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Mysterious Influx of Soviet & Chinese Arms for Salvador Rebels

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Title: A Mysterious Influx of Soviet and Chinese Arms for Salvador Rebels
Source: The Sacramento Bee
Date: June 4, 1989

Morazan, El Salvador — Seventeen-year-old Odilia playfully pushed her tongue through her teeth as she recalled how she shot seven Salvadoran army soldiers in an ambush a few days before.

Odilia’s under five feet tall, and her high-powered, Soviet-made Dragunov rifle is almost as big as she is. No matter. The bashful Salvadoran teenager is a highly trained sharpshooter for the leftist Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN).

Over the past several months, eastern-bloc and Chinese-made weapons have been distributed to FMLN guerrilla forces nationwide. The rebels say they bought the majority of the new arms, most of which are AK-47 assault rifles, from the U.S.-backed Contras in Nicaragua, who are now in decline. Officials at the U.S. Embassy in San Salvador say the arms and ammunition have been supplied by the leftist governments of Nicaragua and Cuba, a charge those countries deny.

Regardless of the weapons’ origins, they have bolstered rebel morale in the nine-year civil war. I have just spent two weeks travelling with FMLN guerrillas in northern Morazán province. In dozens of interviews, rebel combatants were confident they could defeat the government led by President Alfredo Cristiani of the ultra-conservative Nationalist Republican Alliance (ARENA) party. Cristiani began his five-year term on Thursday.

Cristiani’s victory in elections last March was widely seen as a backlash against Christian Democrat President Jose Napoleon Duarte. During their campaign, ARENA party leaders blamed the Christian Democrats for failing to defeat the rebels. But most Western diplomats and military analysts agree that the FMLN guerrillas represent the most difficult challenge the Cristiani government will face.

It appears that Cristiani will take a tough line with the rebels. Prior to his inauguration, he announced the appointment of General Rafael Larios and two other hard-line army officers as minister and vice-ministers of defense. U.S. officials had lobbied for the more moderate choice of Chief of Staff Rene Emilio Ponce for the posts.

U.S. officials still defend Cristiani. But most non-American Western diplomats expect human rights abuses to increase as the government escalates the war effort against the FMLN.

“We are ready to talk to them,” said rebel sharpshooter Odilia. “But if they don’t want to talk, we’ll hit them hard.”

On Monday, the FMLN offered to implement a cease-fire and begin negotiations with the new government. But as part of the plan, the rebels demanded that the government prosecute those implicated in the 1980 murder of Archbishop Oscar Romero, including cashiered army major and leading ARENA deputy Roberto D’Aubuisson.

ARENA leaders rejected the rebel offer. “They are asking for something that is not negotiable, nor subject to discussion,” said Ricardo Alvarenga, president of the ARENA-controlled Legislative Assembly.

Rebel leaders promised to “back up” their offer of negotiations with military force. “Both roads are integrated into our strategy,” said Gustavo, a nom de guerre for a senior FMLN official in Morazán. “If the [peace] proposal is not accepted, the people will defend the situation in another way.

There is still the possibility of insurrection,” he added, “and an increase in the war.”

The introduction of Soviet and Chinese arms has already produced a tactical change in the conflict. Both AK-47 and Dragunov rifles use a heavier bullet and have a greater range than American-made M-16 rifles traditionally used by both the Salvadoran army and the FMLN. On Election Day, March 19, for instance, rebel forces used their new weapons in attacks nationwide. According to Salvadoran military sources, following a day of combat many of the helicopters in the government’s fleet returned damaged from rebel rounds.

During a guerrilla ambush last week against about 40 army soldiers between the villages of San Isidro and San Simon in northern Morazán, I watched as an army helicopter arrived to provide air support. But to avoid being hit by rebel fire, the pilot flew extremely high, neutralizing his own ability to fire effectively at the attacking rebel force.

According to Lucio, a veteran rebel fighter in charge of arms distribution in Morazán, 30 percent of the FMLN’s regular forces and five to 10 percent of its special assault forces are equipped with AK-47 rifles. With an estimated 6,000 to 8,000 full-time FMLN fighters, which means upwards of 1,000 AK-47 rifles have entered the country from foreign sources over the past year.

The regular force in rebel rearguard areas such as northern Morazán, Lucio said, benefit more from the AKs’ greater range. The Salvadoran army does not use AKs.

On Wednesday, Salvadoran authorities showed reporters more than 300 Soviet- and Chinese-made weapons captured from FMLN forces. It is the largest arms cache recovered by the government in the war. Weapons were of diverse origin, including AK-47s with Soviet, Chinese, and Yugoslavian markings. But authorities offered no evidence as to how the arms entered the country.

According to FMLN official Gustavo, most of the weapons were bought from the Nicaraguan Contras. But he conceded that some of the weapons were obtained from “other channels.” Asked to elaborate on those channels, the guerrilla leader refused, saying they were secrets of war.

U.S. officials, on the other hand, deny that rebels bought the AKs from the Contras. In a seven-page document which journalists were allowed to read but not copy, embassy officials claimed that Cuba and Nicaragua are the “bulk suppliers” of the new arms.

According to the embassy document, which is labeled “For Official Use Only,” Salvadoran authorities have captured documents indicating arms and ammunition shipments. The embassy document also states that weapons shipments by boat along El Salvador’s Pacific coast have been detected. But when asked to produce further evidence, a U.S. official said he could not because the information was classified.

In a telephone interview, Dr. Wayne Smith of the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies doubted the embassy’s claim. “My yardstick, based on past experience, is to accept nothing that the embassy says, nothing the U.S. government says on this subject without seeing the hard evidence and the data to back it.” An ex-career diplomat and the former head of the U.S. Interests Section in Cuba, Smith added, “They’ve said this so many times that their credibility is gone.”

Despite the presence of the AK-47s, FMLN rebels maintained that they capture or make most of their weapons inside the country. At a secret FMLN bomb factory, about 20 rebels worked at making explosives from land mines to homemade anti-personnel rockets.

Sand Diggers and the Strongman

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Vista Hermosa, El Salvador — A powerful torrent during the high rains, Rio Las Canas is a trickle of muddy water from October to May. It begins ten kilometers from the city center, carving its way north past volcanic slopes, eventually feeding into the large, man-made reservoir that separates government-held terrain from contested zones. But there is no fighting between government and guerrilla forces where the river begins-only the taking of sand from its shores.

Homes made of dried mud and bamboo shafts dot Las Canas’s western bank. Inside the riverbed, barefoot workers with rolled-up pants load sand into waiting trucks. Farther downstream the riverbed is demarcated by a barbed-wire fence. Beyond the fence bulldozers load sand into trucks watched by heavily armed men.

Used primarily to make concrete, sand in El Salvador sold on site for $25 a truckload. In an export-oriented economy dominated by more valuable cash crops, even the country’s prolific Marxists have failed to designate such a cheap commodity as a vehicle of class struggle. But, for the riverbank community of Vista Hermosa, sand, not coffee, is king.

Vista Hermosa is located far from the large agricultural plantations in the western region of the country that offer seasonal labor. With a combined under- and unemployment rate in El Salvador of well over 50 percent, few if any of the community’s residents have access to better paying jobs in the capital city of San Salvador. Like most of El Salvador’s marginal population, they also receive no external assistance. A hodgepodge of peasants from various parts of the country, the people living along the river fall neither into official categories of earthquake victims nor war refugees that would make them eligible for U.S. targeted aid.

Most of the river dwellers front Vista Hermosa live in constant fear of failing beyond the edge of survival. Prices of food staples have more than quadrupled in the past three years. A typical “food basket” for a family consists primarily of corn tortillas with salt, and perhaps an occasional plate of higher priced rice and beans.

But unlike the less fortunate who pick their meals from refuse piles in San Salvador’s central market, the 350-odd people from Vista Hermosa and two other nearby communities have had regular work. Breadwinners earn their living standing knee-deep in mud, shoveling sand into twenty-foot trucks for $3 a load. Depending upon demand, a strong young man might make up to $15 on a good summer day. But lesser-abled bodies usually earn about $3, provided that rain doesn’t wash the sand downstream.

Even with cheap labor abundant, entrepreneur Jose Rene Mendoza finds it more advantageous to employ modern machinery to excavate the river. He could further maximize profits if he could monopolize the sale of sand and charge a higher price for every load. But first he would have to eliminate the competition; aII digging by independents would have to stop. Mendoza plans to make himself master of Rio Las Canas.

Before the rainy season came, Mendoza expropriated an extension of the riverbed and brought in bulldozers to replace the work of men. Mendoza says he owns the area encircled by the barbed-wire fence, and adds that the rest of the riverbed is the property of other landowners like himself. Pointing to the workers loading sand by spade he says, “Those people have no property titles, they are trespassers on private land.”

The people from Vista Hermosa claim that the river is in the public domain. They avoid the part watched over by Mendoza’s armed guards. Dependent on their daily earnings, workers (about a third of whom are women and preadolescent children) walk the trail every morning to the water’s edge. The private truckers, who don’t seem to mind whose land they are on, buy from both the independents and Mendoza. The latter’s conflict is not with those who take from the river, but only those who dig.

An association of agricultural workers is trying to organize the sand diggers and their community. A number of workers from Vista Hermosa, including Jose Arnoldo Cerritos and Arturo Navarro Garcia, decided to join. But the peasant association belongs to a larger trade union coalition, which Salvadoran and U.S. government officials say is a front group for the country’s leftist guerrillas.

The issue appears to be about property rights and the question of public versus private domain. In El Salvador, such matters are rarely if ever settled before a formal court. Rather, from the perspective of the authorities, the dispute here is between a respected landowner and businessman and three base-wage sand diggers who are members of a known subversive organization.

Leaving aside strictly legal questions, I will let the reader decide whether this case is a political or civil dispute. I will also leave it to the reader to decide if the way in which it was (partially) resolved should be characterized as a political or a common crime. But let me forewarn, your decision is moot. Either way, the story that follows is endemic in a society and social structure that seven years and $3.3 billion in U.S. aid failed to change.

Nineteen-year-old Maria Luisa Leiva was in her mud-walled home with her husband, uncle, and two children the evening of April 14, 1988. Three armed men in olive green uniforms came to the door and told her to put out the light. They asked for her husband by name and said, “Tell Arnoldo Cerritos to come out.” The men bound his wrists and then took both Arnoldo and the uncle away. Maria Luisa was told that she would be taken too if she tried to follow. One of the uniformed men remained five minutes to make sure she stayed behind.

Arturo Navarro and his eighteen-year-old helper were intercepted by armed men near the same house about fifteen minutes later. They were ordered to lie face down and were asked their names. One of the uniformed men left for a few minutes and then returned. He said, “Are you Arturo Navarro? Then you’re coming with us.” The men led Arturo away in the direction of the river. The younger captive was searched and set free.

The next day both Maria Luisa and Arturo’s wife went to the air force base at Ilopango to inquire about their husbands and the uncle. The communities along the river are patrolled regularly by the air force, who were present in Vista Hermosa under daylight on April 14. The air force patrols are elite U.S.-trained paratroopers, distinguished from the other military services by their maroonish red berets. The uniformed men who came the night before were hatless, although one was carrying a “red beret” in the same hand as his black-barreled gun.

An air force sergeant spoke to the wives, and then made a phone call asking for the three disappeared men by name. He told the women to wait a moment, as he thought that the men were, in custody on the base. Three young men appeared, heavily armed and in civilian clothes. They spoke to the sergeant, and then told the women that the people they were looking for were not there.

The base at llopango is just a few kilometers from the scene of the abduction. But the men’s bodies were found two days later in a ravine near the airport some thirty kilometers away. When asked about the murders two weeks later, Mendoza said, “We didn’t kill them.” No doubt a truthful retort. The murders had been denounced as the work of the armed forces based at Ilopango by Auxiliary Archbishop Rosa Chavez in his Sunday homily a few days before.

The killings are not particularly surprising for El Salvador. Nor, despite at least two adult eyewitnesses to the abduction, that they will go uninvestigated, unpunished, and officially unsolved. But what is unusual is that the attempt to intimidate the community didn’t work. At the time of this writing, twenty to thirty sand diggers can still be seen within eyesight of the fenced-off property claimed by Mendoza on any given day; more than a hundred others can be found further on — either up- or down-stream. Unable to support themselves and their families any other way, the motley assembly of workers (who include one or two pregnant women) will continue to dig as long as they need to or can.

That survival could be the flip side of subversion is something that both the paratroopers and Jose Rene Mendoza fail to grasp. Jose Santana, for instance, begs a journalist to help him, as he has heard rumors that he will be next. His voice shrill and cracking, the terrified man stutters as he explains that he is not so much worried about himself but for his family and how they would support themselves if he should disappear. Jose Santana is the cousin of one of the victims and knew the other two. But despite the danger, a month after the murders he is still digging as before.

The nine-year-old son of Arturo says he doesn’t understand why his father was killed. But now that he is the breadwinner, Oscar carries his father’s shovel to the river every morning to dig. But the boy earns only about a dollar working a half day, as his mother, who also digs, wants him to stay in school.

Oscar is too young to be a member of the peasant association to which his father belonged. But there is no doubt that in the eyes of Jose Rene Mendoza, the son following his father to the river is an outlaw. In a country where property and power remain the rule of law, a beleaguered landlord can phone the armed forces’ twenty-four-hour hotline to report a subversive act. There is no number to call, however, if armed men in olive green uniforms take a relative away in the night.

