political stability in the country, mostly through the handpicking of successors to the presidency and with the oligarchy slapping itself on the back with every intermarriage amongst themselves, the overall lot of the campesino remained the same and could be described as the rich get richer and the poor just get more abused. The world at this time was into a depression and the Salvadoran economy was hurting. Unemployment was soaring. The price of coffee fell by more than fifty percent, and availability of imports, which were related to the exports of an already sagging economy, were becoming difficult to come by. Labor activism was growing under trade unions and the socialist activity of the period.

There was talk once again of reform, not revolt, and the elections of 1931 were won by the popular candidate. Before the year’s end though, el General Maximiliano Hernández-Martínez, the vice president and minister of war, overthrew the popularly elected el Presidente Araujo. El General Hernández-Martínez was once quoted as placing more value on the life of an ant than that of the lower class citizens. The oligarchy and other investors who had the most to gain financially by the general’s move completely approved of his action.

A US Army colonel assigned to the US embassy at the time reported on the almost total lack of a middle class in the country. He noted a very wealthy and privileged upper class with all the luxuries of the times. These elitist families were in the minority. He also noted a very large under-privileged lower class with no upward mobility and no hope of rising above its lot. The masses were at the mercy of the whims of the privileged few. The American colonel also reported that the country was ripe for revolution. American State Department personnel and other political experts ignored the colonel’s report. He was only to be concerned with military matters, not the social or political climate of El Salvador.

Around this same time, a voice was sounding off in the region of Sonsonate and it was being heard throughout the land, especially by the campesinos of the western departamentos. Educated at la Universidad Nacional, Agustín Farabundo Martí hailed from a well-to-do family. He had attended communist lectures throughout Central America and helped found the Central American Socialist Party. The Gravina family didn’t like what they were hearing now in their family owned store and it worried them. Perhaps it was time for the family to move al oriente, the east, past el Lempa and get away from what they thought would be the heart of the coming rebellion.

Perhaps history chose not to remember but Agustín Farabundo Martí had won the trust and confidence of the religious Mayan Indian leader and chieftain, el cacique Ama. A cacique was near absolute in Mayan Indian socio-religious ways and could also sway Indian minds in political matters. Though El Salvador had a small pure blooded indigenous population, the old ways were still very much alive. By the traditional order of things, the cacique was still an influential person. And now, Farabundo Martí was calling on labor and peasant leaders for direct action against General Hernández-Martínez. As the revolt began to shift into gear, military leaders found out about the plans and had Farabundo Martí arrested. Despite the confusion in the following days, insurgent leaders continued to press forward. Fighting erupted throughout the western portions of the country and many government buildings fell to the rebels. The popular revolt appeared to have gotten off to a good start but within three days a counter-offensive by soldados y guardias reclaimed all the government buildings and garrisons previously lost to the insurrection.

The Gravina family would now be witness to the reprisals the military would take against the populace for the insurgency. In the weeks that followed, more than 30,000 Salvadorans, mostly campesinos of mixed Indian stock, were executed in retaliation. The killings would be forever known as la matanza, the slaughter. The message was clear that the military would not tolerate any challenge against the ruling class or its own authority. It would not show tolerance toward any individual or group of activists. Farabundo Martí and the cacique Ama were hung together at the Plaza Central in Sonsonate. La matanza would forever be recorded in the minds of the Salvadoran people and it would have its effect on all those who thought of opposing the government for decades to come. For the next half century the military ruled supreme in shaping Salvadoran politics.

As soon as the situation calmed, the Gravina family went east and settled in the río Lempa valley. The matriarch of the Gravina clan, Eusebia Gravina, dispersed all the relatives in the new home region to insure the survival of the bloodline. She was an honest woman, very direct and to the point and of all the men that Eusebia knew, and she knew several, only one would be her lawful husband, she eventually outliving them all. She gave birth to several children in el Lempa from her various courtiers.

* * *

Having settled in el oriente the previous century, Pedro Medina Alfaro fathered several children and, as the custom was among Latino males, his first borne was named after him. He raised the young Pedro like he himself had been raised: with a sense of honesty and truthfulness. Both Pedros were apolitical, catering to no particular ideology. They just wanted to raise their families, give them an education, make enough to get by and a little more to enjoy life. But out of politics, they both wanted to stay. Some of the other relatives, however, were feeling discontent with the system as the way to insure personal prosperity. The oldest Medina may have been surrounded by his relatives, but those relatives were dividing into definitive camps of ideology.

