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El Salvador THE UNITED STATES TAKES A HAND
The Carter administration had lost considerable leverage in
El Salvador when the Romero government renounced United States
aid in 1977. The United States therefore welcomed the October
1979 coup and backed up its approval with an economic aid package
that by 1980 had become the largest among Western Hemisphere
recipients. A small amount of military aid also was provided.
United States advisers contributed to the third junta's agrarian
reform program, particularly Phase III, of the reform, the socalled Land to the Tiller decree of April 28, 1980, granting
title to smallholders. Phase II, expropriating holdings between
100 and 500 hectares, was decreed in March 1980, but
implementation was postponed. The government cited lack of
administrative and financial resources for its inaction; many
observers believed that political considerations were equally
influential.
United States policy and influence in El Salvador, however,
was fitful and inconsistent from 1979 through 1981. It was driven
by two conflicting motivations in the complex and shifting
political prism of El Salvador. The first motivation was the
prevention of a leftist takeover. Both economic and military aid
for the junta governments seemed to be intended to promote a
centrist alternative to either a Marxist-led revolution or a
conservative military regime. The assumption of power by the FSLN
in Nicaragua increased the pressure on the United States to
prevent a similar result in El Salvador; this pressure grew by
1981 as the Sandinistas consolidated their dominant role in the
Nicaraguan government.
The second motivation was human rights. The Carter
administration had established the promotion of human rights as a
cornerstone of its foreign policy, particularly in Latin America.
Like many Salvadorans, United States officials were frustrated by
the inability of the junta governments to contain political
violence. Nevertheless, Carter's policy was sufficiently flexible
to allow increased aid levels despite a generalized upswing in
human rights violations in El Salvador, as long as the government
there appeared to be making good faith efforts at reform. It was
not merely the general level of violence, however, but the
specific murders of United States citizens that most affected
dealings with El Salvador. As previously mentioned, the December
1980 murder of the four churchwomen produced a complete cutoff of
aid pending an investigation of the case. On January 4, 1981, two
American land reform advisers from the American Institute for
Free Labor Development (AIFLD) were gunned down along with a
Salvadoran in the Sheraton Hotel in San Salvador. This action
alarmed not only the White House but also the United States
Congress, and it added fuel to the effort to disburse aid based
on improvements in the Salvadoran human rights situation.
The launching of the "final offensive" lent a new urgency to
Washington's approach. On January 14, 1981, four days after the
offensive began, Carter announced the approval of US$5 million in
"nonlethal" military aid; an additional US$5 million was
authorized four days later. The low level of the aid and the
impediments to its rapid disbursement meant that it had little
direct impact on the Salvadoran armed forces' response to the
guerrilla offensive; the renewal of military aid, however,
established a trend that President Reagan would build on when he
assumed office on January 20, 1981.
The Reagan administration initially appeared to stress the
need to shore up El Salvador as a barrier against communist
expansion in Central America. The United States Department of
State issued a special report on February 23, 1981, entitled
Communist Interference in El Salvador, which emphasized
Nicaraguan, Cuban, and Soviet support for the FMLN. The report
was widely criticized in the American media and the United States
Congress. Nevertheless, the administration succeeded in
increasing substantially the levels of United States military and
economic aid to El Salvador, first by executive order, then by
legislative appropriation. Although Reagan downplayed the
importance of human rights considerations, Congress voted in
January 1982 to require certification by the executive every six
months of Salvadoran progress in such areas as the curbing of
abuses by the armed forces, the implementation of economic and
political reforms (particularly agrarian reform), and the
demonstration of a commitment to hold free elections with the
participation of all political factions (all those that would
renounce further military or paramilitary activity). The
administration accepted the certification requirement, albeit
reluctantly, and proceeded with a policy that emphasized economic
maintenance in the face of guerrilla attacks on the country's
infrastructure, military buildup to contain the insurgency, and
low-key efforts in the human rights area.
Data as of November 1988
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