SALVADORAN LAND REFORM IMPERILED, REPORT SAYS

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP84B00049R001002400020-8
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 3
• Document Creation Date: December 20, 2016
• Document Release Date: May 22, 2007
• Sequence Number: 20
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Approved For Release 2007/05/23: CIA-RDP84B00049R001002400020-8
alvadoran Land Reform
i
m eriled -Re ort s a.
[
By'Karen DeYoang - UCS statistics.as "not as ii rule de-
WtWdngtonPostFgretgnservioe finitive or'reliable"and characterized
Land-reform workers in El Sal- the land-reform program
aq "a re,
~
vador have charged that. the 4eforrif'
program, strongly supported.:.bY the
Reagp,,administration as a lcby to
future Salvadoran democracy and
stability, is near collapse. because of .
military-backed terror and murder,
illegal peasant evictions and a slow,
"frequently hostile" bureaucracy.
In a December report. requested
by Salvadoran President Jose Na-`.
poleon Duarte; the executive board
of the Union Comunal Salvadorena,
the country's largest peasant organ-
ization -and an indirect recipient of'
U.S. aid for educational and advisory
assistance to the program, said that
"the' failure of the agrarian reform
process is an immediate and immi-
nent danger." .'
Asked Friday about the report,
the State Department dismissed the
markable succ"e8s i3tiiry~` " "
"
' "~
The administration must xertif
to Congress this week that the Sat-
'vadoran government is "making. con-
tinued progress in. implementing"
promised reforms, including , land
reform, or risk a cutoff ,of the $25.
miljion in U.S. military aid 'and" $40
million in economic assistance,
gated this year for: 91 Salvador,,. DEANE NINTON '
is
whi eh also require certification that - - -
El . alvador- is making progress to. with, administration officials about
ward stemming human rights abuses questions raised both, by the UCS
and promoting a political rather report and a recently completed in-
than military solution to the corm: ternal Agency for. International De-
try's civil war, were mandated lastvelopment. audit of a $10 million
month in response to'concern over U.S. aid project to a mist the land
administration backing' for, the .Sal reform, as' well as an extensive re-
vadoran leadership. spouse prepared for The Washington
But background conversations
 Approved For Release 2007/05/23: CIA-RDP84B00049R001002400020-8
The Reagan administration has
continued its predecessor's support
for the reforms, while stepping up
military aid to help the government
in its year-old civil war with leftist
guerrillas. It does not dispute that
there are serious problems with the .
land-reform program, many of which
it blames on bureaucratic inefficien-
cy and the size of the task.
However, while it acknowledges, a
lack of control over elements of the
military by civilians who now share
power with the Army, it contends
that the government is gradually.
bringing these elements to heel. ,In
the administration's view, the bulk
of the problems are -caused by the
guerrillas, who it charges ' are sabo-
taging the reforms and killing more
civilians than the military.'
While economic aid is necessary
to promote the reforms, the admin-
istration argues, the defeat of the,
guerrillas is vital if the reforms are
to succeed. ' '
Critits of U.S. policy, including a
number of members of Congress, ,
long have maintained the opposite.
They charge that despite the good
intentions of some in the Salvadoran
government, the reforms are being
thwarted by rightists in* the same
military that is pledged to imple-
ment them and the wealthy who
want to return to the status quo.
This situation, they maintain, . is
'merely perpetuated by U.S. military
aid.
A copy of the critical UCS report,
which is dated Dec. 10, and covers
events 'in 198t, was given to The
Washington Post by Leonel Gomez,
the former deputy director of the
Post by U.S. Ambassador to El Sal-
vador Deane R. Hinton, reflected a
deep?concern about the problems
they pose for certification.
The audit, dated Dec. 17, 1981,
notes "progress" in the project, but it
cites serious difficulties in monitor,
ing the distribution of U.S. funds. It
notes. that AID receives information
on the reform only through govern-
ment meetings and written reports,
with no field work of its own because
of security problems.
While the congressional restric?
tions on aid contain no provision for
rejecting administration certification,
the House subcommittee on inter-
American affairs, chaired by Rep.
