Abstract
During the civil war in El Salvador, academics and students were arrested, kidnapped and murdered.
Miguel Angel Parada, the rector of El Salvador’s national university, visited London at the end of 1983 as part of an international tour to increase awareness of the plight of his university and of education at all levels in El Salvador. It was the third year of a brutal 12-year civil war. The university campus was occupied by the army on 26 June 1980, when 22 people were killed. Despite the occupation, Dr Parada and his colleagues offered courses to 17,000 students in rented premises throughout the city of El Salvador. Dr Parada’s own position was particularly hazardous. His predecessor, Felix Ulloa Martinez, was murdered. He himself was arrested in 1981 when troops burst into a university administrative meeting and detained 20 members of the council. The kidnapping and murder of students and university teachers continued unabated through 1983, the victims including Dr Enelson Escobar, a lecturer in the Faculty of Law, whose tortured body was found on 8 December 1983. His name, like that of Dr Parada, was on a list published by the Ejercito Secreto Anticomunista (ESA, the ‘Secret Anti-Communist Army’) of people with ‘subversive connections’. In spite of the dangers, Dr Parada remained outspoken in his defence of the university as the promoter of education in its widest sense, and the ‘defender of rational, critical thought in a country turned over to barbarism’.
Index: What is the present situation in the university?
Miguel Angel Parada: Well, as you know, we have not been able to use our campus since June 1980. The soldiers have let us in to get some files and documents, but many more were destroyed. Even so, we try to run as many courses as we can in places we rent.
When they took over the university we were just finishing the first half of the academic year 1980, with 30,000 students. It was only in 1982 that we could finish that academic year: but student numbers had dropped to 6,000. What happened to the rest? 24,000 young people who had wanted to study had been frightened away or forced to start work without qualifications. No country can afford to waste its future like that, especially not one like El Salvador, where there are so few professionals.
From Index on Censorship, 1984. An open letter to kidnappers of Hugo Francisco Carrillo from his family
What reasons have the government given for the armed intervention?
The government claimed that the university was trying to operate as a state within a state, and not obeying the rule of law, but that is nonsense. The police or military could always have access to our campus, but only if they did so in the proper legal fashion. They – not us – were the ones who ignored our country’s laws by bursting in violently and killing innocent people.
Then of course they said that we were a centre of subversion, a support base for the guerrillas. But in 1982 we pointed out to the Ministry of Education that the guerrillas seemed to be getting stronger and stronger, whereas we had been closed for two years – so how could we have been such an important base for them? These of course were just excuses, not the real reasons.
What were these then?
Historically, there has always been a great deal of tension between the government – in El Salvador as in many other Latin American countries – and the state universities. This is because in the universities people still try to think, still have ideals, and try to propose new ideas and models for society. They are continually faced with governments who do not believe in thinking, merely in repression. They cannot tolerate any criticism, anyone who denounces human rights violations or the abuse of power, or spotlights institutional injustice. The government and the university in El Salvador have never been allied, there has always been a contradiction between their efforts. This has always been the case, almost since 1841 when both the state of El Salvador and its university were established. And as the social conflict in our country has got worse, so have relations between government and university.
The government itself has stated publicly that the conflict in El Salvador is due to 50 years of neglect, corruption, and unrepresentative governments, so why blame the university? How in the midst of all this social turmoil can they expect the university to stay like an island of calm? The university is bound to reflect all the tensions and debates as to the rights and wrongs of the question.
The government said we were subversive, and pointed to the political graffiti all over the university walls. We replied that they should take a look at any wall in the city of El Salvador, and they would find exactly the same slogans. And if the armed forces, with all their troops, tanks, and helicopters, could not put a stop to it, how did they expect us to do so?
They also objected to the policy the university has of actively favouring those students with scant financial resources. Over the past 20 years we have made a conscious effort to recruit poorer students and to make sure that they are not kept from finishing their studies because of money problems. We have offered not only grants but small stipends to those most in need, as well as running university residences and restaurants, selling text books cheaply, and so on.
We argue that the right to education is a basic one, and that it is our responsibility therefore to give preference to those who might be denied that right for financial reasons; but the government also sees that as subversive.
How do you manage to continue?
It is getting more and more difficult. Our budget has been cut by almost 70 per cent over the past four years, and even without taking the extra expense of having to hire rooms into account, we do not have enough money to pay our staff.
We have lost about a quarter of our teachers. In the past few years, as many as 26 private universities have sprung up, some of them with more money and thus able to pay much better salaries. And of course, apart from those who drift away or prefer to go abroad, you must not forget that an average of one student or lecturer per week is being murdered in El Salvador.
The latest case, which happened now while I am out of the country, is the murder of Dr Enelson Escobar, a lecturer in the international relations department of the Faculty of Law. He was an economist who had always worked for the government, had even served abroad as a diplomat. But when he wanted to give the benefits of his experience by teaching in the university, he was kidnapped and killed by a right-wing death squad. They have apparently published leaflets accusing him of being a traitor to the country, of being in the university in order to pass government secrets to the guerrillas, but anyone who knows him knows that is absurd. To these people, the mere fact that he wanted to work in the university made him suspect, whatever his record or personal views.
Soon after your return to El Salvador there is not only the start of a new academic year but also elections in the country. What prospects do you see for the university in the coming months?
We are expecting more than 20,000 students to enrol for the academic year starting in February 1984, which shows how great the need is for the university.
But the pressures on us have become so intense, and are bound to get even worse in these pre-election months, that we are seriously wondering if it is worth the price we pay to carry on. The fact that we give lectures in the same place and at the same time each day makes us sitting targets for the death squads. There have already been paid advertisements in some newspapers with lists of students and teachers supposed to be ‘subversives’ – these are little more than an invitation to kill.
One plan we are discussing is for the whole university staff to go into exile and denounce the government, showing it is impossible in El Salvador today to have any university education. We do not expect anything very much from the elections themselves. It seems to me that if the government and the armed forces consider something like the university as a threat, when we make no political claims at all and have absolutely no wish to compete for political power, then any opposition party which does want to dispute political supremacy with them can have no guarantees whatsoever. In such circumstances, who can believe that the elections will be free and peaceful, or that the results will be respected if they go against the government?