Nobody here but us roadbuilders: the Pentagon keeps busy in El Salvador

Progressive, The, Oct, 1994 by Steve Watrous

The question is how an army maintains its budget, its image, and maybe its power, when the enemy is gone.

The U.S. Defense Department's answer is joint military exercises described as "Humanitarian and civic action Missions," where the two armies make like Boy Scouts and build schools, wells, latrines, and other apparently good works. They call it "nation building." In Latin America, the title of the program is "Fuertes Caminos," or Strong Roads, although they don't do roads anymore.

But El Salvador just came off a twelve-year civil war and the Faribundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN) guerrillas signed the peace accords only because a key point was getting the military out of civil society. Critics in the United States and El Salvador, both within the establishment and among progressive forces, believe these feel-good projects violate the peace agreement and undermine El Salvador's fragile road to democracy. Some call the exercises illegal and complain that they improperly influenced El Salvador's spring elections.

"The peace accords defined a very narrow role for the Salvadoran military: defend the country's borders," says Geoff Thale, director of the National Agenda for Peace in El Salvador. "The peace accords redefined their role: to stay out of politics, to stay out of internal affairs, and to be under civilian control. This is a hard role for the Salvadoran military to accept. What the military needs to learn is that it has to take direction from civilians. Any other encouragement by the United States harms this process."

Sending U.S. troops to build schools and roads sounds innocuous to people in the United States, but in countries afflicted by violent conflict and human-rights abuses, these military-led projects have a negative impact. Responding to a new Fuertes Caminos exercise in war-torn Guatemala, Nobel Peace Prize winner Rigoberta Menchu asked President Clinton to keep the soldiers home: "While they say the troops are in Guatemala for social projects, like road construction, their presence is perceived as support for the repressive policies of the Guatemalan army."

The U.S. troops, driving trucks so big that some roads were damaged, rumbled into eighteen Salvadoran communities starting in August 1993. The Pentagon says the exercises are rebuilding a country destroyed by war. The two provinces selected had seen some combat, but not in the project areas. The soldiers stopped in San Luis Talpa, not far from the main airport, to build a three-classroom addition to the small town's school and drill two wells in outlying areas.

Fredi Arnoldo Castillo is the subdirector of this public grade school. Local people had some concern at first about the arrival of the soldiers, he said, but then they warmed up to the idea of troops constructing things for nonmilitary purposes. It took only one month to erect the building.

Castillo likes the new structure--painted bright blue and white, opening onto a plaza, and decorated with a large metal plaque honoring the two militaries--except for one thing. The school administration had wanted to use the new classrooms for kindergarten and first grade. Only one classroom was being used in March 1994, however, because the school doesn't have the money to hire enough teachers. Funds for public education are scarce in a country where the average rural person attends school for only three years.

Castillo also mentioned proudly that his school had been a polling place in the March 20 election. What he didn't mention was who won. ARENA, the party of the death squads, swept the municipal elections in San Luis Talpa and every other community where U.S. troops had shown the flag. ARENA won just under half the votes for president and National Assembly in March, but as the strongest party it finished first in 207 of the 262 municipalities and will completely control these local councils under the winner-take-all system.

"The Fuertes Caminos projects were mostly in communities organized by ARENA," said a development specialist who works in the area and must remain anonymous. "It became clear to people that this was one more patronage goodie provided by the party in power in return for support. Most bridges and other public works are decided on this basis in E1 Salvador.

"People liked getting the goodies, but not in this way," she added. "They said that if the United States really wanted to help, it would send the money and maybe equipment or trainers, and let the people here desperate for work do the construction themselves. They were especially irritated by the uniforms."

The Fuertes Caminos exercise was not a major factor in the elections but neither was it an example of U.S. neutrality or leveling the proverbial playing field. Since these humanitarian projects are, at least officially, at the invitation of the host country, other communities with hopes for a new school or well had an incentive to vote for ARENA. The soldiers arrived as the election campaign was gearing up and the FMLN leaders made clear that, if they won, the U.S. troops would not be invited back. But the FMLN finished second and the U.S. troops returned from May through August 1994.