Michael Barnes (D-Md.), has sched-
uled hearings to begin Feb. 3 on El
Salvador.
Although Barnes said in an inter-
view last week that he fully expects
the certification to be made, he said
the hearings were intended to allow
the administration to justify it and
to allow critics of U.S. and Salvador.
an government policies to air their
views. The UCS document is expect-
ed to be discussed in the hearings.
Land reform was decreed in early
1980, about six months after a group
of reform-minded young military
officers staged a successful coup
against the last in a long line of
rightist generals. 4
The land-reform program is divid-
ed into two operative parts, designed
to benefit nearly one-fifth of El Sal-
vador's 5.5 million people. It calls for
government expropriation, with com-
pensation, of more than 300 large
agricultural estates to be turned over
to peasant cooperatives, and the
granting of ownership titles for small
plots to as many as 125,000 share-
croppers and tenant farmers.
Land redistribution, along with
other political and economic reforms
promised by the new government
and supported by the United States,
was considered vital to satisfy the
aspirations of El Salvador's majority
peasant class and to counter appeals
to them by the left, which argued
that revolution was the only way to
alter permanently the status quo.
The reforms have been bitterly op-
posed by the conservative Salvador-
an business community, and the
large landowners for whom the right'
ist military historically ruled the
country.
A. Salvadoran government ' agency
charged with carrying out the land
reform. Gomez, who now lives in
Washington and 'publicly opposes
U.S. policy in El Salvador, fled his
country last January when agency
director Rodolfo Viera, a. former
head of the UCS, was killed there
with two American labor officials.
The State Department was given
a copy of the report by the AFL-
CIO-affiliated American Institute for
Free Labor Development, which has
worked in El Salvador since 1966,
and helped found the UCS in 1968
as an association of peasant cooper-
atives.
According to the labor institute's
deputy director, Sam Haddad, cur-
rent UCS membership is about
110,000 peasants. In the past two
years, the labor institute has re-
ceived U.S. aid grants, this year to-
taling $1.5 million, which it uses to
pay about. 200 UCS officials and
members to promote land reform
and give technical assistance to its
beneficiaries and to monitor imple-
mentation of the program in the
countryside.
While he emphasized that the
labor institute and the UCS are "still
very supportive" of the land-reform
concept, Haddad said "a lot of the
things" in the UCS report "are true"
and that the labor institute stands
behind the documentation. Both the
labor institute and Gomez, who re:-,
quested that he be identified as hav-
ing released the report to the press,
expressed fear that newspaper pub-
lication of the charges -in the report
would place UCS officials in El Sal-
vador in physical danger.
- 'I can see people down there .
the extreme right . .'. being most
upset, and taking revenge, if it got'
out that the executive board of the,
UCS published this," the labor in-
stitute's assistant director, Jesse
Friedman, said. The two Americans
killed. with Viera last January, Mi-
chael. Hammer and Mark Pearlman,:
were employes of the institute Two'
Salvadoran businessmen were ar.
rested in connection with the deaths,
but one has since been released.
Gomez maintained that UCS'
leaders were "risking their lives" by.
compiling the document, but said
that "I don't talk about the `extreme
right.' I talk about the [Salvadoran],
Army."
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Among its specific allegations, the
report says that "at least 90 officials"
of peasant organizations, many of
whose cases are detailed in one of
several appendices to'the report, and
"a large number of beneficiaries" of
the land reform "have died during
1981 at the hands of the ex-land
lords and their allies, who are 'often ',
members of the local security
forces." " 1 1. .
It says. more than 25,000 former
sharecroppers or tenants have been
forcibly evicted from their farms, "in
the majority of cases with the assist-'
ance of members of the military
forces," before they could claim the
ownership documents.
Using figures that generally agree
with those of AID for the same pe-,
riod, the report notes that only,`
about 15,000 families eligible for in--`:
dividual ownership have been grant
ed provisional titles to their land.
Since the program began in April,
1980, no permanent titles'have been
granted to individuals. Of more than
300 peasant cooperatives formed on '
former large, privately owned es
tates, only two have received title to
the land. One more title was granted
after the UCS report was compiled.
