Pubdate: Sun, 24 Mar 2002
Source: Register-Guard, The (OR)
Copyright: 2002 The Register-Guard
Contact:  http://www.registerguard.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/362

BUSH TRIP FINDS CENTRAL AMERICA STILL MIRED

SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador - The United States lavished money and concern on 
El Salvador during its 12-year civil war, and in the decade since the 
fighting ended, Jose Jacobo Jimenez has held fast to the idea that this 
nation's hard-fought democracy must still matter to Washington.

"Today, El Salvador is united with the United States," said Jimenez, a 
security guard. "They should take us into account."

He really wants the United States to take him in. The needs here are deep 
and lingering, he said: too much crime and not enough jobs or housing. Like 
many Salvadorans, Jimenez has found the rewards of peace and political 
loyalty to be elusive. He now hopes the United States will remember the 
past by allowing him to move there.

"Everything is difficult here," Jimenez said. "We'd like to go there 
because you can work better. The hard part is getting there."

Postwar disillusionment

When President Bush arrives here today for a Central American summit 
meeting on free trade, security and migration, he will encounter a region 
transformed yet stubbornly familiar. During the past decade, peace accords 
ended grisly Cold War conflicts between authoritarian governments and 
Marxist guerrillas, and made way for nascent democracies where the former 
combatants trade political barbs, not bullets. Human rights are generally 
respected, armies have been scaled back, and civilians dominate the 
political discourse.

But the disillusionment of people like Jimenez, who thought life after war 
would be safe and prosperous, is also part of the U.S. legacy. Violent 
crime plagues large cities, and despair afflicts countless peasant farmers 
who have suffered drought, official neglect and plummeting prices for their 
crops.

Courts and prosecutors struggle to reform justice systems as people clamor 
for safer streets and an end to the impunity enjoyed by organized 
criminals, corrupt officials and past violators of human rights, including 
some who were once allies of Washington in the fight against communism.

For Bush, whose administration includes several officials who guided U.S. 
policy in Central America in the 1980s, this trip is intended to send a 
clear signal that the region has not drifted into the shadows after Sept. 
11 and remains a valued ally. Central American leaders have been buoyed by 
the visit, hoping for a trade pact to bolster their economies and 
extensions of protected immigrant status for their countrymen in the United 
States who send home much-needed dollars.

However, taking a hard look at Bush's political priorities, Central 
Americans are coming to realize that this isthmus of small countries is 
unlikely to regain the importance it once commanded.

Fruits of U.S. intervention

"The '80s were a strange episode where the United States was concerned 
about Soviet advances in the Third World at the same moment that the region 
experienced social revolution," said William LeoGrande, a professor of 
government at American University. "The U.S. focused intently on the region 
for that. There is a feeling that the U.S. put a lot of money and attention 
to the region during the war and in some sense helped fuel the war. In a 
sense, we owe the region more for reconstruction."

Those who supported the anti-communist policies of the United States see 
today's Central America as a vindication of their efforts. In El Salvador, 
Nicaragua and Guatemala, wars ended, elections were held and free-market 
changes were adopted to attract investment. Political dissent no longer 
brings a swift death sentence.

The region's governments value good relations with the United States and 
have pledged to help fight terrorism and drugs. U.S. troops have returned 
to the region to assist in counternarcotics efforts, even in Nicaragua, 
where reservists have run training exercises and provided aid.

"There is genuine peace," said a senior U.S. official. "The three countries 
that had wars have had one election after another, clean and in peace, and 
the results have been respected. This is a major step forward."

Yet the past continues to haunt the region. The crime wave is fueled by 
easy access to weapons left over from war. Political parties born of the 
Cold War conflict have been unable to move beyond old divisions to win the 
allegiance of an increasingly cynical public.

Oppression in Guatemala

Perhaps nowhere are the challenges as daunting as in Guatemala, where a 
36-year war left some 200,000 dead, mostly at the hands of the government. 
A peace accord full of bold language and optimism ended the shooting, but 
it has hardly brought tranquillity.

Human rights groups have repeatedly been subjected to intimidation, 
break-ins and surveillance. Earlier this month 11 forensic anthropologists, 
who helped unearth evidence used in cases against present and former 
officials accused of genocide, received death threats.

A member of an opposition political party was murdered.

Although President Alfonso Portillo came to office promising to dismantle a 
military intelligence group linked to assassinations and human rights 
abuses, he has not.

A shadowy alliance of former and present military officers is believed to 
be involved in organized crime, including drug trafficking.

In a sign that civilian rule remains tentative, a recent government 
directive requires local police commanders to submit daily reports to 
military officers.

Lawlessness in El Salvador

El Salvador "is a small place and to the extent it was known in the world, 
it was known for its civil war," said a Western diplomat. Now, the diplomat 
added, "it is probably the most successful U.N. peacekeeping effort in 
history."

Yet even here people fear for their safety in the face of lawlessness, as 
the years after the peace accords turned out to be almost as violent as the 
civil war. Kidnappings became common, and not just among the rich, with 
people sometimes held hostage for a few hundred dollars.

While soldiers were dismissed and rebels demobilized, governments did not 
do enough to provide them with land or jobs, said Laura Chinchilla, the 
former minister of security for Costa Rica. A culture of violence that 
helped many survive in war fostered the growth of organized criminal gangs. 
The situation has been complicated by a U.S. policy of deporting criminals, 
including many street gang members.

Security has become crucial for democracy, Chinchilla said. "If we do not 
see a successful response to that," she said, "there is a temptation on the 
part of citizens and government to resort to authoritarian measures."

U.S. officials, criticized for neglecting the region in recent years, have 
begun to warn governments that they should not use the fight against 
terrorism as a pretext to roll back democratic reforms.

Bush also has emphasized that corruption will not be tolerated in the name 
of national security. Last week, to back that up, the State Department 
revoked the visa of a retired Guatemalan general and adviser to President 
Alfonso Portillo who is suspected of drug trafficking.
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