A Coup Against Chaos

A new regime promises reform, but may not be able to deliver

The country has long been on a collision course with anarchy. Since January, at least 600 people have died in clashes between El Salvador's military government, left-wing terrorists and murder squads directed by the country's ultra-reactionary oligarchy. Marxist guerrillas have kidnaped a score of foreign businessmen, extorting at least $40 million in ransoms. The kidnapings sparked a flight of foreign capital that further weakened the tottering economy of one of the hemisphere's more densely populated nations (531 people per sq. mi.). Presiding over the chaos was General Carlos Humberto Romero, 57, an inept military despot who was despised even by his reluctant supporters in the armed forces.

The coup d'etat that unseated Romero as President last week was greeted with unabashed enthusiasm in Washington. "It's the best piece of news we've had in this office for a long time," said a State Department official. Well aware that Romero was out of touch with El Salvador's realities, U.S. policymakers have been hoping for some kind of "evolutionary change" that would avoid the horrendous bloodshed of Nicaragua's civil war. Whether El Salvador's new rulers will be able to maintain peace in their factionalized little country, however, is doubtful.

The plot to oust Romero was hatched about six months ago by a cadre of liberal army officers organized as a "council of military youth." They were assisted by reformist academics of the Jesuit-run University of Central America Jose Simeon Canas. Inspired by the success of Nicaragua's revolution, both groups were convinced that the only way to prevent all-out "class warfare" was to end the corrupt military regime and, as an intellectual who helped plan Romero's ouster explained last week, overhaul the country's "antiquated economic, social and political structures."

Two weeks ago the conspirators informed the U.S. embassy in San Salvador that they were ready to stage Romero's overthrow. Last Monday their forces moved swiftly through the capital city, carrying out the plotters' plan to "behead the army" by arresting the general staff and putting 85% of the senior officers on the retirement list. Through an American diplomat, they informed Romero that he had until 3 p.m. to get out of the country. With that, the President (whose brother Jose Javier was gunned down by leftists five weeks ago) boarded a plane and fled to Guatemala.

After Romero's exit, the army named a five-man junta of soldiers and civilians that one liberal academic describes as "100% nationalistic and anti-imperialistic." Its members: Colonel Adolfo Arnoldo Majano, 41, deputy chief of El Salvador's military school; Colonel Jaime Abdul Gutierrez, 43; Roman Mayarga Quiros, 36, an M.I.T.-educated electrical engineer who was formerly rector of the University of Central America; Guillermo Manuel Ungo, 47, a university administrator who ran for Vice President in the 1972 election; and Mario Andino, 43, an electrical engineer known for his progressive political views.

The new junta promised to hold elections, possibly as early as next year, and to use the huge coffee and cotton plantations that occupy the bulk of the country's arable acreage for land reform. It ordered an investigation into the fate of 276 people who "disappeared" during Romero's reign. It pledged to form close ties with Nicaragua's new revolutionary government and to establish diplomatic relations with Cuba. The junta also begged El Salvador's leftist guerrillas to lay down their arms and join in building a "just society."

The sweeping changes won quick approval from Washington, which hailed the new government as "progressive and reasonable." It also won the cautious endorsement of San Salvador's Archbishop Oscar Romero y Galdamez. In a broadcast over the national radio station, the archbishop pleaded with his countrymen to give the new regime time to prove that "its beautiful promises are not dead letters but rather a real hope that a new era has begun for our country."

His plea had little impact. First to ignore it were the notoriously brutal Treasury Police, who killed 18 people in a savage attack on striking workers at four large factories in the capital. Leftist terrorists cut loose with an orgy of violent protest, blowing up three power plants and burning seven buses. The 75,000-member Popular Revolutionary Bloc, the largest of El Salvador's leftist movements, denounced the new junta as merely a "change of face" and planned a mass demonstration in San Salvador. While giving permission for the demonstration, the new junta warned that it would use force, if necessary, to prevent a new outbreak of street fighting. Declared Ungo:

"The state has the legitimate right of self-defense. We will allow political dissent but not delinquency." At week's end the terrorists announced that they would halt their offensive, but renew it if the new government failed to deliver on its promised reforms.

In Nicaragua, meanwhile, the three-month-old revolutionary government was also under fire. The new regime had released thousands of Somoza's loyal national guardsmen from custody and permitted many of his henchmen to take refuge in the embassies of countries that supported the Somoza dynasty. These unrepentant loyalists have attempted a counterrevolution, with political assassinations and minor acts of sabotage. Marxist Interior Minister Tomas Borge Martinez is determined to crush this threat, even if doing so belies the new regime's promise of a "generous revolution." Last week the decomposed body of Somoza Loyalist Pablo Emilio Salazar, the flamboyant "Commandante Bravo" of the national guard, was found in Honduras' capital of Tegucigalpa. Salazar had been tortured, and shot six times. By week's end his assassins were still unknown.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.