Waiting for Tet: Salvadoran Rebels Have a Plan for Sunday’s Elections

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SAN SALVADOR – THE BRIGHT LIGHTS of San Salvador cut the cool night air. Large spotlights beamed from military bases along the perimeter. Closer to the center, more lights glowed atop the heavily fortified walls of the U.S. embassy.

Dressed in black and armed with an M-16, one of my guerilla guides stopped along the rugged mountain trail. From the eastern slope of the San Salvador volcano, I could see the entire city below.

The overlook is less than two miles from the capital. “We are in the heart of the enemy,” says Elsa, the nom de guerre of a guerilla comandante.

In the past year, the rebel Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN) has moved the front line of the war to El Salvador’s central region. Along with a cameraman for West 57th of CBS News, I spent five days with the revels on the volcano, which towers several thousand feet about San Salvador.

The trip came amid a watershed in Salvador’s nine-year civil war. The FMLN made an unprecedented offer to participate in the upcoming presidential elections on the condition that they be delayed at least four months. But the U.S.-backed Salvadoran government plans to go ahead with March 19 elections as scheduled. In response, the guerillas have promised to increase attacks. “We will concentrate,” said Elsa, “on the capital city.”

The FMLN has been fighting since 1980. Many rebels and their civilian supporters say that victory is just around the corner, yet an FMLN takeover now seems doubtful. Nonetheless, a new rebel drive is expected. According to some, it may have the same relative impact on El Salvador’s civil war as the Tet offensive had in Vietnam 21 years ago.

A report on El Salvador by four U.S. Army lieutenant colonels a year ago described U.S. intervention here as “this country’s most significant sustained military enterprise since Vietnam.” And despite nine years and more than $3.3 billion in U.S. aid, the Salvadoran government, they say, has won neither popular support nor the war.

For at least 14 months, the rebels have held the military initiative. The numbers for the U.S.-backed counterinsurgency don’t look good. According to Salvadoran Army colonel Juan Orlando Zepeda, FMLN assaults have forced the government to deploy 85 per cent of its troops in defensive positions. Since 1987, El Salvador has been more dependent on U.S. aid than any country since the former Republic of South Vietnam.

U.S. military advisers are frustrated. “This isn’t like World War II,” said one. “There are no population centers to control and industrial centers to attack.” Looking out over the country’s rugged terrain, he said: “Out here, how to you eliminate the enemy’s ability to fight?”

U.S. advisers asked that the same question in Vietnam; FMLN rebels look to that insurgency as a model.

SITTING WITH HER legs crossed, a camouflage hat on her head, and an Ak-47 on her lap, Comandante Elsa explained the difference between the army and the FMLN. “One can’t underestimate the enemy’s potential. They know how to defend themselves,” she says. But “the interests that drive the army are not the just interests of the people.”

Behind her, a young woman transcribed numbered radio codes, while another rebel tended the campfire. The guerillas said it was the same type used by the Vietcong; it burns in a dugout hold to avoid detection.

“Our army,” says Elsa, “did not grow based upon forced recruitment. We are rooted within the population.”

Soft-spoken, pleasant, and always smiling, Elsa doesn’t fit the image of a hardened guerilla leader. But she sits on the FMLN’s Joint Command for the “Central Front,” which includes both San Salvador and Guazapa volcanoes as well as the capital city. “If we say that Guazapa is the arrow in the heart of the enemy,” she said, “on [San Salvador] volcano we are the point of the arrow.”

Unlike in more secured areas under FMLN control, here the location of the army is always in some doubt. An unexpected encounter with a government patrol is a rare but real possibility, For us, getting past army checkpoints near the volcano’s base was the most dangerous exercise, but a clandestine network of civilians facilitated in our entry. Further on, two guerillas walking “point” provided cover as our patrol marched by moonlight through fields of recently harvested coffee.

The close proximity of the volcano to both the city and the army also makes conditions difficult. Base camps, for example, must move every few days. And life as a compa – a companero, or FMLN combatant – is essentially one of the perpetual camping out. A bed consists of two pieces of heavy plastic – one for above and one for below the body. Meals are the same tin cup of rice and beans every day. And to avoid detection, conversation must be kept to a near whisper.

Nonetheless, morale is exceptionally high. “Vergon!” – Salvadoran slang for the greatest – is the way most compass answer ‘How’s it going?” Among scores of combatants I’ve interviewed in the last several months, all but one were convinced or an eventual rebel victory. If morale is an indication, the odds are heavily weighed against the army.

And morale doesn’t fall from the sky. It is the rebels who define the terms of the conflict. They initiate most engagements, and government casualties are disproportionately high. In contrast to the guerillas, army soldiers usually say “A saber, va” – Who knows? – when asked which side is winning the war.

Literally dragged from movie theaters, bus stops, and high schools into military service, most army soldiers seem more interested in getting a visa to the United States than fighting guerillas. According to FMLN rebels, soldiers are notorious for firing their weapons in the air to give away their location – and thereby avoid a confrontation.

But according to Comandante Elsa, the key to the rebel’s success on San Salvador volcano is the civilian population.

IT IS DIFFICULT to determine popular support in any guerilla war. Most upper- and middle-class Salvadorans reject the rebels and their cause. But the FMLN is predominantly a rural-based insurgency.

“The masses are the ones who provide supplies,” said Elsa. “They also, up to a certain point, go out on scouting explorations to inform us about the location of the enemy.”
We met with a group of peasants working in a field. A rebel sent two men out to keep watch for the army; they trimmed coffee trees as a cover. Other peasants, mostly women, dropped about two handfuls of fresh tortillas each in a straw basket, which we later carried back to camp.

“To struggle you don’t need a weapon,” said Aristides, the guerilla leading our patrol. “Just to make tortillas is enough.”

Most of the people living on the volcano pick coffee. El Salvador’s leading export, coffee earns more than 60 per cent of the country’s foreign exchange. These pickers and others like them constitute the primary work force of the country.

Aristides emphasized class divisions. “Those who work a lot,” he told them, “earn a little. But those who hardly work have millions of colones [worth five to the dollar].”

El Salvador’s U.S.-backed land reform affected about 18 per cent of the country’s peasants. Most of them are organized in cooperatives, many of which remain strapped for access to credit, equipment, and seed. A land-to-the-tiller program had less success. Out of a potential 117,000 beneficiaries, only 18,000 received definitive land titles. And eight years after it was conceived, the breakup of the large coffee farms – on paper, the meat of the reform – is still blocked by landowners.

The rebels’ simple Marxist message made sense to the pickers. Landless and illiterate, they don’t understand the material dialectics, but they do know the different between rich and poor. For them, the guerillas have not only brought a sense of hope for their future, but an immediate material gain in their lives.

“Thanks to them, we make more now,” said one weather-beaten man. Before, the pickers received the equivalent of 65 cents for picking 25 pounds of beans; now they receive about $1.10.

