Foreign Relations of the United States 1977–1980; Volume XV; Central America, 1977–1980

461. Telegram From the Embassy in El Salvador to the Department of State¹

San Salvador, January 20, 1981, 1730Z

510. Subj: Past, Present and Future U.S. Policy Toward Salvador’s Revolutionary Governing Junta. Ref (A) 80 State 355609,² (B) 80 San Sal 2038,³ (C) 80 San Sal 3677,⁴ (D) 80 San Sal 6284.⁵

1. (S-Entire text)

2. Summary: The moderate government of El Salvador has administered a crushing military and political defeat to the foreign-supported and orchestrated “final offensive” of the local Marxist guerrillas. The long-predicted mass insurrection failed to materialize as did the promised general strike, despite the fevered incitements to revolt by Radio Moscow, Havana and Managua plus the clandestine Nicaragua-based “Radio Liberacion.” The people stuck with the government because, despite its flaws, it has brought them the hope that El Salvador’s unjust and repressive socio-economic structure will be changed in their favor. The people also seem to understand that Marxist terrorists are just as lethal as the rightist death squads that have victimized them for so long. Our economic assistance here has been massive over the last year and has strengthened the best elements in the Salvadoran Government; our military assistance had been limited to non-lethal equipment intended to strengthen the command structure and limit repressive tendencies in the brutal and corrupt security forces. Now, in response to foreign-intervention, we are resupplying the armed forces to make up the draw-down of their stocks occasioned by the leftists’ “final offensive.” The Salvadoran armed forces are determined that our last minute military support not take credit away from their victory over a foreign-supplied and trained guerrilla force. We must continue to calibrate our military assistance to El Salvador to strengthen the civilians and moderate military officers in their struggle to control repressive elements in the security forces. The return of rightist emigres associated with death squads and responsible for decades of corruption of the security forces could lead to a rightist-sponsored massacre and the recrudescence of the left. In the end, a futile effort to reimpose a discredited and anachronistic socio-economic structure, whatever the level of foreign support or participation, would result in a leftist victory but only after a bloody civil war. We should reflect carefully on this scenario in considering future U.S. policy toward El Salvador. The lesson to be learned from the past year here is that it is unnecessary and even counterproductive to furnish millions in military assistance, to send dozens of military advisors or to sponsor “special operations.” What is needed to defeat the Marxist-Leninists in Central America is solid U.S. backing for good government through effective diplomacy—an Embassy speaking with one voice and an aid program that gives a government the tools it needs to better the lives of the people. That is how a democracy fights Communism. And it works. End summary.

3. Unless foreign nations intervene massively and soon, the Revolutionary Governing Junta of El Salvador (JRG) has now defeated the vaunted “final offensive” of the indigenous Marxist/Leninist guerrilla organizations despite heavy doses of propaganda, supplies and training provided by external Communist sources.⁶ The JRG prevailed because the majority of Salvadorans have lost their sympathy for the leftist movement and, while they may not support the government yet, they have done nothing to impede its efforts to suppress the leftist offensive. Moreover, they made the leftists’ general strike a total failure despite desperate propaganda efforts abroad to qualify it as a “partial success.” Well-armed and trained leftist guerrillas are still able to attack small population centers in scattered areas of the country. But since the widespread and coordinated series of attacks on major cities, including poor areas of the capital, on the night of January 10, the guerrillas have had no success in taking or holding territory for anything more than a few hours, i.e., any takeover is terminated by the arrival of Army reinforcements within a few hours.⁷ Even some Western press sources continue to describe this as evidence that the government does not control the whole territory but the fact that no guerrilla enclave exists and that the leftists were unable to declare a government inside the country, as they promised, proves the failure of the main political/diplomatic purpose of the offensive.

