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                                                                                WORLD, Page 32

EL SALVADOR

Two Cheers for Peace


A treaty may end the bloody 12-year civil war, but prosperity
will prove more elusive

By JOHN MOODY/SAN SALVADOR


    Marcelo Guerrero devotes part of each day to hustling
lottery tickets in San Salvador. The rest of his time he whiles
away in the sprawling shanty village of Zacamil on the edge of
the capital, waiting for the government to build him a new
house from a nearby pile of concrete blocks. While his two
children splash through streams of urine and dirty water,
Guerrero reflects on the prospects for his -- and his country's
-- future. "Peace would be nice," he murmurs, "but it won't
change my life much."

    Many in El Salvador share Guerrero's gloomy assessment.
People are delighted that for the first time since 1980, and
after the loss of 75,000 lives, the government and the Farabundo
Marti National Liberation Front (F.M.L.N.) are at war no more.
But they also realize that the long-term outlook for the
country is dismal. The peace treaty signed last week in Mexico
City, which goes into effect Feb. 1, is no guarantee that El
Salvador's 5.4 million people can prevail in the other battle
that they have been steadily losing -- the one against poverty
and hopelessness.

    Politicians and diplomats have already coined a phrase,
"the crisis of peace," for the postwar dilemma. Aside from the
obstacles posed by unrepentant zealots on both sides in the
protracted political struggle, there is a legitimate question
about whether the country will function any better united than
it does when bloodily riven. Poverty, social inequality, over
reliance on U.S. financial handouts, simmering disputes over
land and ideology, and a choking residue of hatred from the war
all conspire against success in rebuilding the shattered land.
Says National Assembly Vice President Ruben Zamora, who is close
to the insurgents: "Peace generates huge expectations among the
people that cannot possibly be met. The war was always the
excuse for everything: no water, no electricity, no jobs. But
the fact is, peace won't fix these problems."

    Salvadorans need look no further than Nicaragua. The 1990
election of Violeta Barrios de Chamorro was greeted with
widespread relief for ending nearly 11 years of incompetent rule
by the Sandinista National Liberation Front and almost a decade
of warfare with the U.S.-backed contras. Chamorro's government
moved quickly to end the fighting and rekindle relations with
the U.S.

    Yet the transition has had only mixed success. American
aid is again flowing, but the country has a long way to go
toward reconciliation. Discharged troops from the Sandinista
army and the contras roam the country robbing civilians to feed
themselves. The Sandinistas have caused trouble whenever they
can, organizing public strikes and threatening violence and
disorder in the streets. Chamorro has shown an unhealthy
tendency to concentrate power among her inner circle of friends
and relatives.

    El Salvador faces similar perils. The pain and injustice
etched by a dozen years of war, and the estimated $1.3 billion
in related material damage, will not be erased by the stroke of
a pen. The army, which bears responsibility for the majority of
wartime human-rights abuses, and the F.M.L.N., which prolonged
the fighting during the lengthy peace talks, cannot abandon
innate suspicions of each other. As a result, though Salvadorans
will be technically at peace, they will face tension and fear,
if not outright hostility, for the foreseeable future.

    Nor will the economic dislocation that has made life
miserable for generations be altered overnight. The Center for
Economic and Social Investigations, a private liberal think tank
in San Salvador, estimates that one-fifth of the population
controls two-thirds of the nation's wealth; the poor face meager
prospects for finding jobs or improving their share. The
government has earmarked $100 million to retrain ex-combatants,
and foreign donors have pledged up to $1 billion in aid. But
with unemployment at 50%, widespread illiteracy and a legacy of
violence, El Salvador is unlikely to attract the kind of foreign
investors flocking to more promising Latin American countries.

    The country's leading source of income is remittances, the
money sent home by Salvadorans living and working abroad, often
illegally. Though impossible to quantify accurately, most
economists agree that the expatriates send back somewhere
between $750 million and $1 billion a year. The No. 2 source of
income has been the $1 million a day in aid received -- until
recently -- from the U.S. Coffee sales account for $250 million
to $300 million a year, a figure not likely to change much --
unless it drops.


    The one unalterable figure is the amount of land -- 8,124
sq. mi. -- that makes El Salvador the most densely populated
country in Central America. Disputes over property have often
led to bloodshed. A military coup in 1979 was sparked in part
by a plan to redistribute farmland, most of which is still
owned by a tightly knit oligarchy. Since then, land reform has
come to signify justice to those without property and communist
conspiracy to those who stand to lose theirs.

    Hundreds of deed holders who fled the war's devastation
are sure to return in coming months to reclaim their property.
They will find, in most cases, that squatters who braved the
fighting to cultivate the soil now consider themselves not claim
jumpers but valiant pioneers. The Salvadoran government has a
small reserve of land earmarked for redistribution, which may
help a few. But not all the disputes can be solved that simply,
and some are certain to lead to violence.

    Blood may also flow after President Alfredo Cristiani
carries out the peace treaty promise to reduce the armed forces
by half in the next two years. Cutting the military from its
current strength of 60,000 may appease critics of El Salvador's
bloody past. But Cristiani will be turning out into the streets
trained killers with little prospect of finding legitimate
employment. Says Zamora: "There will be a huge increase in
violence, much like there was in Nicaragua. Many people will
die." Zamora's idea is to offer the soldiers public welfare jobs
like reforestation and environmental protection. But who will
pay their salaries?

    That question is nearly always answered with the same
casual assumption: the U.S., of course. Having dumped $4 billion
into the country since 1980, the U.S. has become El Salvador's
cash cow. A major cutback of funds from Washington was once as
unthinkable as a slash in Soviet aid to Cuba; now it may also
be just as inevitable. Ambassador William Walker tries to
convince Salvadorans that American support for their country is
unwavering. Yet he acknowledges, "I don't know any more than
they do what's going to happen up on Capitol Hill." Given the
economic climate in the U.S., foreign aid to a country no longer
facing a communist insurgency seems a likely target for the
budget ax, and many Salvadorans know it.

    A second issue that worries Walker and other diplomats is
the fratricidal political atmosphere. Cristiani's ruling ARENA
party, founded in 1981 by right-wing extremists, has moved
closer to the center since he took office in 1989.
Unfortunately, the party has few leaders suited to take the
President's place when his term expires in 1994. Vice President
Francisco ("Chico") Merino has aligned himself with ex-Major
Roberto d'Aubuisson, ARENA's infamous far-right patriarch.
D'Aubuisson, 48, implicated in numerous human-rights abuses, has
terminal cancer.

    The Christian Democrats, the largest opposition party,
have little choice but to form a coalition with emerging
center-left parties. The strongest, the Democratic Convergence,
received less than 15% of the vote in recent local elections.
The Christian Democrats' best presidential hope is still former
Foreign Minister Fidel Chavez Mena, whom Cristiani thrashed
soundly in 1989. Says Chavez: "The left must think really hard
about its proper role in the new El Salvador. We foresee an
alliance of democratic forces that would permit a government of
concertacion."

    That often used word, roughly meaning "acting together,"
implies that all Salvadorans really want the same thing and are
willing to put aside their bitter past to work for it. Mostly,
however, the country seems to share the helpless attitude of
Guerrero, who waits for something to spring from nothing. The
blood shed during the past 12 years and the deep divisions that
remain suggest that, hard as it is to envision, things may get
worse in postwar El Salvador before they get better.