As a result of such donor funding discrepancies, many programs that were the cornerstones of the peace accords suffered serious funding shortfalls. The impact of these shortfalls was significant and was particularly evident in the case of the PNC, where funding shortfalls resulted in woefully inadequate resources for the deployment of the new police force. According to Tommie Sue Montgomery, in one department 230 police officers shared seven vehicles and two motorcycles to serve an area the size of metropolitan Atlanta, Georgia. Other police precincts had no phones, radios, or vehicles.86 Similarly, funding shortfalls impeded the work of the public ministry’s office (including the attorney general) and delayed the land transfer program and judicial reform. Thus, funding shortfalls of high-priority programs jeopardized the peace process by neglecting the very programs that were mandated by the accords.
Truth, Justice, and Reconciliation in El Salvador’s Captured Peace
The importance of transitional justice to the peacebuilding process has been increasingly recognized by the international and scholarly communities. The purpose of transitional justice, which may include judicial and nonjudicial mechanisms, is to provide recognition to the victims of human rights abuses committed during war. The most common transitional justice mechanisms are truth commissions, prosecutions, reparations, institutional reforms, and memorialization.87 Transitional justice also necessarily entails confronting and reconciling the past. While some of the institutional reforms created by the peace accords may ultimately contribute to transitional justice, the process in El Salvador has been quite limited. To date, the most significant state-sanctioned element of transitional justice was the truth commission and its report. As demonstrated below, even that was undermined by the Salvadoran government.
The Truth Commission
The Commission on Truth for El Salvador, agreed to in the Mexico Agreement, was overseen by the United Nations. The commission, chaired by former Colombian president Belisario Betancur, began its work in July 1992 and published its report in March 1993, two months later than the original mandate. During the course of its investigation, the commission received more than seven thousand complaints from victims and witnesses and collected additional evidence from human rights organizations. The commission also conducted forensic investigations, including an exhumation at the site of the 1981 El Mozote massacre. In all, more than twenty-two thousand complaints were documented. The overwhelming majority (95 percent) of those accused in the complaints were classified as “agents of the State, paramilitary groups allied to them, and the death squads.”88 Some 60 percent of complaints involved extrajudicial killings, more than 25 percent involved disappearances, and more than 20 percent included torture. More than 75 percent of the complaints received by the commission pertained to events that occurred from 1980 to 1983, with approximately 50 percent of those occurring in 1980 and 1981. The commission also noted that 95 percent of complaints involved incidents in rural areas.89
The report, From Madness to Hope, identified both patterns of violence and specific cases attributed to State agents and death squads, the most prominent of which included the assassinations of Archbishop Óscar Romero, the Jesuits, the FDR leadership, Attorney General Mario Zamora, the American churchwomen, the murder of four Dutch journalists, and numerous civilian massacres. The report also documented the FMLN’s execution of mayors from 1985 to 1988 and other extrajudicial killings, including the murders of U.S. marines in the Zona Rosa in 1985. Most of the report, however, focused on the abuses and violence committed with impunity by state agencies and their affiliates. Among the report’s findings in individual cases, the commission concluded that Roberto D’Aubuisson ordered the assassination of Archbishop Romero; that the murder of the American churchwomen was planned before their arrival at the airport and that high-ranking officials impeded the investigation; and that Col. René Emilio Ponce gave the order to kill Father Ignacio Ellacuría and “to leave no witnesses,” which was followed by a widespread cover-up. In its investigation of civilian massacres, such as those at El Mozote, Río Sumpul, and El Calabozo, the commission determined that the armed forces had engaged in a systematic policy of targeting civilians:
Everything points to the fact that these deaths formed part of a pattern of conduct, a deliberate strategy of eliminating or terrifying the peasant population in areas where the guerrillas were active, the purpose being to deprive the guerrilla forces of this source of supplies and information and of the possibility of hiding or concealing themselves among that population.
It is impossible to blame this pattern of conduct on local commanders and to claim that senior commanders did not know anything about it. As we have described, massacres of the peasant population were reported repeatedly. There is no evidence that any effort was made to investigate them. The authorities dismissed these reports as enemy propaganda. Were it not for the childrens skeletons at El Mozote, some people would still be disputing that such massacres took place.
[. . .]
No action was taken to avoid incidents such as this. On the contrary, the deliberate, systematic and indiscriminate violence against the peasant population in areas of military operations went on for years.90
The Cristiani administration initially attempted to prevent the findings of the commission from being publicized but was unsuccessful in its attempts to persuade the FMLN to support that position.91 Unlike many truth commissions, the Salvadoran report named individual actors allegedly responsible for human rights violations. Although the Cristiani government initially supported identifying those guilty of committing abuses, its position changed once it became clear that high-ranking officials would be implicated.92 Threats of coups and retaliations, which had occurred during negotiations, soon resurfaced. Cristiani asked that the publication of the report be delayed until after the 1994 elections. The commissioners held firm in their decision, arguing that telling the “complete truth” meant naming names.93 As a result, more than forty individuals were named. Defense Minister René Emilio Ponce, himself named in the report in connection with the Jesuit murders, and other members of the high command called the report, “unfair, incomplete, illegal, unethical, biased and insolent.”94 Other members of the military high command directed their anger toward Cristiani, who, they suggested, had been “irresponsible” in having agreed to the commission.95
There were numerous other criticisms of the report. First, at the behest of the FMLN, there were no Salvadorans on the commission. The organization argued that the high levels of polarization and distrust between the government and FMLN would make it difficult to find mutually acceptable, neutral Salvadoran investigators and that using Salvadorans to take testimony would reduce the number of victims and witnesses willing to provide testimony.96 Indeed, many Salvadorans feared retribution if they were to testify about government abuses. But as Ana Guardado and others have noted, this decision not only prevented Salvadoran citizens from becoming full participants in the process but also meant that there was no government ownership of the report.97 Not only did the Cristiani administration refuse to accept the findings of the commission, but no effort was made to distribute the report, as had become common practice in other cases.98 Instead, Cristiani urged Salvadorans to forget the past. As described below, the refusal to acknowledge the report’s findings or assign responsibility for acts of violence seriously impeded reconciliation by perpetuating two very distinct narratives of the war.
Second,