4. How did the offensive proceed? For several months the leftist terrorist groups have been threatening a “final offensive, general strike and mass insurrection” that would sweep away the JRG and leave them in control of El Salvador. Under heavy pressure from the Cubans and other Communist backers, the disparate leftist organizations, both the guerrillas and their allegedly peaceful front organizations, were melded first into two large units and finally into one supposedly monolithic coalition. The Farabundo Marti Liberation Movement (FMLN), now headed by Dr. Guillermo Manuel Ungo, is the new holding company for what had been two ostensibly separate organizations that have conducted political agitation and terrorism respectively for the last six months, the allegedly peaceful Democratic Revolutionary Front (FDRL) headed by Dr. Ungo and the armed, terrorist Unified Revolutionary Directorate (DRU), headed by Cayetano Carpio.

5. Once the umbrella coalition was in place, i.e. in early December, a grand orchestrated campaign of internal and external propaganda began to promise a final FMLN offensive that would be accompanied by mass insurrection. [garble] that used against Somoza’s Nicaragua in which an entire people rose up against a hated dictator who by then had become isolated internationally and internally by a documented series of outrages against the population. Leftist propaganda against El Salvador attempted to capitalize on a series of appalling violations of human rights connected with or directly chargeable to brutal and vicious elements within the security forces which had remained largely out of the control of the JRG. A worldwide campaign of [garble] offered ample evidence of security force excesses that increased the diplomatic isolation of the JRG, especially from such important European countries as Germany, France and Spain. The murder of the American churchwomen in early December, which was certainly the work of the Salvadoran security forces almost completed the JRG’s diplomatic alienation, even from its most important international supporter, the USG.

6. At this point, under intense pressure from the USG, Venezuela and other sympathetic but offended democratic governments, the JRG at last moved to begin to root out the cancer that had so weakened the anti-Communist position in this country throughout the last year. The Christian Democrats in the regime threatened to walk out unless the Ministry of Defense restructured itself in a way that removed from command the worst offenders in the security forces. The PDC also asked that the officer corps pledge armed force commitment to the implementation of the sweeping reform program that had succeeded in weaning public support away from the left so dramatically since its inception in March 1980. Both steps were taken following a consultation of all military officers. Subsequent renewal of U.S. economic assistance gave the JRG a new lease on life at a critical juncture and its promises to reform the command structure, investigate the deaths of the churchwomen and bring rightist death squads under control renewed hopes here and abroad that a decent reform government committed to democratization could be put back on track before the “final assault.”

7. Weeks of mounting and clearly orchestrated propaganda, supplemented over the last two months by large clandestine shipments of sophisticated new war supplies, culminated in the announcement of the great offensive on the evening of January 10th. For several days, the leftist newspaper El Independiente had published elaborate instructions telling the population how to participate in the insurrection, e.g., by fabricating molotov cocktails at home, preparing boards full of nails to throw in the streets before the Army convoys, painting death’s heads on the houses of suspected government informers, etc. A clandestine radio transmitter located in Nicaragua went on the air several days before the offensive with the same kinds of instruction and incitations to insurrection. Four local radio stations were seized at dusk on Saturday, January 10 and the population was called to arms. Meanwhile, coordinated guerrilla attacks took place in many areas of the country, including an assault on the main Air Force base at Ilopango, a mutiny in the Santa Ana barracks and guerrilla assaults on a long list of small military posts in widespread areas of the country.

8. By 11:00 p.m. the offensive had largely spent itself. There was no mass uprising. On the contrary, the guerrillas received little or no encouragement even in the most impoverished and alienated districts of San Salvador where terrorist incidents have occurred almost nightly over the last year. On Sunday, government control was reasserted in Santa Ana and new attacks were put down over the next several days in a number of other population centers, still with no evidence of public sympathy for the leftist insurgents. The general strikes called for Monday, January 12th, then Tuesday, January 13th and last, Wednesday, January 14th were uniformly ignored by 90 percent or more of the working population. Only two factories were closed in San Salvador on the first day and they reopened at noon; buses were off the streets for several hours. On Monday and Tuesday mornings in response to terrorist threats that they would be burned on sight bus service was restored by mid-morning both days; hundreds of foreign journalists here for the final offensive could find guerrilla attacks under way in remote areas of the country but no evidence of any support for the general strike. Nonetheless, Communist controlled and influenced news organizations, consistent with their earlier propaganda, reported that vast areas of the country including major population centers were under guerrilla control and that the whole country was wracked by insurrection, general strikes and hand-to-hand fighting. All of this was untrue and ultimately the international news services established what was really happening in El Salvador for readers and listeners not under Communist control.