The camps were not so divided that the Medina family did not enjoy family fiestas. During one fiesta following a baby baptism, the younger Pedro Medina met a young girl by the name of Caridad Gravina, one of Eusebia’s daughters. After a long courtship and Eusebia assuring herself that Pedro’s interest in the young Caridad were serious, they were allowed to make a home for themselves in Gramales de los Angeles, a small city nestled in the shadows of several volcanoes and low mountains in el Departamento de Usulután.

The Medina and Gravina families, despite differences in politics, became very close. They mostly toiled in their small businesses and some became professionals in their own right. But life was still difficult in El Salvador and any appearance of soldados o guardias was always met with distrust, anger, and distaste. In the Medina and Gravina clans, government authority was to be tolerated but not abetted. They felt no allegiance to it. Elections were a farce. There was mistrust with anything connected to politicians. Government authority, particularly the military, was something that the ruling classes, by now known as the ruling families, used to retain control of the richness of the land. Most of the Medina and Gravina clans felt no sense of loyalty to such a government. Why should they?

Only one major incident disrupted the harmony of their lives near el Lempa. While the male family members were away on the range tending cattle, three bandidos came to the finca where their wives and children had gathered. The bandidos robbed the household of some cash and belongings but otherwise did not harm the occupants beyond the point of tying them up before leaving. As fate would have it, one of the husbands returned a short while later and made the discovery. All the clansmen were hurriedly called in off the range and after cutting sign on the thieves, to see where they were headed, the patriarch Medina and his kin rode their horses hard to cut off the bandidos at the Lempa.

Riding to the river valley, they spied three figures on horseback about to enter the water. Unfortunately for the bandidos, the stolen goods they carried on their mounts confirmed who they were and Pedro and his men charged their horses into the Lempa, meeting the thieves at midstream. No firearms here. This was purely a knife and machete confrontation. When it was over, most of the stolen goods were recovered right there in the river while the lifeless bandidos and their horses were swept away to the Pacific by the current.

* * *

Many of the hacienda owners allowed the hated guardia to actually billet on their land. Royalties were paid personally to los comandantes de la guardia to establish this form of security. And by allowing abuses to take place without reprimands, the troops always remained loyal and obedient to their commanders. In some cases, land owners actually established their own security forces as private armies within their haciendas.

With the proper payoff to the local comandante, official government action into the affairs within these haciendas was usually bribed away. With the military firmly in control, most salvadoreños resigned themselves to a lot of poverty and feudal servitude. They had to. They had no legal tender. They were paid with the landowner’s own form of currency, useless beyond the hacienda walls.

Unlike the landed oligarchy, the Medina and Gravina clans could take care of themselves without external intervention. They just wanted to be left alone. United in their effort to give their children a better life, they were about to split over how to better themselves.

* * *

The third generation namesake of Pedro Medina settled firmly and peacefully into Gramales de los Angeles in eastern El Salvador. Gramales, as it was affectionately called, had a long history rich in local custom and folklore dating back to Spanish colonial days. In the past El Salvador had concentrated on only one export crop at a time. First it had been cacao, which was followed by indigo. Now it was coffee, each putting the Salvadoran economy through cycles as each commodity went through its boom and bust stages. Cafetales, molinos y fincas were the mainstay of the economy around Gramales and for now the coffee industry brought prosperity to some and seasonal employment to most. The Medina family was not going through cycles. They went into the food business. Unlike other commodities that went through cycles, food was always in demand. The grocery store they owned and ran kept food on the table, paid off the house and raised the kids. The store was the idea of Caridad. She had the astuteness of her mother, Eusebia, and was constantly turning over colónes as profit.

Her husband, Pedro, had gone into business driving a Mercedez-Benz truck for a well to do Jewish immigrant family. This was a man’s job, honest, mostly clean and the wages were good for the period. The job actually complemented his two-meter tall athletic physique. For a while, he even had done some boxing but he couldn’t stand hurting anyone so he quit the ring. Since the Medinas were not competing for the richness of the land, they felt no fear from that quarter. Many times the hacienda owners themselves would patronize their store. Aside from selling them foodstuff, the Medinas from Gramales wanted nothing more to do with the ruling families or the military and they wanted the same from them in return.

* * *

For most Salvadorans of the era, the two most common ways to get ahead socially or influentially were to join the church or join the military. El Salvador was rich in religious history. After all, hadn’t the Spaniards introduced Catholicism to the New World? For a family, no matter how rich or poor, to have a priest son or nun daughter was regarded with much esteem. It was an honor and a blessing to be so privileged. Many of the lesser affluent took this road to come out of poverty. At least with the church, one had a future, lived cleanly, could eat regularly, travel some and have a place in society. A nobody could get to be a somebody… and have influence over the people. You could control their behavior, know their secrets, sway their minds and have them do what was asked of them. All the church had to do was promise there would be a better life in paradise if they just continued to do the church’s bidding here on earth.

