[Marxism] Salvadoran ¹ s Death in Iraq Leaves His Mother Fuming

[Bonnie Weinstein <giobon@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Salvadoran¹s Death in Iraq Leaves His Mother Fuming
By MARC LACEY
January 26, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/26/world/americas/26salvador.html

SAN SALVADOR, Jan. 21 ? From her hillside home in western El Salvador,
Herminia Ramos sobbed and sobbed the other day as she recalled her fallen
son.

In some ways, Ms. Ramos is like the thousands of other Salvadoran mothers
who lost children in the 12-year civil war here that ended in 1992. But Ms.
Ramos¹ grief is fresher than the rest, the result of a more recent conflict.

El Salvador is the only country in Latin America with troops in Iraq, a
point of pride for President Antonio Saca, who is a gung-ho supporter of the
Bush administration, but extremely unpopular among the war-weary population.

³Our army should be at home,² said Ms. Ramos, 48, fuming against a war she
said she did not know the first thing about until smartly dressed officers
showed up at her home in 2004 to inform her that her son, Natividad, had
become the first Salvadoran to die in combat in Iraq.

The United States has been debating for years the reasons for the war in
Iraq and whether the invasion and continued presence of troops there are
justified. Was there reason to believe that weapons of mass destruction were
there? Was Saddam Hussein¹s despotism enough reason to topple him? Did links
between Iraq and Al Qaeda exist?

El Salvador, which has been involved in the war since August 2003 and
currently has 380 troops in Iraq, has been having its own discussion. Ms.
Ramos, for one, can find no justification. Those other mothers can say that
their children fell while fighting for their country, either for the Marxist
guerrilla movement or the American-backed government. But Natividad Ramos,
20, died in Najaf in a clash with armed followers of the Shiite cleric
Moktada al-Sadr.

³I got through our war without losing any family,² she said of El Salvador¹s
civil war, which took an estimated 75,000 lives. ³And now my son was sent to
fight in someone else¹s war.²

Officially, Mr. Saca¹s government says the deployment of what is called the
Cuscatlán Battalion is a way to thank the world for its assistance in
helping stop the civil war here a decade and a half ago. Salvadoran
officials say their country is an active part of the United Nations and
believe in the world body¹s effort to rebuild Iraq.

They stress the humanitarian dimension to their soldiers¹ work there, like
building roads, health clinics and schools, while acknowledging the dangers
that have resulted in the deaths of five soldiers and the wounding of about
two dozen more. They proudly note that El Salvador¹s army, once linked to
right-wing death squads, has been purged of its bad elements and is now one
of the most respected institutions in the country.

But those arguments have not been enough to sway local critics. A newspaper
opinion poll put opposition to El Salvador¹s involvement in Iraq at 81
percent. In 2004, masked protesters briefly took over the country¹s main
cathedral and demanded an immediate withdrawal of troops. For the most part,
though, Salvadorans have been preoccupied with local concerns, such as their
economic woes and the insecurity that causes strains in their own country.

Every time a new contingent is sent, though, the legislature splits along
party lines, with the right-wing government and its allies backing the plan
and the leftist opposition voting no.

³It¹s the gringos¹ war,² said one critic, Olga Serrano, who is executive
secretary of a group of wounded veterans from the war in the 1980s. ³What
are we doing over there?²

Behind the scenes, government officials sell the plan differently. They
point to all the benefits they believe they are receiving from Washington as
a result of their assistance, even as the Bush administration insists that
it is not giving El Salvador special favors for its troop presence.

³We¹re doing this to help the Iraqis but we¹re also doing this for our own
people,² said Carlos Rolando Herrarte Rivas, a legislator from the
center-right Christian Democratic Party who went to Iraq in December as part
of a government delegation to visit the troops. ³The president can¹t say
that but that¹s why we¹re doing it.²

Mr. Herrarte, a retired colonel, said the Bush administration had been
treating Salvadoran migrants well despite strong anti-immigrant sentiment in
the United States. He pointed to the Bush administration¹s decision in
January 2005 to grant a one-year extension of temporary protected status for
about 250,000 Salvadorans living in the United States. The status gives them
a reprieve from deportation because of natural disasters or political
turmoil at home.

Mr. Herrarte also cited the $461 million in antipoverty funds that El
Salvador was awarded last fall by the Millennium Challenge Corporation, an
American foreign aid agency, as being another outgrowth of the war effort.

³When I go to my town, they yell,² he said of his vociferous antiwar
constituents. ³They want to know why we are there. They say, ?Get them out.¹
Then I start explaining how this is helping our people in the United
States.²

To say that El Salvador and the United States are joined at the hip is an
understatement. Nearly a third of native-born Salvadorans are living in the
United States, including relatives of President Saca, Defense Minister Otto
Alejandro Romero Orellana and many other decision makers. Those Salvadorans
abroad send home about $2.5 billion every year, which represents about 17
percent of the country¹s gross domestic product.

Former President Francisco Guillermo Flores Pérez, who was considered
especially close to the White House, sent the first troops to Iraq in 2003.
The issue came up in the presidential campaign the following year when Mr.
Saca, a pro-American businessman, defeated Schafik Handal, a former
Communist guerrilla.

Mr. Handal had pledged to withdraw Salvador¹s 380 soldiers from Iraq
immediately. Mr. Saca said a victory by Mr. Handal ran the risk of cutting
the flow of money from Salvadoran migrants in the United States.

Mr. Saca has continued sending troops even though the governing Nationalist
Republican Alliance party, known as Arena, lacks a majority in the
legislature. Mr. Saca¹s party has had to strike deals with two smaller
parties to come up with the 43-vote simple majority.

The Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front, an outgrowth of the guerrilla
movement that fought the government in the 1980s, has consistently voted
against the war.

Critics of decision to send Salvadoran troops point out that Nicaragua,
Honduras and Dominican Republic continued to have strong relationships with
Washington, even though they pulled their troops out of Iraq in the spring
of 2004.

They point out that Hondurans and Nicaraguans also have the same preferred
immigration status that Salvadorans do. Honduras and Nicaragua also received
Millennium grants, albeit smaller ones than El Salvador¹s, critics note.

Salvadoran officials are not speaking of an increase in troops to quell the
Iraqi insurgency. But when they are asked how long the country plans to
involve itself in the war, they do adopt President Bush¹s language: as long
as it takes.


________________________________________________
YOU MUST clip all extraneous text before replying to a message.
Send list submissions to: Marxism@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism