War Baby (13 page)

Among the correspondents it was known as the Number Four War; numbers one to three being Beirut, the Iran-Iraq conflict, and the Falklands. The American public had grown bored with the bodies on El Playon. Been there, done that. So many reporters had abandoned the Camino Real that the dining room had discontinued its breakfast buffet. Webb had propounded a theory that the political climate of El Salvador could be gauged by the Camino Real’s breakfast menu. All You Can Eat was front page on the Washington Post; à la carte meant no bang-bang and complete editorial indifference in New York.

The routine reminded him of Saigon. Every morning he presented himself at COPREFA, the press office at the Ministry of Defence, to listen to their spokesman exaggerate the number of rebel casualties claimed by their forces in the surrounding provinces, much as the JUSPAO press officers subverted their reports at the Five O’clock Follies at the Rex. Each day COPREFA officials taped ‘Urgent’ notices to the front desk at the Camino Real announcing staged press events, such as the ritual display of ‘defectors’, thin and unshaven men with the demeanor of beaten dogs who were seldom allowed to speak more than a few words.

Like Saigon, the city of San Salvador was a sour cocktail of excess and fear, an island of imported Americana surrounded by enemies. On the Boulevard de los Heroes, directly opposite the Camino Real, was the Metrocenter, claimed as ‘Central America’s Largest Shopping Mall’. Plump Escalon matrons in too-tight Levi jeans, trailing maids and babies, shopped for beach towels printed with maps of Manhattan and muzak played ‘I Left My Heart in San Francisco’. Outside, National Guardsmen cradled M-3 machine guns, fidgeting, clicking the safeties on and off.

On Wednesday nights at the Camino Real wealthy middle-aged Latinos shuffled past the oysters and spare ribs at the poolside buffet, and danced a few stiff rumbas before hurrying home for the 9.30 curfew, when the crackle of small-arms fire again echoed around the city. In the discotheque off the lobby, waiters in black cowboy hats darted around the strobe-lit dance floor carrying piña coladas to the rich sons and daughters of San Benito, until their shrieks of laughter were cut short by the FMLN cutting the power lines to the city, leaving the room in darkness.

Webb had heard Vietnam’s name invoked many times since he arrived in El Salvador. One night in the Sheraton’s paino bar he overheard a crewcut American in a tan suit giving a fellow journalist from a provincial Mid-West newspaper his view of the war: ‘Yes, sir, we sure as hell are not losing this one. This is no Vietnam. Nossir. Make sure your folks back home understand that, loud and clear. We can
win
this one.’

But unlike Vietnam there were no free chopper rides to the front lines to see how the war was being fought. Instead, every day Webb and his fellow correspondents went to the US Embassy and were handed transcripts from the rebel radio station, Venceremos, heavily censored by the CIA in Panama.

The only other option was to speak to the dead at El Playon.

* * *

The next morning, Daniels was still unsettled by their brush with ORDEN at Puerto del Diablo. He hardly touched his breakfast. He stared out of the window at the volcano, but Webb guessed that what he was actually seeing was his own bones mouldering in the gorge with the other disappeareds.

Webb just felt angry. These latest efforts to intimidate him had only strengthened his resolve.

Daniels put down his coffee cup. It rattled in the saucer.

‘You okay?’

‘I didn’t sleep very well. Are we out to El Playon again this morning?’

‘Change of pace. I’ve arranged an interview with Ricardo Beltran.’

‘Who’s he?’

‘He’s a guiding light in the Fourteen Families. A
finquera
, one of d’Aubuisson’s staunchest supporters. He’s also said to be ORDEN’s paymaster.’

Daniels nodded. ‘Okay. Just be careful where you park the car.’

As they drove through the streets that morning they passed automobile showrooms, Coke billboards and air-conditioned shopping malls. It was the worst of American freeway culture transferred to the malaria belt.

It was only around the plaza that you were reminded that you were in Latin America; vendors squatted beside panniers of oranges and corn; shoeshine boys haunted the outdoor cafés; toothless old women with arthritic fingers sat on the sidewalks begging. This was where you found the lottery ticket sellers and the newspaper vendors, the drunk and the mad, the hungry and the hopeless. The ones they called
la chusma
- the rabble.

Black and white police cars patrolled the sidestreets, rifle barrels bristling from the windows. Violence and despair simmered in the heat.

The crossroads at the Avenida Roosevelt and the Avenida Gustavo Guerrero was the divide between the downtown and the pleasant avenues of the wealthy. Here the houses were insulated from
la chusma
by high walls and luxuriant gardens. They passed a small park surrounded by expensive fashion boutiques, a supermarket and a busy McDonald’s. Above it presided the statue of Jesus, his arms outstretched, balanced on a tiny globe. The city’s namesake:
El Salvador del Mundo
, Saviour of the World.

‘Christ on the ball,’ Daniels observed.

‘I wish He was,’ Webb said.

San Benito was leafy quiet, the preserve of only the most privileged. The so-called Fourteen Families had their homes here and in neighboring Colonia Escalon.

The Fourteen Families were supposedly El Salvador’s ruling elite, but this was a fallacy; in reality power was shared between two to three hundred families, and almost all of them had built their wealth on coffee. Ricardo Beltran was the patriarch of one of the most influential of these clans.

The street was deserted. The twenty-foot-high stone walls of Beltran’s house had been reinforced with an extra ten feet of brick, topped with concertina wire. They were being by a closed circuit camera. As they got out, they heard the metallic click of a safety catch on an automatic weapon and the crackle of a handheld radio as the security moved into action on the other side of the gate.

A plain-clothes guard with an automatic pistol tucked into his belt checked their COPREFA identity tags and whispered into his radio. They were ushered into a courtyard fragrant with cannas and oleander. In front of them was a colonial-style two-storey house with bougainvillea creeper climbing the whitewashed walls, magenta pools of blossom lying undisturbed on the paving below. Two Mercedes limousines were parked in the driveway beside a marble fountain. Mozart drifted from an open window.

‘I am an anti-communist,’ Beltran said. ‘The United States is also anti-communist. Ronald Reagan is anti-communist. Therefore if I am extreme right, so is the president of your country. So are all Americans. So are you.’

Beltran spoke his twisted logic softly, like a reasonable man, ice clinking in his glass. An Alsatian slept on the carpet at his feet. On the other side of the room, Beltran’s daughter lounged on a brocade sofa, filing her nails, watching an episode of Starsky and Hutch that had been dubbed into Spanish. A parrot squawked in its cage on the terrace.

It was the 9-millimetre pistol lying on the cushion at Beltran’s side that made Webb nervous.

He returned his attention to his notebook. ‘Sir, yesterday we went out to Puerto del Diablo.’ He glanced up at Beltran. A muscle rippled in his jaw. ‘Who is responsible for the deaths in San Salvador?’

Beltran spread his hands, the helpless gesture of a civilized man. ‘I must tell you I do not know. The leftist guerrillas have destabilised our country to such an extent that it is no longer clear who is doing what to whom. Some people are very angry with these rebels and perhaps a few vigilantes have taken the law into their own hands. Then, of course, you have the leftists committing some of these murders for their own ends. So who is to say who is responsible for what?’

‘What do groups like the FMLN have to gain by killing teachers and journalists?’

‘To understand the mind of a communist you have to be one.’

Webb leaned forward, checked the small cassette recorder he had placed on the coffee table between them. ‘There is a consensus of opinion that almost all these killings can be attributed to the so-called death squads. It is said these groups are actually the government’s own security forces dressed in plain clothes, and that they are doing the government’s dirty work for them.’

Beltran was at ease with this sort of speculation. ‘You are just repeating propaganda from the leftists, dreamed up by the Cubans and Marxists.’

‘But what exactly is a communist, by your definition, Señor Beltran? Someone who resents having a member of his family taken from his bedroom in the middle of the night and murdered?’

Beltran picked up the pistol and started to play with it. ‘You have to understand, Señor Webb, our country is not like yours. We cannot be America. How long have you been here?’

‘Is this relevant?’

Daniels shot him a warning glance.

‘One month? Two months?’ Beltran continued. ‘And you think you understand El Salvador?’

‘Perhaps you’re right, sir. I don’t understand a country that makes war on its own people and murders all the doctors, priests and professors.’

Daniels coughed nervously. But Webb sensed that Beltran’s urbane façade was starting to crack. Besides, he did not think Beltran was going to use the pistol here in his own house, if for no other reason than he did not want blood stains on the new carpets. He felt safer here than he had at Puerto del Diablo, at least.

‘Señor Beltran, what is your opinion of land reform?’

‘It is an evil that will destroy free enterprise in my country. How will it benefit El Salvador if we take away the land from the very men who made it prosper? We blame your former president, Jimmy Carter, for exporting this nonsense. He forced it on us, in return for the money and arms we needed to defend ourselves from the Marxists. He did what they had failed to do - he brought communism to El Salvador.’

Webb had heard these same arguments propounded by President Thieu about social reform in South Vietnam. He supposed that King George III would have said the same thing to Washington and Adams.

‘El Salvador exports five hundred million dollars’ worth of coffee a year. The coffee growers stash the profits in Swiss bank accounts rather than pay taxes on it.’

‘Does the United States government tell your companies what to do with their profits? And what if we did pay our taxes here? What would happen to the money? The National Bank would give it to the Marxists for land reform.’

There was an edge to his voice now, and his eyes were bright with venom.

Webb ploughed on. ‘Most wage earners in this country get less than one dollar a day. Surely they don’t need a Marxist to tell them they’re hungry. They don’t need a Cuban to tell them their children are starving.’

Beltran did not answer. He clicked the safety off, then on, then off again. Finally he looked at Daniels. ‘You,’ he said. ‘You put away your camera and I will show you something.’

Webb shrugged and Daniels put his Canon back in its metal case.

Beltran left the room. Daniels and Webb looked at each other, but did not speak. Daniels was pale.

Beltran returned with a small sugar sack. He emptied the contents onto the table. At first Webb thought they were dried apricots but then he remembered seeing similar trophies in Vietnam.

They were human ears.

‘This is what we do to those who will not listen to the voice of reason and moderation in this country.’

Webb stared back at him.

‘These once belonged to your beloved Marxist guerrillas. Now I will answer your question, señor, and I will answer the Marxists at the same time.’ He picked up one of the ears and held it to his mouth. ‘GO FUCK YOURSELF! There, I think he heard that, señor. Now, I think our interview is over. I will advise you to be very careful in El Salvador. You are a guest in our country. When you are a guest in a man’s home and you piss on his carpet he is no longer required to be the genial host, no?’

The maid showed them out and they went back to their car in silence. Daniels did not speak until they reached the forecourt of the Camino Real. Then he said: ‘Everyone in this country is a fucking psychopath,’ and he went straight to the bar and got drunk.

At the opposite end of the Avenida Roosevelt, in the hub of the downtown area, was the Metropolitan Cathedral, notorious since 1980 as the scene of Archbishop Romero’s murder. It faced a small, dusty plaza and the somber facade of the National Palace. A handful of supplicants moved through the square soliciting contributions for the families of the disappeared.

Webb and Daniels paused in front of the cathedral. A flock of raucous parakeets wheeled overhead. Webb checked his watch. Almost five o’clock.

They went up the steps and through the barricades. He looked back across the square. Two olive-clad National Guardsmen watched them from the balcony of the palace, two Mussolini look-alikes in their black helmets and shiny black Prussian boots.

The atmosphere inside the cathedral was that of a construction site abandoned because of a labor dispute. High concrete walls bristled with rusting structural rods weeping brown stains down the concrete. There was unfinished wiring, fluorescent light fixtures hanging askew, and the high altar was backed by a piece of warped plyboard. There were no frescoes on the walls, and no representations of the Stations of the Cross, because Romero had halted the expensive refurbishment of his church. He had said the money should be spent on the people and not on display.

Webb and Daniels took a place in the pews and settled down to wait. It was dark inside; there were no candles burning on the high altar. The flowers that had been placed there had long since died.

Webb saw dark stains near the altar, splashes of blood on the linoleum floor. Romero’s tomb was in a transept off to the right, it was surrounded by offerings of fresh flowers and notes decorated with motifs cut from greetings cards. Three women, their heads covered in white lace veils, were praying at the sarcophagus. A needlepoint tapestry had been placed on the tomb. Webb silently translated:
Praise to Monsignor Romero from the Mothers of the Imprisoned, the Disappeared and the Murdered.

A figure appeared from the shadows and sat down beside him. ‘Señor Webb?’

‘Father Hernandez?’

‘Thank you for coming.’