For the more aggressive though, the church was not the way out of poverty: they joined the military. For the ones that really strove, an appointment to la Escuela Militar Capitán General Gerardo Barrios in San Salvador was the beginning of a long road to prosperity. All officers of la Fuerza Armada de El Salvador were trained and disciplined at la Escuela Militar. It did not matter what branch of service one eventually went to. Once one became un oficial militar, doors opened to a future that most Salvadorans couldn’t even imagine… if, one survived the ordeal to the higher ranks. Not to lose sight of the church, la Escuela Militar drilled into its cadets that their appointment to the academy was an appointment from God to protect the nation and the Salvadoran way of life. To protect that way of life, one had to swear an allegiance not just to the nation itself, but in the back rooms of the cuarteles to el general, el coronel, or whomever el comandante was. It was like an army within an army.

Caught in the middle of all this was el campesino, el peón. He had no recourse of his own. With the church on one side demanding allegiance to itself under the name of God, and the government on the other demanding their share of obedience under the banner of God given authority, the common Salvadoran was in a no-win rut. Education might improve his lot but it wasn’t readily available beyond the elementary grades. For church leaders as well as government leaders, it was always easier to control an uneducated mind.

As the Medina and Gravina families splintered on political ideologies, some went the way of la Escuela Militar, others went professionally into ranching, while others took on the legal profession as lawyers. Still others went to foreign schools in Eastern Europe to learn the ways of socialism.

The clans themselves were not readily recognizable by their surnames anymore. More than halfway through the twentieth century, more than two-thirds of all Salvadoran families were composed of unmarried couples, known as compañeros de vida, or life companions. With the legally married couples, surnames were not a problem. It was different with most of the other conjugal unions. Some offspring took their father’s surname while others kept their mother’s. Other parents tried on new conjugal partners due to death or other tragedy, producing different surnamed children, grandchildren, cousins and so on within the same family group.

This was the norm and reflected no moral judgment on the Salvadoran people. The church tolerated this practice as long as the children were baptized as required by church law. The Medina and Gravina clans, regardless of surnames, kept in touch with each other. And regardless of the surname, or the political, military, trade or ideological affiliation, each family was respectively tied to a hometown en el oriente.

* * *

By the mid-twentieth century mark, a modern infrastructure was evolving in El Salvador. Roads, dams, electrical energy, seaports were all going up throughout the country. A working middle class was taking shape. Some reformers even managed to get into the higher offices of government but they usually lasted a few months before being deposed by military officers or political leaders. If one was popular with the people, one was not popular with the powers that be. Senator John F. Kennedy, the future president of the United States, embraced the Alliance for Progress effort for El Salvador, but the Salvadoran oligarchy opposed and ultimately blocked that program as too socialist. There for a moment, Pedro Medina thought the United States might do something about the situation in El Salvador.

Pedro further reflected on El Salvador’s history, when El Salvador had formally petitioned the US Congress for statehood. The dream had been the same as for any American, but the US Congress chose to ignore the request. Pedro had lived through the warning given by the US Army colonel at the US embassy of a possible revolution due to social conditions and no action had been taken then. Now the US ambassador to El Salvador was becoming critical of the reform efforts being undermined once more. Directives from Washington, however, ordered the ambassador to stay close to the oligarchy and the army because they have the power, and an overly large US military mission was assigned to El Salvador. Pedro wasn’t short on brains, but he couldn’t understand why the US government was apparently backing the Salvadoran forces.

* * *

La Fuerza Armada de El Salvador is composed of two branches. There is the usual army, navy and air force, which are under one branch, the Joint General Staff. But there are para-military forces in la Fuerza Armada which make up the second branch and these deal primarily with law enforcement. There is la Guardia Nacional, dating from the turn of the century. It performed the rural police mission and was mostly seen away from the larger urban areas. Commonly referred to as la guardia or la GN, it was probably the better trained arm of the entire force with the most dedication to its mission. Though equipped with firearms, they took great pride in their training of the manual of arms with the machete.

La Policía Nacional, also formed in the previous century, was in essence a state police force with military training and hardware. Called simply la PN, it could be seen maintaining law and order in any city or town.

Last of the para-military forces was la Policía de Hacienda, the treasury police. La PH patrolled mostly around ports of entry, border crossings, and any place where customs duties had to be performed. La PH was the least professional of the three organizations and attracted the least educated and most ill-mannered personnel. They were known for their callousness and country, read hillbilly, ways.

All three of the para-military forces were led by officer graduates of la Escuela Militar. A graduate of the academy could go into any branch of la Fuerza Armada. It should be noted again that the real professional security forces were found in the GN, PN, and PH, not the military, which had the primary responsibility of dealing with an external threat.

