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El Salvador THREATS TO INTERNAL SECURITY
In the final quarter of 1988, El Salvador continued to suffer
the effects of a nine-year-old insurgency by the FMLN, whose
6,000 to 8,000 armed combatants--a figure reduced by attrition
and desertion from the estimated 12,000 guerrillas in the field
in 1984--received varying degrees of support from Nicaragua,
Cuba, and the Soviet Union. By most estimates, more than 63,000
people, or about 1.2 percent of the nation's total population,
had died in political violence since 1979, victims of either
leftist guerrillas, the military, or right-wing death squads. At
the same time, 25 to 30 percent of the population had been
displaced or had fled the country as a result of the conflict.
Tutela Legal (Legal Aid--the human rights monitoring office of
the archdiocese of San Salvador) and other human rights groups
claimed that the rightist death squads had murdered more than
40,000 Salvadorans by 1985. During the Duarte government,
military and right-wing death squad activity declined
significantly, partially as a result of United States threats to
withhold economic and military assistance.
In January 1987, constitutional rights were restored when the
state of siege, instituted in 1980 and regularly renewed since
that date, was allowed to lapse. Extraordinary legislation
governing the prosecution of persons suspected of involvement
with the insurgency (Decree 50) expired several weeks later.
Although the military was concerned that the failure to renew
these security decrees would adversely affect their ability to
conduct the war, it complied nonetheless by reinstating due
process procedures as set forth in the Constitution. The security
forces followed presidential orders not to take coercive action
to halt a series of violent demonstrations and strikes by
guerrilla urban front groups, whose members vandalized and
destroyed public and private property, in the May to August
period of 1987.
Under the general amnesty law of November 1987, passed by the
Legislative Assembly in an effort to comply with the Central
American Peace Agreement, the government released about 470
suspected or convicted insurgents--including some involved in
several major terrorist incidents--along with a few former
military personnel involved in death squad murders. The amnesty
covered "politically related crimes" and all common crimes
committed in a group of more than twenty persons. It specifically
excluded, however, the crime of kidnapping, the 1980 murder of
Archbishop Romero, and the period after October 22, 1987.
Interpreted broadly, the amnesty could prevent charges from being
filed for massacres by the military and killings by the death
squads and could require the release of soldiers convicted of
human rights abuses. Both the left and the right criticized the
law; the left objected to an effective pardon for thousands of
death squad assassinations, and the far right condemned pardons
for acts of terrorism and sabotage.
The government's leniency did little to alleviate political
violence, however. The capital city was exposed almost daily to
leftist-sponsored demonstrations, strikes, and economic sabotage,
as well as bombings. According to the United States Department of
State, in the first quarter of 1988 the capital suffered 213
incidents of sabotage against its telecommunications and
electrical systems, as well as 49 acts of economic sabotage and
138 strikes or demonstrations.
Data as of November 1988
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