“Well, Dr. Burstin, we are launching our final offensive and in two weeks we will be in power in El Salvador. About that there isn’t the slightest doubt. We have been meeting with different personalities to explain our political platform, which is progressive, independent, and anti-imperialist. That is why we have invited you, so you could perhaps help us explain it to your friends in the United States, especially the Jewish groups which control the media. In order to enter a truly democratic stage in the history of El Salvador, we must of course first destroy the current government, which is a puppet of American imperialism. We have the support of an absolute majority of the Salvadoran people, and in two weeks we will be in power.”

It was Wednesday, January 7, 1981. Having very recently returned to my home in Costa Rica from a wonderful year in England, I was reluctantly beginning to acclimate myself again to life in the tropics and trying to understand what had happened during my absence: the new Sandinista government in Nicaragua, the new junta in El Salvador, big changes in Panama, Honduras, and Guatemala, the coup organized by Maurice Bishop in Grenada, the economic crisis here at home in Costa Rica.

Then, on January 6, I received a curious phone call from a Salvadoran engineer, an efficient and discreet man who had worked in the Office of Information of the Costa Rican government when I was its director, a few years ago, and who still lived in San José in a sort of semi-exile status. “A group of representatives of the Democratic Revolutionary Front [FDR] and the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front [FMLN] of El Salvador want to see you as soon as possible,” he said. “Would you have any objection to meeting with us tomorrow night?”

“Well,” I replied, “it’s been three years now since I’ve had anything to do with politics. Why me?” In response he said something about my Zionist connections, something almost identical to what I was to hear eleven months later upon receiving a similar invitation from Cuban leaders to meet with them for a discussion of the situation in Central America and the Caribbean.

“May I bring a friend with me?” I asked him.

“Don’t worry, Doctor, nothing will happen to you,” he said.

“No, I’m not worried. It’s because I will need a witness if some day I decide to tell somebody this story,” I said. “It will be Miguel Angel Murillo. You know him well. He was the deputy director of the Office of Information when you worked there.”

He agreed. “We will pick him up first and then we will pick you up at 7:30 tomorrow night at your home. For security reasons we will go in one of our cars.”

It was not easy for me to convince Miguel Angel to accompany me. A man of outstanding intelligence, he was reluctant to get involved again in politics after leaving the crucial post he had held in the Office of Information. But finally he accepted. So that night, Wednesday, January 7, 1981, our Salvadoran engineer, efficiently and discreetly, took us in his car to a house on the West Side of San José, having to endure all the way my snobbish comparisons between this West Side and the West End of London. Miguel Angel, who knows me well, knew that I was not joking.

We arrived at eight. The house was a typical middle-class Costa Rican house, nice and clean, in a pleasant suburb full of similar houses. I was informed that it was there that the Salvadoran rebels usually got together. All such meetings had to be held in complete secrecy, in order not to violate the Costa Rican laws which forbid political activity to political exiles, and also to avoid the curiosity—so I was told—of several intelligence agencies who might be interested in what was going on there. (A few weeks later one of my patients told me in my office: “Doctor, I saw you a few weeks ago arriving at the house in our neighborhood where the Salvadoran guerrillas meet. I was at a party across the street when you arrived in the car they use to bring people to their meetings. Almost everybody recognized you. Some of them didn’t know you had returned from England and they wanted to go and say ‘hello’ to you, but I persuaded them not to do it because those meetings are completely secret.”)

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The night was cold and foggy. There were eight people inside, waiting. I knew some of them because they had lived in Costa Rica for many years as political exiles. Two of them had been my patients. One of them belonged to a prominent family of Salvadoran businessmen long established in Costa Rica; his father had been my patient, too. The engineer introduced them one by one, giving their names and the political or guerrilla organization to which each one belonged. Two were representatives of Christian organizations; a third was identified as a socialist (“but democratic,” he added when he was introduced); a fourth was also a socialist (with no adjectives added); then there was a Communist, “from the Communist party of El Salvador”; I was unable to understand what or whom a sixth (who was never to say a word all evening) represented; a seventh (the businessman’s son) introduced himself as “the representative of the private sector”; and, finally, the representative of the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front—the FMLN.

As soon as we were seated at the dining-room table, the representative of the private sector opened by saying that the simple fact of his presence there was a clear demonstration of the “pluralism” of the group. The representative of the FMLN then said—for the first time but not the last—that, as was evident, “Here, in this group, we are all equals.” As we were still in that stage of every serious conversation which falls between the initial courtesies and the moment of getting down to business, I repressed the impulse to quote Mark Twain’s observation about equals. Instead I asked him who had the guns. “We do,” he replied.

I nodded complacently. “So you are thinking of forming the next government of El Salvador before President Reagan is inaugurated and presenting him with a fait accompli?” That was my first idiotic question of the night. Miguel Angel was taking notes and throughout the long evening opened his mouth only to drink coffee and eat sandwiches—which, I realized later, was exactly what I should have done. For a moment, looking at this group of educated people, serious and committed, full of enthusiasm, mysticism, and high hopes, I felt as if I were in a time machine and that there, in front of me, were seated Kerensky, Zinoviev, Trotsky, Jan Masaryk, Béla Kun, and—inevitably in such a group—Joseph Stalin.