"What had begun 'in March and
April of 1980 with bright promise,"
and had continued to 'show bright
promise even through the, End of
1980," an 11-page summary of the:
document concludes, "now threatens
to become a nightmare of bureau-
cratic red tape, evictions and kit-~.`
lings, in which it will soon. be beyond'
the capacity of the 'government or
the campesino [peasant] leadership
to prevent a complete loss of faith
by our country's cainpesinos in the
agrarian reform program.
"If and when this happens, the
extreme left will have ' free rein
throughout the countryside and all
prospects for ending the violence or
instituting democracy will be at an
end."
Ambassador Hinton disputed , a
number of the figures in the UCS
report, described some as . "un-
proven," and differed in interpreta-
tion of others.
"While the embassy does not deny,
that implementation of the agrarian
reform can be improved," he said in
a written response to questions
transmitted to the State Depart-
ment, "it is essential to view the re-
form within the context of violence
and social upheaval taking place in
El Salvador today."
Addressing specific points in the
document, Hinton,said that 20,000
provisional titles have been issued to
sharecroppers and 'tenant farmers
covering 30 percent of what he ,said
were , 67,000 potential beniticiary
families
The State Department and AID,
in previous documents and congres-
sional testimony, consistently have
calculated the number of potential
beneficiaries as 125,000, the figure
also used by ;UCS. The new figure of
slightly more than half the original,
Hinton said without elaboration, was
due to "subsequent analysis based on
the best`available data."
Without addressing' directly the
delays in- granting:' permanent titles,
to small-plot farmers,, Hinton said
"the important consideratigns, rather
,than estimates based ,on insufficient
or dated statistics, is that the process
is, continuing and is doing so under
conditions less than ideal."
Hinton said ' the 'titling of large
cooperatives, with only three out of
326 farms completed so far, re-
mained a "serious bottleneck and
will continue to be unless major,legal
reforms are made of the entire reg-
istry process. The chances . of this
taking plate in the immediate future
are not likely."
Although the UCS and others
have charged that the lack, of titles
raises, the hopes, and spurs the ac-
tions, of those who hope to reverse
the process, Hinton said that titling
"is only one part of the agrarian re-
form process" and that the impor=
tart thing is that the' cooperatives
are now in possession of the land,
,with or without titles.''"
On the question of evictions, Hin-
ton said that in those provinces "not
affected by the high levels of vio-
lence, little in the way, of evictions
has occurred and that generall y but
not always the armed forces are,
within their own limited capacities,
giving support to the entire agrarian-
reform process including attempts to
assist farmers who have been illegal-
ly evicted."
He said that killings oicivi7iane
have decreased in the past year, and
that while they still occur, "the nun
ber is impossible to determine with
any degree of accuracy." In general,
human rights organizations monitoring the situation in El Salvador
agree that, after a high level last'
winter and through the early spring,
the .. number of deaths , decreased
through the summer. But listings_by
the University of Central America in
San Salvador, ' amosq' others; show
an upswing beginning in October. .
The labor institute maintains that
,,the UCS report -is accurate because
of the organization's extensive field
reporting.. According to the AID in-
ternal audit of its assistance to land
reform,, "because of the political At-
uation in 'El Salvador and inade-
quate staffing," the AID office there
confined its monitoring of the pro-
ject to "periodic meetings with [gov-
ernment] officials and reviews of sta-
tistical reports." Field visits to pro-
jects, it says, "were discontinued due
to dangerous, conditions that existed
in project areas."
The audit, which covers the pe-
riod from July 7, 1980, to May 31,
1981, notes that "progress was being
made in achieving the objectives." It
goes on, however, to, raise serious
questions about lack of technical as-
sistarice to cooperatives and of su-
pervision over the spending of U.S?
funds, including "about $872,00Q,of
ineligible loan expenditures", tq}pi-
bursed by AID in El Salvador.
AID officials in San Salvador, s?gd
ad the deficiencies pointed out irt,te
audit had been corrected, but, lousy
declined to detail measures ten until they have been officially.com-
municated to Washington.
Washington Post special corre-
spondent John Dinges contributed
to this -article from Sari Salvador.