In a 2001 interview, US Ambassador Robert White had this to
say:
After Reagan's inauguration, Alexander Haig recalled White to Washington. Twenty years later, White still believes that "had we had a united policy in Washington to achieve a peaceful solution to El Salvador's problems in 1980–81, it could have been done. It was a tough problem, but not insoluble." And so he tried to convince Haig.
"But the Reagan conservatives wanted to demonstrate an ability to crush revolutions. They wanted to say in El Salvador, this is what we could have done in Vietnam, had we not been saddled by reporters, by columnists—all those liberals. I tried to tell Haig, you're not going to do it, not with the tools available to you, not with the forces available to you." Haig was not interested in White's analysis. He congratulated the ambassador on doing a fine job in El Salvador and summarily and unceremoniously removed him from his post.
I respect Ambassador White but it is difficult to conclude that had the US had a coherent policy in 1980-1981, A Salvadoran civil war might have been avoided. That's what I thought and what comes out in chapter 6 of William Stanley's
The Protection Racket State.
The left was divided in 1980. Most popular organizations still held out hope for a more peaceful transformation of the political system. However, they were decimated in 1980 by right-wing death squad activity that picked up in December 1979 and would continue for the next two years. And while the masses were interested in avoiding bloodshed, many of their leaders were hoping for greater repression as that would encourage greater numbers of Salvadorans to join the revolutionaries. Several leaders of mass organizations were aligned with or incorporated into the guerrillas.
The more progressive members of the PDC were killed in 1979 and 1980 as well. They were mostly killed by right-wing death squads, but some were probably killed by the left as well. Attorney General Mario Zamora was murdered by the right-wing in February 1980. The left-wing of the PDC joined the FDR or left the country. While there was a rightist civilian on the first junta, there was none on the second junta. That cut off most communication between the PDC and the moderate civilian right.
The FMLN formed in 1980 but the only organization that seemed interested in a negotiated solution was the National Resistance Armed Forces (FARN or RN). They had entered into on-again, off-again discussions with the junior members of the military but there was still a certain level of distrust between the two organizations. And the military had successfully infiltrated the RN which made collaboration between the reformist military and guerrillas difficult. It's not clear, I might say highly unlikely, that the FPL or the ERP were ready to negotiate in 1980. White
described the FPL's Cayetano Carpio "as a total fanatic" and compared him to Cambodia's "Pol Pot left." We are also talking months after some of them had participated in the July 1979 Sandinista revolution in neighboring Nicaragua. They were looking for their own revolution.
The hard-line and junior members of the military were trying to outmaneuver each other throughout the late 1970s and early 1980. Adolfo Majano and Mena Sandoval seem to have been outmaneuvered at nearly every turn. The senior, hard-line officers had seniority, political awareness, and the support of the right-wing elites. In many ways, they also had US support at this time. Not White's support, but the US government's support (as well as the CIA). However, the US government didn't support them simply because it backed a hard-line approach to El Salvador. The US, for the most part, backed the hard-liners because they were in charge of the military and security forces; they were the military brass. The US feared that if they supported the rebellious junior members, military unity would have collapsed thus opening the door for the revolutionaries.
It appears that the US was not fighting back against the right-wing military, just trying to prevent them from overthrowing the first and second juntas. Had the junior officers successfully outmaneuvered their superiors, the US might have backed them simply because they were in charge. Washington wanted to send support to the military in order to gain leverage over it. White disagreed and said that it would only look as if the US was supporting repression and would do little to gain leverage over those hard-liners. He was correct. White wanted the right-wing to bring the violence under control before providing support.
The US was successful in getting the army to allow the civilian PDC to govern, at least symbolically. The US was also successful in getting the military's support for land reform. Some of the worst elements of the army and security forces were removed during the first junta although it is not clear that the US had much to do with that. However, the US could not get Garcia, Vides Casanova, Carranza and others to clean up their units and to use less repression because that was
not in the military's interest.
Finally, the elites were caught off guard by the October 1979 coup but they regained some control in 1980. Instead of fracturing like the elite in Nicaragua, the Salvadoran elite grew more cohesive. While the rural elite were often the most conservative and hard-line, the political-military organizations did not discriminate. They kidnapped and killed some of the more progressive and urban elites. What sympathy some elites had for reform, died with their targeting by the FMLN.
For White to have been right, the leadership of the popular movements and the guerrillas, more than just the RN, would have had to support a political solution and not wanted to emulate the recent success of the Sandinistas. The Guatemalan guerrillas were on the offensive at this time as well although they were suffering devastating losses in the city.
The junior officers in the military would have had to outmaneuver the hard-line faction and then hold off any counter-reaction from them. The security forces would have to have been isolated and its leadership decapitated (not literally, well maybe). The right-wing elite would have had to negotiate with the communist PDC and the communist political-military organizations. There might have been an opportunity for the US to back Majano against the hard-liners in May 1980 but even Majano was reluctant to push too far out of fear that there would be rebellion within the military's ranks.
As the year went on, right-wing violence continued unabated. The left-wing political-military organizations killed 1,488 civilians between June and the end of the year. Death squads killed Monsignor Oscar Romero, the leadership of the FDR, the US churchwomen, and thousands of other Salvadorans. The political-military organizations continued their attacks against the civilian right and formed the FMLN. Jimmy Carter was also defeated in the November elections in the US. The fifty year protection racket involving the military and the elite would have had to have been broken within a few months.
I just don't see it.
See also
Liberal reform and conservative counter-reaction in El Salvador and
El Salvador's failed October 1979 coup.