The Salvadoran army had actually gotten off to a professionally good start early in the previous century. Its officers, discipline and uniforms made the other armies of Central America look like rag-tag outfits of bandidos. However, enlisted soldiers were by now receiving little meaningful military training. Unlike the other security branches, the Salvadoran military was paid low wages, was composed of many conscripts that were treated harshly and could not enjoy of the fruits of their labors as the other security force members did. Clearly, the priority of la Fuerza Armada was internal control.

It was different for the officer corps, los oficiales. Upon graduation as a subteniente, a second lieutenant, the new officer went into a guaranteed promotion system, the first one in four years to teniente. That was followed by a promotion every five years thereafter. The regimen at la Escuela Militar was grueling. But to those that graduated, and a graduating class could number just a handful of men, the rewards were bountiful.

Being assigned to a cuartel as a young subteniente, where el coronel had the power to do as he pleased and usually did, left quite an impression on the young oficial. The longer the young officer lived under this influence the more he realized that someday he too would be un coronel, inheriting the power of life and death over people, able to confiscate goods at will, womanize as he pleased, interpret the law to his own benefit, and require his junior oficiales to take an oath of allegiance to him. In return, he would guard them from any outside intervention or intrusion. Yes, the officer took an oath to protect the Salvadoran way of life, and God had chosen him as one of the protectors. With that responsibility also came the so-called privileges of the very chosen.

But of course, there weren’t enough cuarteles and staff positions to go around to all of the colonels. Consequently, due to the military’s control of the government since the 1930s many normally civilianized ministerios were headed by coroneles. Coroneles were named as chiefs of transportation, the treasury, communications, roads, energy, the post office, and so on. Anything that required a minister as its head could have un oficial militar in charge. The corruption emanating from this structure was almost incomprehensible.

* * *

Sensing that the United States would not interfere in Salvadoran affairs, perhaps even tacitly approving the status quo, el General de la Guardia Jose A. Manzano established a para-military spy network to be active in the rural areas. To maintain an appearance of a lawful organization, it was titled officially Organización Democrática Nacional, or simply Orden.

At about this same time and not so far away in Colombia, South America, the Catholic Latin American Bishop’s Conference was taking place. The theme was the inequality and oppression of the people. In the church’s struggle for the minds of the oppressed, the bishops blamed the wealthy elite’s culture of power for provoking the coming revolutions. A new theology was emerging and the writings of the Bible were being interpreted with Marxist terminology. Western values, and the United States in particular, were being attacked by this theology of liberation. Once again the masses were being called upon by the church to act but this time with a new twist. Now the underprivileged were to reach not only spiritual, but physical freedom as well on earth by stressing activism and dissent. According to the clergy, justice on earth would be achieved. The media was to carry it as liberation theology.

Orden, the newly established intelligence network, targeted the Catholic Church and leftist leaning political organizations from that point on. This new threat from the political left was not to be tolerated and Orden began receiving assistance from US intelligence organizations.

* * *

None of this was lost to Pedro Medina in Gramales de Los Angeles. The youngest Pedro Medina, the fourth to bear the name, was now a young man, finishing his university degree in business administration and economics. His father was the oldest surviving Pedro Medina and was accorded the title of Don Pedro. Aside from the young Pedro, there were four other children in the family, all females, and Don Pedro assured himself that they all receive a solid education. One daughter, Enna, was already a grade school teacher and another, Rene, was doing her studies toward a like career. The two younger sisters, Mirta and Sarah, still in colegio as high school is called in Latin America, would also be universitarians if Don Pedro had his wish.

Despite all the internal problems that were facing the Salvadorans, there were more problems spilling over the border from Honduras. Don Pedro saw those problems split three ways. The most serious was the people’s dissent and dissatisfaction with their government. Another was the support, the dissenters and the entrenched authorities were beginning to receive from their supportive camps. But the most immediate problem for the Salvadorans was the problem with Honduras.

As the cry for reform grew from the campesinos, the patrones began to force peasants off their lands. Some 300,000 Salvadorans moved into the underdeveloped neighboring Honduras to start anew, mostly by farming. Land was available and Honduras was not nearly as populated as El Salvador. But the Salvadorans outgrew their welcome. Honduran farmers complained to their government authorities that the Salvadoran farmers were competing too strongly. The Honduran radio broadcasts that Don Pedro was now receiving in Gramales were full of anti-Salvadoran propaganda. It would only be a matter of time before the Hondurans kicked the Salvadorans out. Don Pedro knew that if the leaders in San Salvador were to make the people forget their nation’s problems by uniting them around a common cause, then the Honduran situation could be made that cause.

