El Salvador An Offer They Couldn't Refuse

By JOHN MOODY SAN SALVADOR

The neatly typed letter to Mayor Marta Gomez de Melendez opened with a cordial greeting. But there was no mistaking it for fan mail. The message from the Marxist-led Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (F.M.L.N.) informed the mayor of Cojutepeque that she was obstructing El Salvador's revolution and gave her a choice: resign within 72 hours or face "popular justice." Gomez, a normally outspoken member of the right-wing ARENA party, knew exactly what * the last phrase meant. In the past year, eight mayors who ignored similar F.M.L.N. invitations to quit had been "executed," as the rebels call their political murders. Unwilling to become another dismal statistic, Gomez joined 42 other mayors who have capitulated to the F.M.L.N.'s strong-arm tactics.

The drop-out-or-die ultimatums are an aggressive attempt to rectify a long- standing rebel problem. Although the F.M.L.N. has fought the 56,000-man Salvadoran armed forces to a stalemate during nine years of civil war, it has accumulated no sustained political influence. Now, two months before presidential elections, the insurgents have hit on a way to make their presence felt in nearly every town and village.

Even as it makes a mockery of local government, the F.M.L.N. is challenging the Salvadoran army with its boldest military offensive since 1983. Two days before Christmas, a well-trained assault team lobbed three bombs into the headquarters of the El Salvador armed forces. Seconds later, three nearby car bombs detonated. In all, three people were killed and more than 30 injured, most of them civilians. The same week, urban commandos set off two car bombs outside the air force general command in Ilopango. Last week the guerrillas bombed Treasury police headquarters, killing one person and wounding several others.

The rebel offensive is timed to remind voters that the F.M.L.N. remains a force to be reckoned with. The election of moderate President Jose Napoleon Duarte in 1984 seemed to promise an end to the grueling war. But failed talks with the rebels and charges of official corruption have dissipated the popularity of Duarte's Christian Democratic Party. ARENA has strongly rebounded and seems likely to corner the votes this time. But many observers foresee a runoff for the presidency between ARENA's Alfredo Cristiani and the Christian Democratic candidate Fidel Chavez Mena.

Far behind in the polls is the Democratic Convergence, a left-wing coalition. Its candidate, Guillermo Ungo, a leader of the rebel movement's political arm, has called openly for a dialogue with the F.M.L.N. While the guerrillas officially shun the elections as a farce, some strategists believe Ungo's participation may be useful. Explains Hector Silva, a spokesman for one of the parties in the Convergence: "Ungo knows he can't win. But with him running, how to end the war becomes part of the campaign debate."

In the countryside, the rebels woo the peasants by striking at wealthy | landowners. During the recent coffee harvest, the F.M.L.N. decreed that growers should pay their pickers nearly twice the legal minimum wage, which can be less than $2 a day. When some landholders refused to cooperate, armed guerrillas hijacked truckloads of newly harvested beans and redistributed the stolen booty to the pickers. Other landowners who balked at paying a "war tax" to finance the insurgency have been burned out.

The rebels' show of strength comes at a particularly difficult time for the government, which already faces staggering economic trouble. This year's coffee harvest will probably be the scantiest in 30 years, disastrous news for a country that counts on this single product for one-third of its income. An additional 50% of its income comes from U.S. aid, but belt tightening in Washington could erode the $537 million currently allocated to El Salvador.

More ominous, right-wing death squads are reviving their grisly trade. By one count, death-squad killings totaled more than 50 in 1988, more than double the number in 1987. And despite U.S. pressure on the Salvadoran army to respect civilians, soldiers are accused of responding to the guerrilla offensive by kidnaping and murdering suspected sympathizers.

The F.M.L.N. may not be able to win a military victory, but its leaders evidently hope to make El Salvador ungovernable until they are ceded a share of the power. Yet the new surge of terror by both sides only brings more bitterness to a country that seems doomed to endless war and senseless slaughter.