Subject: El Salvador (excerpts from Witness to War) Date: 23 Jan 90 15:06:15 GMT soc.rights.human:1640 misc.headlines:11626 soc.culture.latin-america:639 (Posted for MATHRICH@UMCVMB.MISSOURI.EDU) Excerpts from "Witness to War," by Charles Clements, MD (Bantam) ---------------------------------------------------------------- Clements is an american doctor and a quaker who spent a year in El Salvador treating casualties behind rebel lines. Very readable and very moving. Here are some excerpts: "... the young children of Copapayo- several of whom I delivered- were my greatest concern. They were hysterical with fright. They screamed each time the mortar clusters began their descent. They clawed and tore at their mothers, desperate to escape the explosions. There was no choice but to quiet them. I crushed my store of tranquilizer tablets and mixed them with orange juice and brown sugar ... I began zigzagging my way from trench to trench. None of the mothers questioned what I was doing; they knew death too well. I dosed their terrorized infants according to my best guess of individual weight. By dark, there wasn't a single conscious child under three years old in Copapayo. "Then the evacuation began. A single file column of 300 Salvadoran peasants and a few lightly armed rebel militiamen snaked its way up out of the trenches and wound along the peninsula toward the government lines. ... I prayed for Miguel, and I asked that if any of the children were to die, that it be from an overdose at my hand- not because they awoke, whimpered, and were smothered into silence by their frightened mothers. I knew peasant mothers who'd killed their infant children that way. Their agony never ceased ... "It appeared that a campaign of terror was being directed specifically against health professionals who served the poor or the displaced, or who had treated civilian wounds of any kind. The death squads regarded such doctors and nurses as subversives ... "In medicine, you never forget a first case. Regardless of whether it is an appendectomy or a heart attack, the patient and the circumstances always stay with you. Thus, in Salinas, my first instance of a macheted breast was that of a 54 year old Salvadoran schoolteacher. It had been lopped off by government interrogators. I also saw my first deliberate acid burns and first xrays of badly knitted bones broken by anti communist truncheons. Many of the refugees were emotional basket cases: hysterics, depressives, catatonics, paranoiacs ... "... we saw more vultures than people until we neared Guazapa. Since El Salvador is the most densely populated country in the western hemisphere, I wondered where all the people had gone. The answer lay with the government Hueys we saw from time to time that day. For months, they had ferried invasion forces in and out of Chalatenango, bringing scorched-earth devastation to the entire region. We passed gutted village after gutted village, uninhabitable ruins whose owners had long since fled to Honduras or guerrilla controlled zones to the north and east. Not only were the houses ruined and the livestock butchered, but objects as benign as fruit trees were often, apparently purposefully, destroyed. What I didn't see first hand were the ruined granaries. The government soldiers had seen to it that starvation would set in before the May rains brought another planting season ... "... rationing became necessary and then increasingly severe. First, we were cut to twice-a-day meals of two tortillas and a half cup of beans. Then there were no more beans. ... As the rest of the food disappeared, I saw more and more of the youngsters with the distended bellies of serious malnutrition and the flag of blondish hair, a sign of protein deficiency. "... two [of her] children, a boy and a girl, had died of a fever and diarrhea, respectively. ... two other children were killed in a massacre during the early months of the civil war ... 'Why didn't you flee?' I asked. 'Because we didn't know then,' she answered through her tears. 'We had never been to a demonstration or belonged to an organization. We didn't know we were the enemy.' "My diary became a receptacle for this pain as well as for my personal frustrations. My handwriting became a furious scribble as I complained that I'd be happy to dispense all the analgesics and iron pills in the world if we only had them. In a few brief weeks, I'd seen a dozen deaths that could have been prevented with an adequate store of medicines. Hunger gnawed at my spirit, too, as did the daily deluge of the rainy season and the dysentery that was slowly robbing me of my strength. I didn't have the proper antibiotic for it ... "[rebel radio station] Vernceremos operated at that time in the eastern portion of El Salvador, moving daily to avoid being captured and silenced by the army detachments sent in constant pursuit of it. Besides the war news, it reported on events in the US and broadcast political programs that addressed issues as diverse as nutrition and sexism. ... US warships in the gulf of Fonseca often jammed Vernceremos' broadcasts ... "Raul was as adamant as anyone I'd met on the question of Cuban or Nicaraguan intervention in El Salvador. He was affronted at the suggestion the companeros needed outside help. 'We don't need cubans, and we don't need nicaraguans' he insisted. 'And we don't need the norteamericanos. This is an authentic revolution, as yours was. We know what we're fighting for.' "... in the midst of the fighting, Raul summoned me to his secret command post for the sector. ... I was introduced to their radioman, who was monitoring the enemy walkie-talkies with a US made Bearcat scanner. As he manipulated the dials to pick up the various frequencies used by the government troops, I heard distinctly american voices issuing coded directives to the troops as well as asking questions of the Salvadoran commanders. ... these men obviously were, at the very minimum, acting in a command and control function ... "... the subtler challenge was to my neutrality, part of my commitment to non-violence. On one level, it was impossible not to be sympathetic to these people who, for decades, had been used as the Salvadoran national doormat. Peaceable protest had brought them nothing but more repression. They at least had a rationale for fighting; they wanted their land back and they wanted their freedom. " ... 'how long,' I shouted [to a government officer captured by the rebels] 'do you think your military can go on committing atrocities against civilians before the US congress gets fed up and cuts off your aid! How long?' The lieutenant looked me straight in the eye and then flicked his cigarette butt onto the the dirt floor. 'Your government will never cut us off,' he said. Pointing to his chest with his good right arm, he added, 'We are anti-communists!' " (responses can go to mathrich@mthvax.cs.miami.edu) -- a.e.mossberg /aem@mthvax.cs.miami.edu /aem@umiami.BITNET /Pahayokee Bioregion Despite the enormous civil rights gains of the past three decades, even the rawest forms of racism persist. -Jesse Jackson