Tensions between the two were rising when a catalyst for war came into play from an unexpected quarter. Both countries were to play in the competition of the soccer World Cup. The first game between the two was played in the Honduran capital city of Tegucigalpa. The Hondurans won. Accusations of harassing the Salvadoran team during the game followed. The second game between the two teams was played in San Salvador. Many Salvadorans, including Don Pedro’s children, irked and harassed the Honduran team at the Gran Hotel in San Salvador where the team spent a sleepless and nervous night before the game. The Hondurans lost the game the next day, sparking riots and anti-Salvadoran street fighting in Honduras. Latin Americans take their soccer games very seriously.

The third and final elimination game between the two teams was played in Mexico City, where the Salvadorans won and in the aftermath the Hondurans blatantly ransacked and pillaged Salvadoran homes and farms in Honduras. That sparked over flights of Honduran airspace by Salvadoran military aircraft. As diplomatic relations were terminated between the two nations, Don Pedro watched the convoys of troops headed for the border. From his truck driving job, he knew those highways could transport troops either way and he felt a little fear for the closeness of the border. Those fears were to prove unfounded.

The Fuerza Aérea Salvadoreña, la FAS, took the initial action by attacking the major Honduran airbase at Tocontin, in Tegucigalpa, destroying several enemy aircraft. La FAS seemingly was performing superbly with their P-51 Mustang and FG-1 Corsairs. The army opened two fronts into Honduras the same day by pouring in twelve thousand troops with la FAS supporting the ground advances on both fronts. Recovering from the initial attacks, the Honduran air force, la Fuerza Aérea Hondureña, la FAH, staged raids into El Salvador with their F4U Corsairs, attacking the FAS base at Ilopango near San Salvador and oil facilities at Acajutla. They had limited success in the initial raids since the FAS had dispersed their aircraft and airfield operations into the countryside with the Hondurans losing several aircraft to ground fire. After gaining the initiative and performing splendidly in the opening campaigns, la FAS was to lose some effectiveness and aircraft to the much better Honduran air force as the war wound down.

Historians of air warfare would note that this would be the last time piston engine fighters would face each other in aerial dogfights. Maybe one could conclude that the Corsair was the best piston engine fighter of the World War II era, with the FAS losing Mustangs and Corsairs to FAH Corsairs while the FAH lost no Corsairs of their own to FAS fighters.

Honduran naval forces were practically nonexistent, and what little there was, was positioned in Caribbean waters along the northern coast. Consequently they never went into action against the Salvadoran Marina Nacional. With no naval resistance, la Marina Nacional had complete control in el Golfo de Fonseca and was quite effective against shore targets in that sector.

Salvadoran ground action, meeting little resistance in the eastern front, stopped seventy-five miles into Honduran territory after the capture of the city of Nacaome. The Salvadoran thrust in the northwest stopped after heavy fighting for the capture of Nueva Ocotepeque, leaving Salvadoran soldiers on Honduran soil with little logistical support. El General Manzano, leading his guardia into Honduras toward the northeast and fearing his dwindling war supplies, ordered his troops to use machetes to kill Hondurans. Firearms were to be fired only as a last resort. La guardia then went on a hacking and slashing spree where mostly civilians met the sharp edges of la guardia machetes.

Six days after the officially called 100 Hour War began, a cease fire was called by the Organization of American States. However, somewhere along the way, the war was dubbed the Soccer War and the demeaning term took root. Don Pedro now saw the spoils of war being brought back by returning troops from the war front. Stolen Honduran cars and Salvadoran military trucks were filled with household goods, driven by Salvadoran soldiers from the border regions. All declared, " . . . mi coronel ordered me to bring this back." The looting of the Honduran towns in the invaded regions was not only by Salvadoran troops. Many Salvadoran civilians near the border areas drove their cars and pickup trucks into Honduras and under the protection of the evacuating soldiers brought back refrigerators, TVs, furniture, and more vehicles. Anything that could be loaded or driven was looted.

The first manned lunar landings took place at the same time as the war, and yet as an important historical event as that was, it was eclipsed in the local news by the fighting. The war with Honduras had given the people a sense of nationalism. For the first time, even if for only a moment, Don Pedro’s family felt like one with the government. But the problems in El Salvador could not be postponed forever.

* * *

There now existed a middle class as well as a migrant peasant and an urban working class. But unemployment was hovering around thirty-five percent of the working age population. Socioeconomic conditions still reflected strong oligarchic rule in other statistics: the top ten percent of the land owners owned nearly eighty percent of the land; sixty percent of the population lived in the countryside; and clearly one-third of all children were dying before the age of five.

