Word: salvadors
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...just that he became El Salvador's first elected civilian President in half a century. Nor that he began peace talks with leftist rebels after five years of convulsive bloodletting. Those achievements, impressive as they are, only hint at why Jose Napoleon Duarte has come to embody the desperate hopes of a nation. His singular quality is his bravery...
Such courage is especially admirable in El Salvador, where 50,000 people, one out of every 100 citizens, have been killed over the past five years. Murder knows no political allegiance: the right-wing death squads, often linked to the military, have terrorized the country, as have the rebels. Duarte, moreover, was already acquainted with his new job's physical risks. Robbed by fraudulent vote counting of what seemed like certain victory during his first presidential run in 1972, he was severely beaten by Salvadoran soldiers before exiling himself to Venezuela for seven years. His pug face, with its slightly...
...President again, this time against Roberto d'Aubuisson, a cashiered army major with a brutish past and some unlovely friends. The whispered threats resumed, but Duarte persevered through a March election and May runoff to capture 54% of the vote. The U.S. proclaimed Duarte's victory proof of El Salvador's progress toward democracy, but the new President cautioned against great expectations. "Are we going to arrive at perfection?" he asked. "It is a satisfying thought, but I think not. We are human...
From his first day in office, Duarte moved on all fronts. He proved an able lobbyist in Washington, charming a reluctant Congress into approving some $200 million in economic and military aid. He shuffled the command of El Salvador's security forces, long considered the breeding ground for the death squads, and watched the number of killings sink from 40 a month to less than a dozen. He assured businessmen, deeply suspicious of his left-leaning economic and social policies, that he would listen to them...
Aware that he could not survive in office without the army's allegiance, Duarte asserted his control over the military with the care reserved for a freshly housebroken tiger. He toured barracks and plotted strategy, but always in consultation with the beribboned officers who once ran El Salvador...