“We sent letters to the owners of these farms asking them to raise the workers’ salaries,” said Aristides. And now, he said, “the majority of the owners on this volcano are paying what we ask.”
“And what happens to the growers who don’t want to pay more?” I said.

“Well… there are laws, laws of war that have their limits. If a grower doesn’t pay what we say, then we sabotage his property,” he said. “We’ll burn his farm or destroy his property in San Salvador.”

A shy wrinkled old woman sat on the ground eating a tortilla. I asked her what she thought of the rebels’ coercive tactics.

“Está bien.” – It’s good, she said.

“Why?”

“Because we eat more,” she said laughing, crumbs falling from her mouth. “Because we eat more.”

The army, on the other hang, protects the growers. Washington pundits may look to Sunday’s presidential elections as proof of democracy, but the drama being played out around San Salvador and Guazapa volcanoes, Usulutan, San Miguel, Santa Ana, and the other agro-export regions remains a class-based war.

“I became aware that they were paying more,” said army colonel Zepeda. The government’s counterpart to Comandante Elsa, Zepeda is responsible for the same territory as the Central Front.

Zepeda said that one Guazapa the rebels also demand a war tax from the growers. He met with growers from both volcanoes. Nobody, he told them, has to pay a tax or give workers more than the government’s set minimum wage. Thus, the minimum wage becomes a maximum wage; anyone demanding more – guerilla or peasant – is a subversive.

Zepeda also denies that the rebels have a legitimate social base. They only survive because of outside assistance, he says. “If Nicaragua were to stop providing aid to this Marxist movement, we could finish the conflict in a short time.”

“Yes, we receive some support,” said Noe, another FMLN comandante within the Central Front, when asked about foreign backing. “It comes from other countries in the world that support our cause.” But they get most out of their material, he added, from inside the country.

MASKING TAPE, coiled wire, flashlight batteries, PVC pipe, fuses, plastic bags, and containers with a variety of powdered chemicals were laid out on a plastic tarp.

“At first we weren’t sure about it,” said a scraggly looking guerilla, as he presided over his collection of homemade bombs. “But later…” He broke into a smile.

Homemade land minds are the rebels’ most common and effective weapon; they cause at least 60 per cent of army casualties. The rebels said they started experimenting with them to repel the army’s counterinsurgency sweep, “Operation Phoenix,” on Guazapa volcano.

A contact bomb, the mine is housed in the closed end of a three-inch piece of plastic PVC water pipe. It can be filled with almost any type of explosive or homemade gunpowder. The most essential ingredient is potassium nitrate, or saltpeter – available, said a rebel, from the local pharmacy.

PVC is used because it doesn’t conduct electricity, but other containers, even shampoo bottles, he says, will work as well. Two AA batteries are places inside the container and connected to an electrical detonator. Stepping on the buried mine from above completes the circuit.

Of all the materials required, only the detonator must be secured from the outside. For larger bombs, the rebels sometimes use TNT, which also must come from outside. But most often they use a highly explosive homemade mixture of ammonia and aluminum powder. This mixture is also used for rampas – a projectile that looks like a small soccer ball wrapped in masking tape. The rampa is hurled by an exploding charge set beneath a crude-looking wooden catapult.

The rebels have also converted car bombs into a more powerful catapult-like device. These have been effective against military bases throughout the capital city. But the two-charge bombs often misfire. In the latest attacks, they have killed more civilians than soldiers. The FMLN announced it was suspending their use late last month.

On the volcano, the rebels plant land mines around their perimeter and remove them whenever they change their camp. I learned the location of both the mines and the latrine – and made sure not confuse the two.

Later that day, I watched music videos with a guerilla on his handheld Sony Watchman. The beat was interrupted by the sound of machine guns. A firefight had broken out between the army and another rebel unit less than one mile away.

“What was that?” I asked, hearing an explosion.

“A mine.” Apparently an army soldier had discovered the perimeter of the other rebel camp.

A new U2 video came on, with images of Times Square and Richard Nixon. By the time the screen had changed to Madonna, the battle was just about over.

HELLO, COMMANDER TWO ZERO
– GO AHEAD, OVER.
– LISTEN IN – THE SHIT IS HITTING THE FAN PRETTY BAD OUT HERE … I’M … I’M BAILING OUT OF HERE, I’M GETTING OUT OF HERE…I’M BREAKING THROUGH.

On February 21, FMLN guerillas attacked a Salvadoran army base in Zacatecoluca, 27 miles southeast of the capital. U.S. Embassy spokesman Barry Jacobs confirmed that it was a U.S. Special Forces adviser was present at the base. During the attack, the adviser – Commander Two Zero – reported his situation by radio to the U.S. Military Group command – Retelo – in San Salvador. A tape recording of that transmission indicates that the adviser – one of the 55 officially posted in the country – felt his life to be in immediate danger.

– GOT TO GET OUT OF HERE. THE SHIT IS HITTING THE FAN, OVER? … I’M TELLING YOU … I DON’T WANT NOBODY TO CALL ON ME TONIGHT … JUST COME OUT FOR ME TOMORROW, OVER.

The transmission took place from 4:00 to 4:30 a.m. The adviser originally referred to the rebel action as an exploratory “probe.”

– COMMANDER TWO ZERO, THIS IS ROTELO. GO AHEAD, OVER.
– AS YOU KNOW, WE ARE BEING PROBED, WE ARE BEING PROBED, WE ARE ALSO RECEIVING RAMPAS, OVER.
– … ALL WE GOT IS …THEY’RE …THE 22 DEFENSIVE POSITIONS … AT THIS TIME IT IS JUST PROBING FIRE … THEY FIRED A COUPLE OF R. P. SEVENS [rocket propelled grenades], BUT THAT’S ABOUT IT, OVER.
– YOU ARE…YOU’VE GOT APPROXIMATELY THE SIZE OF THE FORCE DOING THE PROBING? OVER.
– SAY AGAIN…UH… REAL QUICK… UH…
– HOW MANY PEOPLE YOU THINK ARE DOING THE PROBE? OVER.
– RIGHT NOW I ESTIMATE FOUR TO FIVE. THEY MIGHT BE THE … THEY MAY BE THE … UH… FRONT ELEMENT OF A BIGGER UNIT WITH RAMPAS, BUT I’M NOT SURE RIGHT NOW…THEY’RE COMING AGAIN. WE ARE GETTING RAMPAS, OVER.
– HELLOW, THIS IS COMMANDO TWO ZERO.
– COMMANDO TWO ZERO, RETELO, GO AHEAD, OVER.
– YEAH, THE PROBE HAS TURNED INTO A… AN ATTACK FROM THE NORTHEAST. WE GOT, AH… THREE WOUNDED ALREADY, WE HAVE ONE BLINDADO [armor-plated assault vehicle] IN AMBUSH… AND WE GOT ONE KID – HE’S IN PRETTY BAD SHAPE. HE’S PROBABLY GOING TO GO AWAY. AND WE HAVE TWO OTHER WOUNDED, OVER.

