Central America: Appointment in La Palma

With a bold offer, Duarte reaches out to El Salvador's rebels

The stratagem was risky, audacious—and brilliant in its simplicity. In a few sentences uttered before the United Nations General Assembly in New York City last week, Salvadoran President José Napoleón Duarte pierced the psychological curtain that has divided his nation through nearly five years of civil war. During a 55-min. address, the stocky, dynamic Christian Democrat announced that he would travel unarmed to meet with his Marxist-Leninist foes, the guerrilla commanders of the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (F.M.L.N.). At the meeting, he said, he would discuss the incorporation of the insurgents "into the process of democracy, and the preparation in an atmosphere of freedom for the next popular election."

Duarte set a time and a place for the encounter: Monday, Oct. 15 at 10 a.m., in the town of La Palma (pop. 3,000), 50 miles from San Salvador, the capital. His choice of the site was also courageous: the area around La Palma has long been a guerrilla hotbed. Indeed, in the days following Duarte's proposal, young guerrillas armed with M-16 rifles and hand grenades openly strolled the village streets.

Nonetheless, Duarte intended to drive up the rutted highway to La Palma, accompanied at most by a small contingent of aides, in his cocoa brown Jeep Cherokee. Even though his meeting might end in complete deadlock, El Salvador's first freely elected civilian President in 50 years was confident, as he told the U.N., that he could present the guerrillas with a "new reality." Said Duarte: "The Salvadoran people now have no doubt that subversive violence has lost its mystique and reason for existence." He backed his assertion with the offer of an amnesty if the guerrillas agreed to lay down their arms and join the democratic process.

Duarte's move was hailed by Bishop Marco René Revalo Contreras, president of the Salvadoran Episcopal Conference, as "a decisive moment that could permit a suspension of the bloodbath in our country." Said Mark Falcoff, a resident fellow at the Washington-based American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research: "Duarte is showing a kind of brilliance and political imagination that U.S. Presidents sometimes lack."

Duarte's proposal does not alter his oft-stated insistence that the guerrillas would not be allowed to shoot their way into power. Instead, he said, they would have a chance to compete in nationwide municipal and legislative elections scheduled for March 1985. Nor did the President mention the reorganization of the 41,000-member Salvadoran army that the insurgents have long demanded. By calling for a face-to-face meeting with the guerrilla comandantes rather than with their civilian spokesmen (see chart), Duarte was showing that he truly wanted to get to the heart of the insurgency.