PERSPECTIVES
" The Michigan Daily
Page 5
Struggling for justice in the face of repression
El Salvador: the strength and suffering of a people
The following photos were taken Alfredo Cristiani, of the Arena
by Opinion page staff member (National Republican Alliance) party
Kathryn Savoie during her recent represents the interests of this oli-
trip to El Salvador. garchy and has clear associations to
El Salvador's' death squads.
El Salvador, the smallest country The military forces with their
in Central America, is the recipient death-squad style activities, are the
of the second largest amount of U.S. primary violators of human rights in
foreign assistance per capita after this country. Salvadorans who orga-
Israel. Despite this enormous influx nize to improve their lives are tar-
of U.S. dollars, the majority of
Salvadorans live in extreme poverty
- 60 percent are landless, 700,000
* families are without adequate hous-
ing, one in five children suffers mal-
nutrition, and the combined rate of
unemployment and underemploy-
ment is 77 percent.
Every year hundreds of millions of
dollars in U.S. aid to El Salvador
support, not the poor who desper-
ately need it, but an oligarchy and
the military that helps it maintain
* its position of power and privilege.
This oligarchy of two percent of the
population controls 80 percent of
the wealth and 60 percent of the land
in this predominantly agrarian soci-
ety. El Salvador's new President,
i4Pr i ri in E.1 S lvdn
geted by the death squads. Over
70,000 Salvadoran citizens have
been killed by the military and death
squads in the past decade. And the si-
tuation is not improving. Of the
1,889 political assassinations
recorded in 1988 by the non-gov-
ernmental Human Rights
Commission of El Salvador, 1,648
are attributed to the armed forces.
x:: r 3
a nnlifiral Prick WP have nnly a
ne re In a crisis in I a vauur, apiia l riss . arenave uu.y a
theoretical idea of what a democracy is, and now with the change in
government, Duarte says that this is democracy in action. We see it
as a very negative situation because the ARENA (National
Republican Alliance) party and those it represents only exploit peo-
ple. It's a slap in the face and a humiliation for the poor people of El
Salvador. How can they call it a democracy when the murderers of
Archbishop Romero, and tens of thousands of peasants are ruling
our country? It's an affront, and ARENA and the Bush administra-
tion know it. They know they don't have the support of the people,
that they are rejected by the majority. They can't offer real solu-
tions, only persecution and repression."
- Julio Portillo, National Unity of Salvadoran Workers
Photos (clockwise from center top): Boy playing soccer in a poor community on the
outskirts of San Salvador; a soldier of the Treasury Police during a siege of the office of
the National Unity of Salvadoran Workers, San Salvador; a young girl with a baby at a
cooperative in the Department of La Paz; a farmer at the La Paz cooperative prepares
the land for planting the corn crop; woman and children in a shantytown in San
Salvador; Margarita, a health care worker at the La Paz cooperative.