Later that day, a Salvadoran military officer at the scene said that four soldiers were killed and another 13 were wounded. A Salvadoran army major was among the dead. It appears that the U.S. adviser suffered no injury.

– THIS IS COMMANDER TWO ZERO, OVER.
– ROGER, AH… CAN YOU AH… GIVE US THE DIRECTION WHICH YOU THINK THAT THEY…AH…ARE RETREATING TO, OVER?
– THERE IS A…THERE IS A… A CREEK, A CREEK AND THAT’S THE WAY…I DON’T KNOW EXACTLY WHICH WAY THEY ARE GOING…BUT THEY ARE PROBABLY GOING NORTH. THERE IS PROBABLY A GROUP GOING NORTH AND ONE GROUP GOING SOUTH. THERE IS ALSO AN ELEMENT SOUTHWEST FROM HERE THAT AMBUSED A VEHICLE. WE GOT THOSE PEOPLE HERE. WE ALSO GOT PEOPLE THAT THE LEFT THE PERIMETER. SO…AND WE GOT AMBUSGED COORDINATD TO GET THEM ON THE WITHDRAWAL, OVER.
– ROGER, STAND BY.
– COMMANDER TWO ZERO. WE ALSO PREPARED A UNIT TO…AH…TO CHACE…PUT A CHASE ON THEM AS SOON AS DAYBREAK, OVER.
– RETELO. ROGER, UNDERSTAND

U.S. officials admit to only three occasions of U.S. military personnel engaging in combat in El Salvador – once in 1987 and twice last year. But U.S. advisers are widely believed to have found themselves in conflict situations more frequently than is reported. Advisers are posted at even minor military bases throughout the country. Said a Western diplomat after the Zacatecoluca attack, “I would presume that every time a military base is attacked, a U.S. soldier comes under attack.”

Nine years after the American advisers were first deployed here, Vice-President Dan Quayle said that the congressionally imposed 55-man ceiling should be lifted. Including the U.S. Embassy’s 13-man Military Group command and the Special Forces advisers rotated into the country on 90-day temporary duty assignment, there is already an average of 150 U.S. military personnel in El Salvador at any given time. Many of these advisers are experienced in counterinsurgency. One Special Forces adviser with three years here, for instance, did four years of duty leading ARVN reconnaissance patrols in Vietnam.

CHARRING KERNELS over a hot stone slab, a woman looks up and says hello. She uses roast corn, she explained, to make a cheap substitute for coffee.

A displaced peasant, she lives in one of the many poor barrios on the fringe of the city. The woman said she remembered me from my last visit two months ago.

I asked her if she thought the rebels would win. “I don’t know,” she said. “I hope so. What do you think?”

U.S. adviser comes under fire in El Salvador

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Original article can be found here.

SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador – A U.S. military advisor at a Salvadoran army base came under fire yesterday in an early morning rebel attack that killed three Salvadoran soldiers, but he apparently managed to escape unharmed.

It is at least the fourth reported attack involving U.S. advisers since they were deployed in El Salvador in 1980.

U.S. Embassy spokesman Barry Jacobs confirmed that a U.S. operations, planning and training officers was present at the army engineering base in Zacatecoluca, 35 miles southeast of the capital. But Jacobs denied that the adviser came under fire or was in any immediate danger.

A tape-recording of the advisor’s radio report to military superiors in San Salvador paints a different picture, however. The report indicates that the advisor considered himself to be in immediate danger. A tape of the transmission was obtained by a correspondent for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.

The unidentified adviser, using the code name Commando Two Zero, contacted a U.S. Special Forces officer identified at Rotelo at headquarters in San Salvador about 4:30 a.m.

“Hello, Commando Two Zero” reporting.

“Go ahead, over.”

“Listen in. The —- hitting the fan pretty bad out here. I’m getting out of here…I’m… I’m bailing out of here. I’m getting out of here…I’m breaking through. So if I can make… Don’t worry about it. I’ll get out of here… and, ah… I’ll rendezvous with whoever comes out tomorrow, over.”

“Roger, I understand… S.D.O. (staff duty officer) is on the way. Stand by.”

The U.S. adviser said the rebels were using automatic weapons, rampas, or homemade catapult bombs, and rocket-propelled grenade launchers.

The adviser initially referred to the rebel action as an exploratory “probe” but said it later turned into an attack.

“Commando Two Zero, Rotelo. Go ahead, over.”

“Yeah, the probe has turned into a… an attack from the northeast. We got, ah… three wounded already. We have one blindado (armor-plated vehicle) in ambush… and we got one kid-–he’s in pretty bad shape… he’s probably going to go away. And we got two wounded, over.”

“This is Rotelo. Roger, I understand, anything else? Over.”

“Commando Two Zero out.”

The guerillas and soldiers battled for three hours, according to officials there, including base commander Col. Benjamin Canjura.

Canjura said three soldiers were killed, including a major. Two soldiers died when a rocket-propelled grenade hit the truck in which they were traveling; 13 others were wounded in the fighting, Canjura said.

There is no indication that the U.S. adviser sustained injury.

The guerillas also attacked an important army base in the capital, killing two civilians who lived nearby, officials said.

The early morning attack on the 4,000-member 1st Brigade’s headquarters was the fifth on a major military installation in San Salvador since November. With jurisdiction over the capital and its environs, the brigade headquarters is considered the country’s most important military installation.

Col. Orlando Zepeda, commander of the 1st Army Brigade, said there were not casualties inside the downtown base and that damage was negligible, but he refused to allow journalists inside.

The rebels used two pickups fitted with catapults. The detonation of one explosive charge launches the bombs and simultaneously blows up the vehicle.

The explosion of one of the vehicles killed Pedro Martinez, about 70 years old, and his wife, Maria Teresa, about 65, who lived in a house near the headquarters.

A Western official said he knew of only three occasions when U.S. advisers have engaged in combat in El Salvador.

In March 1987, Army Sgt. Gregory Fronius was killed during the rebel assaults against the Army’s 4th Bridgade at El Paraiso.

U.S. advisers also came under attack during rebel assaults against Salvadoran military bases at Usulután in February 1988 and again at El Paraiso in September.

A U.S. official said that any time U.S. military personnel engage in combat it must be reported to Congress. After the latest attack at El Paraiso, the Defense Department waited two weeks before announcing that U.S. military personnel had come under fire.

U.S. military advisors are widely believed to have found themselves in combat situations more frequently than has been reported.

One Western diplomat said, “I would presume that every time a military base is attacked, a U.S. adviser come under attack.”

