El Salvador Rebel Attack

Maria Lydia Vasquez, 30, had no more tears left to cry. Her eyes dry and red, & she watched silently as the bloody body of one of her two slain brothers was lifted from a cattle truck and lowered into a bare coffin resting on sawhorses in the street. A few miles up the dirt road, graves were being dug for the two brothers and 17 other villagers killed last week when 100 to 200 leftist insurgents raided the tiny hamlet of Santa Cruz Loma, 33 miles southeast of San Salvador, the capital. Among the dead were six members of the local civil defense team, as well as a woman and three small children. Three of the victims had their throats slit.

The assault on the village was one of a series of raids launched by the guerrillas against lightly defended targets. It came at a time when attacks by large units are relatively rare in El Salvador's civil war. Before legislative elections last month small groups of insurgents hit more than 20 small towns, burning government buildings and public records. In response, the Salvadoran government, with the help of U.S. military advisers, has been rejuvenating the country's civil defense network. One of the rebels' publicly declared goals is to undermine that effort; the object of the assault on Santa Cruz Loma was the village's still poorly trained and equipped 16-man civil defense unit. "We denounce the killer regime of (President Jose Napoleon) Duarte," read leaflets left on some of the corpses. "It is trying to use campesinos in paramilitary organizations to give security to their unjust system."

Until about a year and a half ago, government tactics in the struggle against the rebels focused on clearing them out of contested areas with sweeps by regular army units. Development projects were then established to show that the government cared for the residents' welfare. But all too often, the insurgents returned as soon as the army left. "There were cases where the guerrillas were using new schoolhouses for indoctrination classes," a U.S. official in San Salvador explained. "It was clear that there were not enough military forces to position them in each town."

Under the so-called new civil defense concept, the government has begun to rely on 7,000 better prepared volunteers to provide a visible, continuous security presence in 47 towns and villages. The forces are not expected to hold off a major attack, but to resist just long enough for armed helicopters and regular troops to come to their aid. While the program has proved its value in at least half a dozen guerrilla raids since last fall, it is just getting under way in some areas. In Santa Cruz Loma, the civil defense squad did have automatic rifles--but tragically had no field radios to call for help from an army post only five miles away.