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Soon enough the cordialities and the smiles began to vanish. After my initial question, the two fervent Christians—they insisted on being identified as “Christians concerned about the poor”—spent a long time trying to prove to me that the Salvadoran “revolutionary process” was, really, the incarnation of the most profound ideals and beliefs of Christianity. I thought, but did not say, that the FMLN man sitting at my right—the one who was in charge of the weapons—didn’t look anything like Jesus or St. Paul. In a corner, scarcely concealed, I could see the butt of a machine gun.

It was the FMLN man who conducted the meeting. No doubt because he knew that I knew that at that very moment the Sandinistas in Nicaragua were drving out the non-Communist members of the original revolutionary junta, he kept repeating that everyone around the table was equal. After he had said this for the third or fourth time, I observed that his insistence on the point reminded me of the day when I returned home from my office and my daughter Yona, then six years old, was waiting for me at the door to tell me that “It was not me, Daddy, who broke the flower vase in the living room,” before I had even found out that the vase was broken. Only Miguel Angel and the representative of the Communist party smiled. Something is wrong here, I thought. It must be a problem of communication, as some of my academic friends say when they are describing people who do not understand each other because they don’t want to. Nevertheless I was determined to try, and so I pressed on.

“Why,” I demanded, “were you so violently opposed to the junta installed in your country by the young officers in 1979? After all, Salvadoran realities being what they are, they attempted to carry out a program of reform quite unusual in the history of your country. They even incorporated parts of the platform of the Left into their own program. Of course, you can say that they failed to stop the activities of the death squads, and that the reforms they proposed were not ‘profound’ enough. But all that means to me is that the junta in three months was unable to change the facts of life which have been with you for three hundred years. After all, we are talking about politics—that is, realities—not mythical transformations which only happen in the world of words.”

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They were listening. They were really listening. But before I had a chance to congratulate myself on my powers of persuasion, the representative of the FMLN replied: “It was because the junta was backed by American imperialism. The Yankees were behind the coup that overthrew the government of Carlos Humberto Romero. The young officers were puppets of American imperialism and all their reforms were a screen to prevent a real revolution in our country. Besides, they did not control the death squads, so we had to start this guerrilla war. It was unavoidable and it was the correct thing to do. We will be in power within two weeks and then, for the first time in the history of El Salvador, the People will be in charge of their own destiny.”

“Still,” said the man from the Communist party of El Salvador, “you are partially right on one point, Doctor. The truth is that I was appointed by that junta as a member of the Cabinet representing the Communist party, but it was impossible to continue because my friends here kidnapped me to prevent that process from going on.” This provoked a heated debate, which made things even more difficult. But the coffee was good and the conversation, apart from being completely irrational and unfruitful, was quite interesting and entertaining.

“We represent the great majority of the Salvadoran people,” said the man from the private sector after the debate had petered out. “Of course our people are afraid to express their support for us because they might be killed if they did. But our final offensive two weeks from now will be backed by all Salvadorans, in the same way that the Nicaraguan people overwhelmingly supported the overthrow of Somoza. Or do you believe that our people support the Salvadoran army and the death squads?”

“First of all,” I answered, “I think that the situation in Nicaragua cannot be compared with the one in El Salvador. In Nicaragua there was a real popular insurrection against Somoza, and an overwhelming majority of the Nicaraguans wanted to overthrow him, people from all classes and from all walks of life. In El Salvador, this is not the case. No, I don’t think that the people of El Salvador support the army or the death squads. But they don’t support you, either. The armed struggle is between the military and the guerrillas, and the people of El Salvador are mostly not participating. It is quite possible that the Salvadoran army will be unable to wipe you out completely, but they are in the government; and it is quite possible that you will be unable to wipe them out, but you are in the mountains. And if this military stalemate continues—and it seems to me that that is what is going to happen—then they will stay in the government and you will stay in the mountains. Meanwhile, the corpses will accumulate.”

They all vigorously shook their heads in disagreement. “You are completely mistaken,” said the representative of the FMLN. “There is not going to be any prolonged stalemate. We are going to take over the government within two weeks, and we are sorry that you are unable to understand us.”

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It was 11 P.M. By that time the rhetorical castles we had been building all evening were floating in the air, filling up all the space which was not occupied by the smoke of the cigars.

“It seems to me,” I said, trying hard, “that if within the next two weeks you are going to become the government of El Salvador, you will than need massive foreign aid to develop your country. Without the economic support of the Soviet Union, Cuba wouldn’t have survived. But as I understand it, the Soviet Union is unable, or unwilling, to finance another ‘socialist’ experiment in Latin America; Cuba already costs them enough. Therefore the Soviets may come to the conclusion that it is one thing to help create disturbances in the United States’s backyard, but quite another to finance one more of those experiments. On the other hand, you all talk the typical ‘anti-imperialist’ language of Latin American revolutionaries, and when you say ‘imperialist’ you mean, of course, the United States, following in the footsteps of your Sandinista friends. So I see little chance that the U.S. would be willing to help you finance your revolution, either. Where then are you going to get the economic resources you need to develop your country in order to improve the social conditions of your people, which is, I believe, the only reason that you are so eager to grab power in El Salvador?”