In recent weeks, rebel attacks have become more frequent. Yesterday, the rebels attacked two other military installations at the same time they assaulted the Zacatecoluca based and on the base of the 1st Brigade in San Salvador, they said.

The Rebels’ Dirty Hands

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Certain guerrilla tactics are reprehensible. In the last year, the rebels have taken to placing car bombs in front of movie theaters and restaurants in the wealthier sections of San Salvador. In October, a group identifying itself as Manuel Jose Arce Commandos detonated two such car bombs outside a shopping center and a fast-food restaurant. In a communiqué on Radio Venceremos, the rebels’ clandestine station, the FMLN indirectly endorsed the action.

In each of these cases, no one was seriously injured. But that seems more luck than intent. One bomb next to a movie theater exploded while patrons were inside. The one outside the fast-food restaurant went off during regular evening hours. Rebel commanders say such tactics are designed to make the upper classes share the burden of the war.

Summary execution of locally elected village mayors is another deplorable tactic. In El Salvador’s eastern provinces, eight mayors have been executed by the rebels since April. This underscores divisions within the rebel alliance, even after nine years of struggle. FMLN guerrillas in Chalatenango, for example, do not have a policy of assassinating mayors; guerrillas active in the eastern provinces do.

During my trip in Chalatenango, a rebel tried to explain to me why they kill civilians. The rebels assassinate people for committing rape, he said, for using a gun against the people as in a personal dispute, and for providing information to the enemy.

But the rebels do not seem to be limiting their violence to these selected targets. In October, four peasants in Apopa, about seven miles north of San Salvador, were dragged from their homes and killed at point-blank range. The killers identified themselves as members of the army’s First Brigade. But according to Tutela Legal, El Salvador’s Roman Catholic human-rights office, the massacre was carried out by FMLN guerrillas posing as army soldiers. Tutela has consistently reported abuse by government troops against civilians. Its reports are used by such organizations as Americas Watch and are considered to be the most reliable in the country.

If the Tutela report is true, it marks an ominous shift in guerrilla tactics. A few weeks after the incident, rebel leaders promised to investigate the case and said that if FMLN members were involved, the perpetrators would be punished.

Nonetheless, human-rights abuses by the government here have consistently outstripped those by the rebels. Using Catholic Church figures, for instance, the comparison of noncombatant killings by the army versus such killings by the rebels is well over ten-to-one since the beginning of the war, though in recent months it has dropped closer to two-to-one.

Behind the Lines with the Rebels

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With an old straw hat, a soiled yellow shirt, ragged pants, and sandals, my weathered guide could easily have passed for the ignorant peasant he often claims to be. But he is far more sophisticated than he appears. Like most Salvadoran peasants in eastern Chalatenango province, he is intensely aware of the conflict at hand.

“How is the way ahead?” he asks a passerby. “Esta bien, no hay enemigo.” (“It’s O.K — there’s no sign of the enemy.”)

The enemigo is the U.S.-trained Atlacatl battalion of the Salvadoran army. During my week-long tour with the rebels in Chalatenango, the Atlacatl battalion was on patrol. Peasants in the area were almost as knowledgeable as guerrilla patrols about the battalion’s movements through the zone.

“The majority of the people there want the guerrillas, not the armed forces,” says foot soldier Julio Ernesto Cabrera. Local residents agree. Many say they have had relatives killed by the army.

Some of the residents are former refugees who escaped army repression by fleeing to neighboring Honduras earlier in the war. But more than 6,000 have returned to Chalatenango over the past seventeen months.

The Salvadoran rebels have endured nine years of U.S.-backed counterinsurgency. They have emerged as one of the most formidable guerrilla movements in the world. According to U.S. and rebel officials, the key to the rebels’ success is the support of the local population in areas they control.

“Tough, competent, highly motivated,” is how U.S. military officers describe the Salvadoran guerrillas of the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN). The civilian/military liaison for the U.S. embassy in San Salvador describes them as having grown “more committed and more effective” with experience.

Comparing the Salvadoran rebels to insurgent movements in the Philippines and Afghanistan, a top military analyst described the FMLN to me as “the most tenacious guerrilla [movement] in the world.” The FMLN is still not strong enough to take power, but the guerrillas and their civilian supporters are convinced time is on their side.

“This isn’t like Nicaragua, where [the guerrillas] won quickly,” says Israel, a former peasant who joined the guerrillas in 1979. “It’s more like Vietnam — a prolonged war.” As the sun casts shadows across the mountains of eastern Chalatenango, a small column of guerrillas climbs the rocky path into town. Each carries an M-16 rifle. The guerrillas range in age from fourteen to twenty-one. They represent the second generation of fighters for the FMLN.

Contrary to official U.S. pronouncements, the Salvadoran government is not winning the war. The FMLN has demonstrated an ability to strike major military targets, and the guerrillas are capable of draining the government with constant small-scale attacks.

Short of forced detainment of the peasantry or outright genocide — two options under consideration in El Salvador — the government will never wean committed civilian supporters away from the FMLN. Thus the central dilemma of U.S. policy in El Salvador: If human-rights abuses are to be kept within “acceptable levels,” the rebels cannot be defeated.

The alternative would be for the United States to recognize that the FMLN represents a legitimate political-military force, and to urge the Salvadoran government to negotiate. A small but growing number of members of the U.S. Congress take this view, but in El Salvador, the pendulum has swung much further to the Right.

The ultraconservative ARENA party enjoys considerable support not only among the upper classes but also among segments of the lower class and peasantry outside FMLN zones. Most Salvadorans seem to favor neither the government nor the FMLN, preferring to wait and see which side is likely to determine their future. Since President Jose Napoleon Duarte and his Christian Democratic Party have not managed to beat the rebels, the ARENA candidate Alfredo Cristiani is expected to win El Salvador’s presidential election next month.

Sigifredo Ochoa Perez, a leading deputy of ARENA, complains that U.S. policy in El Salvador has “no will to win.” He wants the army to pursue a strategy of “total war.” Ochoa says the nine-year civil war could be terminated in less than a year if the army were given a free hand to attack the civilian populations in FMLN zones. Human rights would not be a concern.

Official U.S. embassy spokesmen continue publicly to advocate small army patrols and civic-action projects, but hard-line U.S. officials are no longer convinced. They prefer the tactic of forcibly detaining civilians who sympathize with the rebels.

“El Salvador needs a population strategy,” says a U.S. official who has advised other Central American governments in counterinsurgency operations. He says the Salvadoran government must separate the guerrillas from the population if it is to win the war.

To some extent, the Salvadoran government has tried this before. In eastern Chalatenango, for example, the air force used saturation bombing through 1985 to drive out civilians. And in 1986, the army forcibly relocated residents on Guazapa volcano near San Salvador.