‘Thank you also. I realize the risk you are taking.’

‘My life belongs to God. There is no risk greater than the loss of one’s soul. Follow me, please.’

A car waited for them at a side door. They got in. Their driver touched the rosary that hung from the rear-vision mirror and crossed himself. They drove out of the city into the
barrancas
.

* * *

‘La Fosa’
. It meant: ‘The Grave.’ It was one of the city’s most desperate slums, where the
mozo
- the truly poor - lived in cardboard boxes, under pieces of tin and black plastic held down with rocks. Webb saw children playing in sewage. Any spare expanse of wall had been plastered with graffiti.

They stopped outside an undertaker’s parlor, a wooden shack with cheap wooden coffins stacked inside like firewood. Father Hernandez led them inside, past the hordes of near-naked children who had come to stare.

The corpses of a young man and woman lay on the cement floor.

Daniels started to take pictures.

A woman knelt over one of the bodies, rocking backwards and forwards, her arms clutched to her stomach as if she had been stabbed. She was helpless with grief. A young man was trying to comfort her, but she was past consolation.

‘What happened here?’ Webb asked the priest, his voice hoarse.

Father Hernandez spoke quickly to the undertaker then said: ‘That is her son. Some men came, took them both away to a barn. They tied his thumbs behind him with barbed wire, then put some rope through the wire and threw the other end over the rafters. They lifted him until his feet were clear of the ground. Then they tied a bucket to his genitals and every half an hour they threw a heavy stone into the bucket. It took him sixteen hours to die. They made her watch.’

Webb thought he was going to be sick. He turned away.

The President of the United States condones this, he is backing these people. How can you be the leader of the ‘Free World’ and let such obscenities happen?

‘So you see, señor, death is not the problem here,’ the priest said. ‘It’s the terror. Finding heads lying in the street, men with their genitals stuffed in their mouths. The people who do this, they are not human. As a priest I should not say this, but I wonder if they even have a soul.’

Daniels put his camera down. ‘I’m all done here,’ he said.

The priest said some words over the bodies and followed them outside. Daniels excused himself. Webb heard him retching in the alleyway beside the undertaker’s shop. Webb got back in the car, oblivious to the children crawling over it, grabbing him, reaching into his shirt pockets.

Father Hernandez climbed in beside him. ‘I am sorry if you found it distressing, señor.’

‘How can you do this? How can you come here day after day and not lose your faith?’

‘Evil will always be with us. You think crucifixion is not a cruel way to die?’

Daniels got back in the car without a word. As they drove back through the streets of the
barranca
, Webb composed his story.

* * *

Ricardo Beltran threw the bag of human ears on the table. ‘This is what we do,’ he said, 'to those who will not listen to the voice of reason.'

I did not ask Señor Beltran how he came by the ears. I did not dare. Señor Beltran is a leading figure in the government here, a respected businessman, and a close friend of the president, Roberto d’Aubuisson. He is also considered a close friend of the US administration in San Salvador, who have described him as 'a man committed to bringing democracy to Central America'.

Señor Beltran lives in a privileged and leafy suburb of San Salvador, his palatial home protected by security guards wielding shotguns and automatic weapons. In the valley below, almost within view, tens of thousands of people live in cardboard boxes, in filth and squalor. Each day more and more bodies pile up on the lava flows at El Playón; most show signs that they were tortured before being killed. Their murderers are never found. The reason for this is that the death squads are believed to be either off-duty soldiers and policemen or thugs directly in the pay of the government.

That this is a brutal and evil regime is without question.

The more pertinent questions regard our own country. From what are we protecting the people of El Salvador? What government could possibly be more brutal than the incumbents? Why is the Reagan administration supporting a government perhaps as murderous as the one that ruled Nazi Germany in the thirties, one that may even be compared in its barbarous intent towards its own people to that of Stalin’s Russia?

Last financial year our president’s apocalyptic obsessions led us to squander one hundred and forty-four million dollars on shoring up this tyranny.

Do we hear the ghosts of Washington and Lincoln in the Capitol tonight, asking: When did our country lose its way?

* * *

By the time he had finished he was sweating. The story had poured out of him in a rush, three thousand words, in without even pausing for rest. It was the first time he had not struggled over copy. Together with Daniels’ photographs, he was sure the piece would make the front pages across the country.