9. In the midst of the general offensive the United States announced renewal of military assistance which had been suspended following the deaths of the American churchwomen and pending the command shifts, pursuit of investigations and attempt to control rightist violence that the JRG had promised. A further pressing decision for the USG was whether to renew lethal military assistance which had ended in 1977 when the Romero regime refused U.S. military aid in anger over human rights restrictions on its use. The offensive from the left, although of relatively brief duration, was sufficiently intensive to run down stocks of Salvadoran ammunition and other materiel. The most pressing need was for small arms ammunition. On Friday evening, January 17th, I informed Junta President Napoleon Duarte that the United States would renew lethal military assistance in response to the JRG’s request for emergency replacement of depleted ammunition stocks.⁸ Duarte accepted the offer with some reserve, asking that minimal publicity be given and that U.S. military advisors not be sent to El Salvador except as technicians performing required pilot or maintenance insruction for the Salvadoran Air Force. Defense Minister Garcia has expressed the same concerns to U.S. officers.

10. Meanwhile, the Salvadoran National Radio, which has monopolized all broadcast time since the opening of the offensive on January 10th, spent this weekend assuring the population that the guerrillas had been defeated unilaterally by the armed forces and reform government which enjoy full public support and are more than capable of defending the national terrority. These broadcasts made clear that the JRG had defeated the guerrillas because the public was on its side and that the armed forces needed no outside help in containing the leftist offensive so long as foreign intervention was curbed. The domestic press and radio has made much of evidence of foreign support for the left in the form of captured weapons, including light artillery, and the barrage of propaganda and disinformation from Radio Moscow, Havana and Managua. These JRG broadcasts and stories exploited heavy nationalist chords and seem to have had a strong public impact.

11. Comment: In the last hours of the Carter administration and on the inauguration day of President Reagan, it is important to try to understand why the JRG has succeeded in defeating a concerted leftist conspiracy to seize power in El Salvador. It is crucial to comprehend that this government has given hope to an entire people that the gross injustices and abuses of the last 50 years are coming to an end and that life will improve for the 90 pct of the population who lived here in near feudal servitude until the revolution of 1979. Only ten months ago, vast leftist front organizations could mass as many as 200,000 people in the streets of San Salvador; they could take over government Ministries, foreign Embassies and the National University in utter defiance of an indecisive new regime that promised progress but was inept and weak. It was also violently opposed by the far right from exile in Miami and Guatemala. In the face of brutal attack from both extremes the JRG went ahead with a series of sweeping social reforms that destroyed the power base of the far left and the monopoly position of the far right in this country, perhaps forever. The reforms have saved the center in El Salvador. It was the reforms that made the people break with the left. The reforms resulted in the increasing violence against the people by both extremist groups, and completed the alienation of the masses from both factions. The far right’s vicious terrorism against the center as well as unarmed leftist sympathizers blackened the name of the JRG abroad because some of these rightist elements had connections with the security forces. Military and civilian moderates were unable or afraid to break these links. The excesses of the security forces and the depredations of the right-wing death squads threatened to destroy the JRG as a government and to isolate it totally from the rest of the world. Only the crisis provoked by the murders of the FDR leaders followed by those of the American churchwomen reversed this fatal slide toward ruin.