But the strategy being considered now is more comprehensive. It is based on “strategic hamlets” and “development poles” currently in use in Guatemala. These are defacto prison camps. A fence surrounds each camp, and an army watchtower dominates it. Civilians must pass an army checkpoint to enter or depart. The transport of food and other necessities is strictly monitored.

El Salvador could resort to such tactics, said the U.S. official. But unlike Guatemala, El Salvador receives almost $1.5 million a day from the United States. “Liberals in Congress” will never go along with such a strategy, he complains.

The drastic military options under consideration reflect the success the guerrillas have had in building civilian support in such areas as eastern Chalatenango. During my week-long trip with the guerrillas, they moved with ease and sophistication even as the Atlacatl battalion approached.

Two miles from the advancing Atlacatl, I traveled with a six-member FMLN patrol. We heard the staccato of machine guns as an army helicopter fired at suspected rebel targets. But none were hit.

Communicating with other guerrillas by radio, the rebel patrol knew the exact location of the Atlacatl. Rather than engage the superior force, the rebels pulled back. Once the army passed by, they reassumed their positions.

The Atlacatli battalion traveled through a number of refugee communities. On one trail between the villages of San Jose Las Flores and Guadila, hundreds of FMLN leaflets were strewn in the path of the on-coming troops. They were marked by a series of crude sketches. One depicted a rebel ambush; another a recent FMLN attack on a National Guard post in San Salvador. The drawings included figures of dead soldiers. “THIS IS WHAT AWAITS YOU!” read the caption below the sketch.

Large battalions such as the Atlacatl are able to move through rebel-held terrain, but they rarely find any guerrillas. Most military engagements are carried out on rebel terms, and the vast majority of army casualties come from guerrilla ambushes or mines.

In a guerrilla war, it is usually the rebels who must move under cover. But here, the army’s Long Range Reconnaissance Patrols are mostly a threat during the rainy season, when the foliage is thicker. And, unlike FMLN guerrillas who rely on their local infrastructure for supplies, the army patrols depend on helicopter drops for extra food and ammunition.

Similarly, the army suffers from poor intelligence. The patrols can’t count on information from local residents, so they depend upon aerial reconnaissance and other technology to other intelligence. This information is often dated and incomplete.

Since U.S. involvement in the war began, the Salvadoran government has enjoyed a huge technological advantage over the rebels. But according to U.S. military advisers, the point has been reached when additional U.S assistance will produce decreasing marginal gains.

A pig scrounges the ground for food, while children play in the dirt. Behind them, wet clothes hang on a line strung between a wooden awning and a tree.

A nude eighteen-year-old male lies on an old plank table. His left upper thigh is grossly disfigured. Guerrilla doctors are preparing to perform surgery.

The patient has a multiple-fractured femur bone. A bullet from an automatic rifle of the type used by the National Guard had pierced his leg. He has been crippled for the past year, waiting for this operation.

The operation is almost canceled when doctors receive word by radio that elite army troops are on the move nearby. By evening, the doctors say it is safe.

In this hospital with no walls and a dirt floor, the operation is expected to last two hours. But complications arise. Without proper equipment except for such items as liquid anesthesia, it takes more than five.

The surgeon uses a carpenter’s drill to make holes for metal rods in the patient’s leg. Reaching into a mess cup of boiled water, he removes a Swiss Army knife with its saw blade exposed.

“The equipment is not optimal,” he says. As I look on with a crowd of children and armed guerrillas, the doctor uses the camping knife to remove a large piece of femur. About ten metal rods, used to immobilize the bone, remain protruding from the patient’s thigh after the wound is closed. Rather than put the leg in a conventional cast, the doctor’s use split bamboo and plaster wrap to keep them in place.

The next day, the patient is put into hiding. “If the army finds him like this,” says one of the doctors, “they’ll kill him or take him away.”

“The worst thing is not the conditions as you see it,” says the chief surgeon, “but that we have to move all the time.” The doctor has been with the rebels for more than seven years. He is one of many medical volunteers who have joined the FMLN. In addition to his medical equipment, he carries an M-16 rifle.

The FMLN also provides health care for civilians living in guerrilla zones. In one case, I travelled with a physician to the home of a young woman who had a severely distended belly. The doctor drained two liters of abdominal fluid. In another case, a child cut his wrist with a machete. Rebel doctors sewed his severed tendons back together.

The Salvadoran government considers rebel medical facilities to be legitimate military targets. A mobile unit, the five-member medical team is constantly avoiding helicopters and army patrols. Medicine and medical instruments must be carried on the doctors’ and nurses’ backs.

An A-37 gunship buzzes the parade ground as army troops stand at attention in full battle gear. Behind the troops, several hundred peasants stand in formation. Representing ninety-eight rural villages, they have been invited to a ceremony at the army’s Third Brigade in San Miguel. The ceremony is part of a U.S.-inspired effort to win “hearts and minds.”

Colonel Rene Emilio Ponce, newly appointed armed forces chief of staff, is the main speaker. U.S. military advisers and officials are also present. They hope that by building better relations with the population, Ponce will be able to turn the war around.

The villagers hold placards indicating which town they come from. At one point, an army lieutenant directs the entire group to march past the podium for review. During Ponce’s speech, the lieutenant paces up and down in front of the peasants. With his back turned to the podium, he orders the peasants to stay in line and tells them when to cheer.

“The army helps us,” says one peasant. “‘But there are still many things we need.”

Some of the peasants say they have received food and basic supplies from the army. They are participating in the ceremony, they say, because they hope to receive more.

But in the past, the army has found it hard to deliver. A nationwide civic-action program that began two years ago has failed. Support for the army lasts only as long as the flow of free provisions continues.

The FMLN, by contrast, builds its support from the bottom up. The guerrillas encourage peasants to organize themselves. The method is similar to that developed by Brazilian educator Paulo Freire and adopted by Christian “base communities” of the Catholic Church. During my trip, I observed two such “dynamic exercises” — one led by “popular” teachers, the other by a young Jesuit priest.

Participants in these exercises are matched in pairs. They speak to each other for about fifteen minutes and then they rejoin the larger group, introducing the partner and relaying key facts about his or her life to the others present. Then the group takes up issues of basic needs and problems. As a result, the level of community organization is greatly enhanced, and peasants learn to take control of their lives.

In one village, residents discuss methods of payment for supplies at the modest dental clinic they have built. In another meeting, they discuss which fields to plant and how to cope with a shortage of seeds. Land in the area is now cultivated collectively after having been seized from absentee owners.

Peasants in these communities do not merely sympathize with the guerrillas. They see the armed and the unarmed struggle as two sides of the same coin. In the words of the young Jesuit, “the struggle of the guerrillas is the struggle of the poor.”

The guerrillas are attracting new volunteers. The rebels once relied partly on forced conscription, but even U.S. officials now admit that this practice has been abandoned.

A shy teen-age girl says she is being trained as a radio operator at a secret mountain location. “You have to fight for the people,” she says.