At la Universidad Nacional de El Salvador in San Salvador, the younger Pedro heard the charlas, the talks and lectures of the dissenters. Radical students and dissenting Catholics were beginning to unite in their antigovernment efforts, eventually forming a people’s army, el Ejército Revolucionario del Pueblo, el ERP. This worried Pedro since he and his sisters were attending classes at the university. The Christian and Social Democratic Parties united with other leftist parties to present a united front for the coming elections. It worked. La Union Nacional de Oposición, UNO,( Partido Unido Nacional de Oposición) won the elections with José Napoleón Duarte and Guillermo Ungo as the newly elected national leaders.

The military candidate, el Coronel Arturo Moreno, seized power declaring the elections invalid. Duarte was arrested, tortured and just as a pistol was put to his head for final disposition a military officer intervened, stating that the country did not need anymore martyrs. Duarte was forced into exile in South America. Ungo would go on to head the political arm of the Salvadoran guerrilla movement from Mexico City. In the demonstrations that followed the military takeover, eight hundred students were arrested and troops occupied the university. It closed for two years and Don Pedro sent for his daughters to return to Gramales.

* * *

Even with the internal political problems that afflicted the country, the Medina family enjoyed their middle class life by simply being noncommittal. The oldest daughters, Enna and Rene were married and well into their teaching careers. Pedro had set his sights on a career in banking and investing. Only the two youngest daughters, Mirta and Sarah, still had to choose a career. But life was not all toil. It was the month of August and the fiestas agostinas were upon the nation. The family, like many others throughout the country, went on a two week hiatus.

For the Medina and Gravina families, it was usually a trip to the seashore and this year was no different. The seaside cabañas they rented offered a place to cook and rest while enjoying the bounty and scenery of the land and sea. One could forget the problems that faced the country even if only for a little while. And what about the norteaméricano, el gringo, they had been watching camped along the seashore? He certainly didn’t appear to have any problems. Don Pedro admired the norteaméricanos for their resourcefulness, abundance and history but he didn’t make any move to meet el gringo. That was left up to the younger Pedro. A spontaneous, if brief, friendship was formed between Pedro and el gringo that lasted only a few days. Pedro learned the gringo was vacationing on his way back to the United States to continue his studies after attending college in Costa Rica.

Pedro reasoned that el gringo just about had an almost guaranteed safe future ahead of him. But at the very same moment Pedro and el gringo were getting acquainted, they heard on a portable radio that some campesinos in la hacienda de La Cayetana, in San Vicente, had their own futures come to a violent end as la guardia opened fire on them for participating in a demonstration. No one remembers how many were killed, only that an additional score or so of campesinos just disappeared. Bold moves were taken by the church in demanding an investigation into the shootings and disappearances. That was met by an even bolder move by the ruling political party in rejecting those demands.

Once again, students, peasants and workers went into action with strikes, sit-ins, and land seizures to press their demands outside of the electoral process. The ruling party still was not bending to reforms, ignoring the people’s woes and even ignoring an embarrassing United Nations report stating that El Salvador had the lowest caloric intake of all Latin America and afflicted by a fifty percent unemployment rate.

* * *

Some in the wealthy-elite ruling class were not satisfied with what they already had at hand and were ever contriving to amass even more. Don Pedro’s employer, the Jewish immigrant, who had given Don Pedro his truck driving job, was better off than most middle class families and thus became a target for such a scheme. The political rulers knew there was money to be had from this particular family, after all they, like many other Jewish families in Central America, had contributed financially to the State of Israel in the aftermath of the Six Day War nine years earlier. Putting the scheme into action, Don Pedro’s boss, Francisco de Soledad, was kidnapped and held for ransom. The response in contributions from the Jewish community was overwhelming and the ransom was paid. De Soledad was released but he declared he couldn’t be of much help in identifying his abductors since he had been kept blindfolded and tied to a chair all the time. But an oversight had been committed by his captors. As the farce of the official investigation into the kidnapping progressed, de Soledad recognized the voice and distinctive shoes of one of the investigators.

Just before his release by his captors, an authoritative sounding person had come into the room where de Soledad was being held. The newcomer was definitely in charge by the tone of his voice toward the captors. Through the narrow slit between the blindfold and his cheeks, de Soledad could see this person’s very distinctive custom made shoes. And now, standing in front of him and leading the government’s investigation into his kidnapping were the same voice and shoes, belonging to none other than to el Jefe Comandante de la Fuerza Armada, el Coronel Rodrigo Molina. No doubt, el coronel wanted to assure himself that de Soledad was clueless as to his abductors. De Soledad, however, maintained his cool until retaliation could be taken.