12. Over the last year, the JRG’s defeat of three attempted right-wing coups, financed by exiles in Guatemala and Miami and led by their chosen instrument, the psychotic Major D’Aubuisson, helped convince the mass of the population that the JRG meant to continue its course toward democratization, economic/social justice and control of repressive forces in the military. The shifts in the command structure of late December, the renewed commitment to agrarian reform following the brutal murders of Adolfo Viera and his two American advisors⁹ and the renewal of U.S. economic assistance in response to the JRG’s promises to control rightist excess, reassured the population that reforms would be maintained. On the verge of the “final offensive” people still believed this government could be expected to continue to pursue the course that has drawn away support and sympathy from the left and that has isolated the terrorists of the far right and far left as criminal elements bent on overthrowing a moderate responsible government. On the evening of January 10th, when the radio stations were seized and the people called upon to rise, no one spoke up. The leftists have revealed themselves to be irresponsible, foreign-directed terrorists and people know it. They stayed off the streets after dark, not merely in response to the 7:00 p.m. curfew but because they wanted no involvement in the alleged insurrection. People went to work on Monday morning not merely because the government exhorted them to do so, but because they wanted to keep their jobs and help end the economic crisis that the far right and far left have visited on this country.

13. It is common knowledge here that the bombings of factories and offices, killings of labor leaders and technicians, and kidnappings of moderate businessmen and government officials are the work of both the far right and the far left. Vicious gangs of self-ruled terrorists, of the far right and far left, are operating in foreign cities and are sponsoring the destruction of this country in order to rebuild it according to their blueprint when its ruin is total.

14. How should the United States proceed in the face of the success this last week of the moderate forces in El Salvador against the leftist final offensive and last month against a third right-wing coup attempt? Why have rightist terror and leftist insurrection failed to destroy the JRG? We must understand that the complex equation that operates in this country has several potentially explosive components, namely the far right and far left. El Salvador’s moderate civilian/military leadership must be supported in its attempt to control extremists on both sides and democratic countries trying to help the JRG should limit their inside participation as much as possible in order to reinforce the moderate tendencies of the JRG. The moderates are succeeding in their struggle to find a peaceful solution without a civil war. We have denied the JRG military asistance on any important scale for the excellent reason that without firm moderate control of the means of repression it would likely be used in condemnable excesses that would bring our country as well as theirs into disrepute. Only about half of the non-lethal assistance in communications and transport programmed for last fiscal year has even reached this country. New lethal assistance has just begun to arrive in response to President Carter’s decision of January 16th.¹⁰ The Salvadoran armed forces are completely truthful, therefore, in announcing to the people that they have put down a foreign-sponsored, trained, directed and supplied Communist offensive using only their own resources. This is an important nationalist consideration. The reinforcement we are now providing will replace Salvadoran ammunition and materiel used in defeating the leftists over the last week. We should ensure that it not be used in a general campaign to eradicate the left here by harsh “search and destroy” measures.

15. The matanza (massacre) so earnestly sought by the far right must be avoided for it would surely bring ultimate victory to the far left guerrillas who are now in defeat because the people have abandoned their cause. To bring back the patrons of right-wing terrorism from their self-imposed exile, to attempt to install them in power once again or to abet their campaign to dismantle the JRG’s reform program by installing a military dictator under their tutelage, would be folly on our part. Sooner or later, probably after a bloody regional war, the left would win because Central America’s anachronistic structure of decades past cannot be reimposed here by any number of troops, foreign or domestic. El Salvador was on the verge of falling to Marxists-Leninists a year ago because insurrection seemed the only hope for change and progress. A small, willful group of amoral oligarchs and their terrorist accomplices in the security forces had staved off change here for decades at the cost of mounting social tension that finally threatened to blow the society apart. Marxist revolution was just about to take power last year for the simple reason that it seemed the only alternative to the malfeasance and cruelty of the small group which controlled this country. When a group of moderate military officers and progressive civilians seized power in October 1979, the former owners of this country fled in undignified haste to Guatemala and Miami. From there they have sponsored and directed a terrorist campaign against the moderate centrist forces in this country. That campaign has claimed thousands of lives. Their role is well known here.