The only effect this devastating argument had was to provoke an astonishing response. “Listen, Doctor,” said the representative of the FMLN, “the Salvadoran people have been used to eating tortillas with seeds of jocote¹ for hundreds of years. We are sure that our people will be willing to eat tortillas with seeds of jocote for another hundred years in order to make the Revolution.”

Miguel Angel threw me a quick glance while he made a strenuous effort—as he told me later—not to stand up and call for a taxi. As for me, I managed to say that the argument of the FMLN man didn’t strike me as quite Marxist, or even slightly progressive, but if the Salvadoran people, as he said, had overwhelmingly decided to continue eating tortillas with seeds of jocote for another hundred years in order to make the Revolution, well, I had to respect the principle of the self-determination of all peoples. For an instant, I thought I could detect a small movement in one corner of the mouth of the representative of the Communist party, perhaps the prolegomenon of a smile.

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It was now after midnight. “It seems to me,” I said, a little tired, “that President Carter is not disposed to allow a Marxist takeover in El Salvador. He has recently increased military aid to the Salvadoran government. And President Reagan, whom you are going to confront with a fait accompli, has repeatedly said that he will never allow a Marxist takeover in any of our countries. Of course, you claim that Marxist-Leninists are only one part of your movement, but how are you going to get the American government to believe you? Anyway, fait accompli or not, President Reagan may decide that he will dis-accompli the fait. All this could lead to military intervention by the United States, and if that happens, nobody can be sure where it will end; nobody can be sure that Cuba will remain immune. I have the feeling that you are going to stay in the mountains for a long time. I don’t deny your capacity for destruction and your capacity to go on fighting for years. But I strongly believe that you will never get to the government by this path, and that the result of your struggle will be the destruction of the Salvadoran economy, the piling-up of corpses, and, eventually, a greater likelihood of a military confrontation between the United States and Cuba.”

I capped this explosion with yet another idiotic question. “Why don’t you enter into a serious negotiation, with appropriate guarantees, with all the democratic forces in El Salvador, to find a political solution to your problems? To me this seems the only way to pacify the country and to control the activities of the death squads. All you do now is provide them with the pretext they need to operate. What about elections? Old-fashioned elections, with due guarantees, clean, and under international supervision. Why not?”

The one who never said a word all night looked at me and I could read in his eyes what he was thinking: this stupid doctor doesn’t understand a thing. But the representative of the private sector had an immediate answer: “There is no chance of a political solution in El Salvador. There is no chance of elections, which our people reject. The only solution is a military one. Two weeks from now we will take over the government and then you will realize how mistaken you are.” At that point, the meeting finally broke up. I was not going to keep asking my idiotic questions forever, and my interlocutors were in any case invulnerable in their convictions and certitudes. I never saw them again.

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What followed is well known. The “final offensive” failed. President Reagan was not confronted with a fait accompli and the United States increased military and economic aid to the Salvadoran government. The Socialist International stated that the FDR/FMLN were “the true representatives of the Salvadoran people,” but elections were held for a Constituent Assembly, and the Salvadoran people did not confirm the Socialist International’s judgment of their political preferences. Still less did they do so in the subsequent presidential elections, which were boycotted by the FDR/FMLN and declared “a farce and a fraud” by the international Left despite the fact that there was an amazingly high turnout at the polls. The killings continued in El Salvador. The guerrillas were not defeated, the government was not toppled.

On Monday, October 8, 1984, at the United Nations, the elected President of El Salvador, José Napoleon Duarte, proposed a meeting with the guerrilla leaders. The death squads threatened to kill him if he kept to this proposal. (According to the theory of the death squads, the only way to solve the Communist problem is to kill the Communists, one by one, and also everybody who looks like a Communist, a broad definition by Latin American standards which has encompassed, in different places, democrats, social democrats, Jews, and even old-fashioned liberals.)

Nevertheless, one week later, on October 15, 1984, President Duarte met with the guerrilla leaders in La Palma. There was talk of an amnesty and of participation in elections by the FDR/FMLN. But the high hopes engendered by this first meeting were dashed at a second meeting held at the end of November in Ayagualo in which the FDR/FMLN reverted to their opposition to elections and demanded that the Duarte government give them a share of power without elections. Evidently for the sake of power they were now willing to work with these “agents of American imperialism” and even to forget about the “farce and the fraud” by which Duarte himself had come to power. After all the killing, the chaos, and the desolation, the guerrillas still refuse to understand that only elections—boring bourgeois elections—can legitimate the political power they seek. And so, thanks to this refusal, the killing, the chaos, and the desolation go on and will continue for who knows how long, and at the cost of who knows how many more thousands of corpses.

¹ A local fruit whose seeds are considered inedible except by the very poor.