A reverse sting operation went into effect by the Jewish community. Contacts with arms merchants in the United States had made an offer to el Coronel Molina for the secret acquisition of 10,000 automatic weapons. El coronel had no reason to suspect anything was afoot. After all, didn’t the United States tacitly approve anything for El Salvador? Now, however, was payback time. Just as the arms deal was to go down at Mount Kisco, New York, U.S. federal agents arrested el Coronel Molina on weapons charges. He was convicted and jailed. Somehow the illegal arms deal had gone sour and the United States had been pressured into prosecuting Molina. To the ruling-elite in El Salvador the message was clear. No matter who or where, no one, not even the ruling-elite, messed with what was called in Latin America la mafia judia.

Don Pedro’s wife, Caridad, didn’t want any part of these games and feared for her husband’s safety. She wanted him to quit his job and help out in the family store. Don Pedro hesitated. That was not man’s work, especially for a man like him. But, without a doubt, the astuteness of Caridad’s mother, Eusebia, had been passed on to her daughter. Caridad presented the business journals and convinced him that they could make more money if they both worked the store. Of course, an expansion project had to be taken but the efforts of both of them were needed for the future success of the business. Eventually, the Medina food business grew, the store expanded and even a second story was added to their already large home.

* * *

When the universities re-opened after two years, Pedro and his younger sisters moved back to San Salvador, he to pursue his career and his sisters to finish off their college education. The youngest of the siblings was Sarah, who by this time had developed some definitive ideas about her country. She disliked the practically forced nationalism impressed on the people. She ignored the tenets of Catholicism, viewing them and its practices as an impediment to people’s well-being and progress. And she abhorred the repression and abuses of the military and security forces. No one could accuse Sarah of being patriotic or sympathetic to the government.

The national situation was tense during the mid to late seventies and one had to be careful as to who to associate with. As expected, the next presidential elections were filled with fraud and over 50,000 protesters filled la Plaza Libertad. One look at the scene on that fateful February day and Pedro quickly escorted his sisters out from the downtown area. Word of the shootings reached them by the time they arrived at their apartment in the Atlacatl section of San Salvador. As the tempers boiled in the plaza, the soldiers opened fire on the crowd. Many trying to get away were gunned down by other troops sealing off the area around la plaza.

The troops then moved in with the escort of armored personnel carriers. These vehicles rolled over the trapped and wounded crushing them to death. The leftist propaganda machinery was quick to assert that the tracked vehicles were former US Army M114 armored personnel carriers bought from civilian sources in the United States during the so-called arms embargo of the seventies. The M114s had cleared US Customs as ‘agricultural tractors’ bound for el Ministerio de Agricoltura. Upon delivery the M114s were transferred to la Maestranza, the ordnance center of la Fuerza Armada. Officially, one hundred persons died that day in Plaza Libertad. The world would never know the true number. For the next three days, the plaza remained sealed off to allow for the removal of the bodies and gore the tracked vehicles left behind. Eventually, the fire department was called in to turn on their water cannon and wash away the remains of the human debris.

A wave of repression followed hitting the Catholic Church as it demanded reform for the campesinos. When a leading reformist Jesuit priest, Rutilio Mayor, was killed in the city of Aguilares, the very outspoken Salvadoran archbishop, Oscar Romero, implicated the government in the killings by not attending the Jesuit’s official funeral procession. Repression was about to hit the Catholic Church even harder. Feeling very sure about himself the president, el General Romero, joined other Latin American nations in rejecting US military aid because of the US’s criticism of human rights and abuses. Salvadoran insurgents also felt sure about themselves and kidnapped the foreign minister, Mauricio Burgonovo. Right wing death squads retaliated by killing another priest, Alfonso Navarrete, and warned all the Jesuits to leave El Salvador within a month.

Even during hard times, humor has a way of cropping up in unexpected ways. The fact that a reformer, the archbishop, and an ultra-conservative hard-liner, the president, both had the same surname, Romero, could not be passed up by the general population. Whenever anyone mentioned any of the Romeros in conversation, the usual question was, "¿Cual Romero? Which Romero? ¿Romero el clero?, o ¿Romero el culero? Loosely translated as, Which Romero, the cleric or the fag?"

El General Romero was no joke, however. He enacted the Law for Defense and Guarantee of Public Order, banning all public assemblies and labor strikes. Critics of the law were jailed. The law itself lasted two years. A better way to deal with the dissenters and insurgents had been found.