By the end of my week-long trip, I had found a better appreciation of the FMLN’s popular support in eastern Chalatenango. In one small town, the locally elected town council sponsored a dance. Government planes flew overhead, even as FMLN fighters, their M-16s slung over their shoulders, danced to La Bamba with their girlfriends from town.

A Blood-spattered Stalemate

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Eastern Chalatenango, El Salvador — A helicopter gunship riddled the landscape with heavy machine-gun fire as a battalion of 200 elite army soldiers trailed on the ground behind.

Two miles away, a patrol of six guerrillas kept track on the oncoming battalion, communicating with fellow rebels by radio. They knew the exact location of the troops, but rather than engage the superior force they prudently pulled back. Once the soldiers passed, the rebels reassumed positions they had held before.

The army’s counterinsurgency deployment and the guerrillas’ game of cat and mouse was typical of the 9-year-old conflict between the U.S.-backed government of this Central American nation and the leftist rebels of the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN).

It is one reason the Salvadoran army has been unable to defeat the rebels. The army is larger and better equipped, but the rebels are quick and elusive and rely on the support of the populace.

A top U.S. military analyst described the civil war as a “strategic stalemate.” The rebels are not strong enough to take power. But the army is not effective enough to “liquidate the guerrillas,” he said.

The U.S. Embassy rarely comments on military tactics. But privately U.S. officials say that the U.S.-backed counterinsurgency is not going well.

The stakes for U.S. policy are high. Since civil war broke out in 1980, El Salvador has received more than $3.3 billion in U.S. aid. Once barely known to policy-makers, this small Central American republic of five million has become the fifth largest recipient of U.S. foreign aid.

No regular U.S. ground troops have been deployed in El Salvador. But four U.S. Army lieutenant colonels who studied the level of training, material assistance and technical support provided by the United States described U.S. participation in the Salvadoran conflict as “the most significant sustained military enterprise since Vietnam.”

And the outcome remains uncertain. Former U.S. Ambassador Edwin Corr has estimated it would take at least until 1994 to beat down the guerrillas. Other U.S. officials say it may take longer. And in an interview, a senior State Department analyst said that the government of El Salvador remains vulnerable to the guerrilla threat.
Some U.S. military advisers blame the Salvadoran government for the prolonged stalemate.

The U.S.-backed Salvadoran army is reluctant to break down into the kind of small units that advisers say are essential to counter the insurgency. And government troops, they say, have become too dependent on their U.S.-supplied firepower, which they use more to, defend themselves than to attack. “It’s like chasing a mosquito with a hammer,” one military analyst said.

Most army casualties result from guerrilla ambushes or mines, said military sources, not from coordinated guerrilla offensives.

The guerrillas — including about 6,000 full-time combatants — are outnumbered more than 9 to 1 by the army. But they are attracting recruits. And a U.S. official who monitors the war says the rebels are “more committed and more effective” now than before.

The key to the rebels’ success is the civilian population in areas they control, said a top U.S. military analyst who has advised other Central American countries in counterinsurgency operations.

Army troops who have patrolled in Chalatenango province say that the population collaborates with the rebels.
“The majority of the people there want the guerrillas, not the armed forces,” said foot soldier Julio Ernesto Cabrera.

A guerrilla commander said the rebels have indeed organized a “clandestine power (base) within the population.”

In one village recently, the town council sponsored a dance, Government planes flew overhead as rebels, their M-16 rifles slung over their shoulders, danced La Bamba with girlfriends.

Although the terrain is rugged and mostly accessible only by foot, eastern Chalatenango is heavily populated. Many residents are war refugees who have been repatriated from neighboring Honduras in the last year.

Col. Lopez Roque, commander of the army’s 4th Brigade in Chalatenango, said the rebels have coordinated the repatriations.

The elite Atlacatl battalion passed through a number of refugee communities during its weeklong trek earlier this month and got a reminder of the rebels’ presence. On one trail, between the villages of San Jose Las Flores and Guarjila, guerrillas had disseminated hundreds of fliers just before the army arrived.

Crude sketches were scrawled on the handouts. One depicted a rebel ambush. Another showed a Nov. 1 rebel attack on a National Guard post in the capital city, San Salvador. The drawings included dead soldiers. “This is what awaits you!” read the caption below the sketch.

Such tactics can be particularly frightening to army troops. The rebels could as easily have littered the mountain trail with land mines as with propaganda, the soldiers say.

Large battalions such as the Atlacatl are able to move through rebel-held terrain. But rarely do they encounter guerrillas. And most military engagements that do occur are carried out on the rebels’ terms.

“We (engage the army) when we want to,” said a 25-year-old rebel.”

The rebels still are far from taking power. But in interviews, both the guerrillas and their civilian supporters said they were convinced that time was on their side.

“The struggle is long,” said one guerrilla. “But (we’re) not tired. We’ll fight until we win.”

Said a rebel named Israel: “This isn’t like Nicaragua, where (the guerrillas) won quickly. It’s more like Vietnam – a prolonged war.”

A former peasant, Israel has been with the guerrillas since 1979. The most difficult time, he said, was the early 1980s. Army massacres in eastern Chalatenango were common. Civilians regularly fled from oncoming government troops, rather than stay behind as they do now. The guerrillas, he said, lacked weapons as well as communications equipment.

“I started with a pistol and a homemade rifle,” said another rebel, Pickiri, who takes his nom de guerre from a revolutionary Salvadoran leader. He now is equipped with a U.S.-made M-1 6 automatic rifle.

The guerrillas also use battery-powered two, way radios in the field. The rebels say they captured the equipment from the Salvadoran army. But reliable U.S. intelligence sources say Nicaragua is the more likely source.

Since 1983, however, the flow of arms from Managua has dried up. The rebels’ M-16s in eastern Chalatenango appeared old. Although they functioned, almost half the weapons’ hard plastic stocks had broken off – replaced by homemade wooden versions.

In the last year, the rebels increasingly have manufactured their own mortars and land mines. They make them with readily available materials such as masking tape, tin cans, gunpowder and flashlight batteries. The rebels employed such “popular arms” in the surprise attack on the National Guard post in San Salvador last month, a rebel said.

The guerrillas also have tried to build troop strength and are attracting volunteers. The rebels once relied partly on forced recruitment. But even informed U.S. officials now admit that this practice has been abandoned.

The Salvadoran army, by contrast, rarely accepts volunteers. Military officials fear that those volunteering may be guerrillas trying to infiltrate the army.

Combatants on both sides are strikingly young. The army recruits males as young as 16. And a “class” of about 10 rebel volunteers ranged in age from 14 to 21 — some of them female.

A shy teen-age girl said she was being trained to be a radio operator at a secret mountain location. When asked why she joined the guerrillas, she replied, “You have to fight for the people.”