16. Over the intervening ten months, through sweeping reforms of the economic and social structure, an essentially middle class group of officers and civilians, at great risk to their own lives, has fought to draw the people back. They have fought to detach the masses from a Marxist movement that, in the face of dwindling public support, has resorted to terrorism against the government, and, increasingly, against the people themselves. The terrorists of the right and left have murdered and alienated the population of this country. Unless one or the other of these extremist factions seems on the point of gaining power, the JRG will continue to expand its base among the population and will rebuild the shattered structure of Salvadoran society on a new foundation.

17. U.S. economic assistance in this effort is vital and should be expanded rapidly in all productive sectors of this economy. Military assistance should continue to be keyed to improvement in human rights performance in order not to strengthen the repressive tendencies of those still in the security forces who respond to direction from rightist terrorists. I would ask the new administration to give the most careful consideration to these concerns and calibrate further U.S. assistance, political, military and economic, as delicately as possible in order to encourage democratic, moderate and progressive forces in this country to save it and the region from tyranny of the left or right.

18. The left here has been defeated. Not one American cartridge was fired and not one cent of lethal American assistance was used. The lesson to be learned from the last year in El Salvador is that it is not necessary to provide millions in military assistance, that it is counter-productive to bring in dozens of military advisors, that dirty tricks are not needed and that in Central America all that is necessary to defeat the Marxist-Leninists is to back good government with effective diplomacy, an Embassy speaking with one voice and an aid program that provides a government the tools it needs to better the lives of the people. This is the democratic way to counter Communism. And it works.

White

1. Source: National Archives, RG 59, Central Foreign Policy File, D810030–0505. Secret; Immediate. Sent for information to Bogotá, Bonn, Caracas, Guatemala City, Lima, London, Madrid, Managua, Mexico City, Panama City, Paris, Rome, San José, Tegucigalpa, Tokyo, Lisbon, USUN, and USCINCSO Quarry Heights.
2. Telegram 355609 was not further identified.
3. See footnote 2, Document 428.
4. See Document 432.
5. See footnote 4, Document 438.
6. In telegram 410 from San Salvador, January 16, White noted his concern that “our public rationale for providing lethal military assistance to the GOES will include specific pointed reference to the danger presented to this government by the leftist offensive,” which would confirm “the thesis” of the FDR/DRU. He added: “In my opinion, the rationale for the renewal of military assistance and the provision of ammunition rests 99 percent on the introduction of sophisticated new weapons of Communist manufacture which have entered into El Salvador from Nicaragua.” Pastor wrote at the bottom of the telegram: “The govt is in firm control. We are confident that with re-supplies they will remain in control.” (Carter Library, National Security Affairs, Staff Material, North/South, Pastor Files, Country Files, Box 22, El Salvador: 1/16–19/81)
7. For more information about the “final offensive,” see Document 460.
8. See footnote 4, Document 459.
9. In telegram 42 from San Salvador, January 4, the Embassy described the January 3 murder of AIFLD officials Michael Hammer and Mark Pearlman, and the Director of the Agrarian Reform Institute Rodolfo Viera, by gunman at the Sheraton Hotel in San Salvador and commented: “No one has been arrested or convicted yet for murders of 9,000-plus Salvadorans and five U.S. citizens.” (Carter Library, National Security Affairs, Brzezinski Material, Country File, Box 21, El Salvador: 12/80–1/81; see also Raymond Bonner, “2 Americans Slain at Salvador Hotel; Aided Land Agency,” New York Times, January 5, 1981, p. 1.) In telegram 3697 to San Salvador, January 7, the Department instructed the Embassy to inform the Salvadorans “at the highest level” that the assassination of Hammer and Pearlman required a “thorough and complete investigation” and that technical assistance would be available. (National Archives, RG 59, Central Foreign Policy File, D810009–0007)
10. See Document 460.