* * *

Back in Gramales, a well to do dentist and opportunist by the name of Delgaroa had been selected as the local jefe of Orden, the rural right-wing intelligence group. Before being shunned by the Medina family, Delgaroa had taken care of the family’s dental needs. A Salvadoran youth scout organization, that had begun years earlier, had been transformed into a private army within Orden. It was one thing to have elitist land owners living in Gramales but to have an actual element of right wing extremists operating in their midst was something else. It scared the daylights out of most people.

And with reason, people in the surrounding areas of Gramales and Usulután began to disappear, their limbless and mutilated bodies discovered days later. Feeling secure and arrogant, Delgaroa’s organization of young men began walking the streets tauntingly displaying their sidearms.

* * *

If nothing else, a report from Amnesty International read like a condemnation of the ruling elite. It stated that the zeal and number of violations of opponents to the government were too many to be considered as isolated incidents as the government claimed. It squarely put the blame on members of the security forces for participating in a deliberate campaign to maintain the powerful position of the ruling minority.

If the repression going out from Gramales was against individuals, in San Salvador it was against the demonstrating masses. By May of the year, unarmed demonstrators staged occupations of the Metropolitan Cathedral along with the French and Costa Rican embassies. One of Don Pedro’s sons-in-law, Mauricio, Enna’s husband, was inadvertently caught up in the demonstration. Before he could get away, he noticed the street sweepers pulling weapons from their refuse cans.

These are not real street sweepers, he thought, and as he looked around for a hasty exit out of the area, he noticed more armed men in uniforms coming out of the nearby commercial establishments. When the shooting started, he forced one woman onto the pavement with him. He looked over to a young universitarian that had been standing nearby with a protest sign and saw she already lay still in a pool of blood from the fusillade of bullets.

In the mad scramble that usually accompanies such events, Mauricio was able to help the other woman out of the area and into safer streets. It was then that he noticed that his clothes had been bloodied in the melee, possibly from the young universitarian lying dead in the street. He also noticed that in their haste to seek safety, the woman he was helping had lost her shoes. As he nervously laughed at her, she pointed out that he himself had been running with only one shoe. He was not about to go back for the other.

* * *

The reform movement received a shot in the arm in the summer of 1979 with the events in Nicaragua. The Somosa regime was overthrown and the Salvadoran rulers began to see leftist overtones practically down the road from them. A popular uprising that could overthrow such a dynasty could also happen in El Salvador. The Salvadoran rulers were beginning to worry, even if just a little. Under pressure from US President Carter, Salvadoran president Romero announced an end to abuses and promised electoral reforms.

The promises were not sincere enough. Besides, with a perceived wimpy president in the White House, the standard joke between los generales y coroneles was the comparison of the US president to the TV heroine of the day, the Bionic Woman: All that power and no balls, they joked amongst themselves.

In October, Romero was overthrown by progressive members of the military promising reforms and an end to violence and corruption. The following day, the new civilian-military junta announced a state of siege and suspended constitutional guarantees. The day after that it called on the leftist factions and the right wingers to lay down their arms, further calling on the left to believe in the sincerity of the junta. The day after the junta’s plea, the left denounced the coup as a military maneuver and vowed to continue its struggle for the overthrow of the ruling class.

Anyway you looked at it, it was a most exciting week in El Salvador. El Presidente Romero left El Salvador and went into exile in the United States.

* * *

The left had been active all year, not only in open rebellion in the countryside by a disorganized insurgency, but also covertly at la Universidad Nacional. In the middle of lectures, insurgents within the student body would just take over the classroom and lecture in the preparation of Molotov cocktails, the disabling of military vehicles, the making of road obstacles and other disruptive devices. They actively sought supporters from the student body and antigovernment charlas were commonplace throughout the campus grounds.

The people began to worry more about the leftist uprising around them. Most Salvadorans had seen some change come to the country but they were smart enough to know that a leftist revolution was not the way to prosperity. This led to over twenty thousand persons participating in a pro-government demonstration before the end of the year. Some even demonstrated in front of the US embassy for its hard stand against some Salvadoran leaders. The United States responded by sending $200,000 worth of riot control equipment to la Fuerza Armada and four advisors to train in its use. This was not lost to the Catholic clergy who declared that la Fuerza Armada would now have better personal protection and therefore be more effective in its violence against the people.

That December, almost in affirmation to the church’s declaration, government troops killed thirty-five campesinos in a couple of ranches and a slaughter house. La PN opened fire on demonstrators in San Salvador the following day. There would be no tolerance toward dissenters. Oficiales del Estado Mayor, the General Staff, confronted the civilian members of the governing junta and cabinet and declared their refusal to recognize civilian authority. The civilians’ pleas for an end to repression were ignored by the officers.

Don Pedro, who had wanted to keep his family away from civil unrest and political activity, was thinking that there were now no areas untouched by