El Salvador Stricken President, Ailing Country

"I have been a man of crisis, a man of battle, a fighting man. Now God has given me this one test more." With those words, a tearful Jose Napoleon Duarte bade farewell to friends, boarded a U.S. military transport and lifted off last week from San Salvador's Ilopango air force base. Seven hours later, the President of El Salvador checked into Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington to face his latest -- and most daunting -- challenge. Before leaving El Salvador, he had announced, "I have a bleeding ulcer in the stomach of a malignant character." Medical tests conducted at Walter Reed found that Duarte, 62, is suffering from stomach cancer that appears to have spread to his liver. "I'm going to fight," Duarte vowed. "God willing, I'll come out all right."

Duarte's farewell at Ilopango had a sad dignity, but could not disguise the fact that he departed a defeated man. In 1984 the stocky Christian Democrat rode to the presidency on a wave of popular enthusiasm for two of his electoral promises: to bring El Salvador's civil war to an end and to usher in an era of stability. That hope has long since given way to military stalemate, political confusion, social despair and pervasive corruption. When he took office, Duarte was touted by the Reagan Administration as the man who would bring democracy to El Salvador. But Duarte's populist concern with reform soon buckled under the frustrations of managing an intractable war. "It might not be his fault that there still is no peace," says fellow Christian Democrat Eduardo Molina Olivares, "but people blame him."

In fact, Duarte has had a hand in turning White House policy in El Salvador -- considered the Administration's sole success story in Central America -- into another potential failure, alongside Panama and Nicaragua. U.S. embassy officials in San Salvador continue to insist that Duarte is making slow progress toward ending the war and establishing a democratic system, but other Western diplomats are more pessimistic. "Things are a shambles," says a West European envoy. "The Americans are in for a shock." Even State Department officials concede that the rosy analysis emanating from the U.S. embassy is "dreamwork."

Duarte's departure is expected to deepen El Salvador's sense of political drift. Vice President Rodolfo Castillo Claramount, who is standing in for Duarte, lacks the charisma and the power to stem a slow disintegration. Recent attacks by leftist guerrillas on hydroelectric dams, bridges and power stations have stepped up the eight-year-old civil war, which has claimed some 70,000 lives. The increase in military action guarantees further erosion in an economy that is afflicted with a 26% inflation rate and cannot provide adequate jobs for half the work force. Right-wing death squads have returned, undermining Duarte's curtailment of political murders and other human-rights abuses.