Central America: A Population Explosion

While guests at the French Embassy enjoyed the Bastille Day cocktail party in the Honduran capital of Tegucigalpa, a slow old C-47 transport plane circled the city. One of the plane doors opened and out rolled a bomb that landed harmlessly in a muddy field. It was the Honduran capital’s first taste of the tragic and senseless miniwar that erupted last week between Honduras and El Salvador. At two points along the ill-defined border, Salvadoran troops pushed into Honduras, and the small air force of each country flew raids against military and industrial targets. After five days of fighting, the Organization of American States managed to impose an uneasy ceasefire.

The damage was already done. An estimated 2,000 soldiers and civilians, mostly Hondurans, were reported dead. Honduran bombs damaged El Salvador’s biggest oil refinery. The future effectiveness of the Central American Common Market, which has brought a surprising amount of industrialization to the region of the combatants in the past nine years, was imperiled, and the area’s main lifeline, the Inter-American Highway, was closed down by the fighting. In the wake of death and damage, a legacy of bitterness was created that might well bedevil the two neighbors for years.

In the past, Honduras and El Salvador have managed to live together in relative peace. Their people speak a common dialect that reflects their Spanish-Indian descent. They are both plagued by poverty and illiteracy, both are ruled by military leaders, and both depend economically on agricultural exports to the U.S. (coffee from El Salvador, bananas from Honduras).

The crucial difference is population density. The 3,300,000 Salvadorans, who are multiplying at one of the world’s highest growth rates, are jammed into a volcanic land no larger than the state of Massachusetts. The 2,600,000 Hondurans are spread thinly over rich territories, fragrant with pine, and five times as big as El Salvador. Such is the land hunger among Salvadorans that in the past two decades 275,000 of them have spilled over into Honduras.

At home, Salvadorans have of necessity become scrambling go-getters who have achieved a substantial level of industrialization. As expatriates in Honduras, Salvadorans have excelled as farm workers and shopkeepers. Increasingly, Hondurans began to resent the Salvadoran intruders, who sometimes took jobs and land away from local people. Honduras last year decreed a land reform, ostensibly to create more equitable distribution of its farm acreage. But one major effect was to deny Salvadorans the right to own land. Many Salvadorans, forced off their Honduran farms, began to return to their overcrowded homeland.

Mobs of Honduran hoodlums terrorized Salvadoran settlers by setting fire to their houses if they failed to heed warnings to leave. Salvadorans wrote to relatives at home telling of murder and rape by Honduras toughs. More than 11,000 Salvadorans fled Honduras, and frequent small clashes took place along the border.

Soccer War. Tensions were brought to flash point last month by a series of soccer games. A three-game play-off was held to decide who would represent Central America in the World Cup soccer championship this year. El Salvador’s team went to “Tegoose” (as Yankees call the Honduran capital) and lost 1-0 in overtime. Until game time for the rematch in the Salvadoran capital a week later, the Honduran players had to be hidden outside San Salvador. The Salvadorans won, and Hondurans retaliated by vandalizing Salvadoran stores in their country and boycotting Salvadoran goods. El Salvador accused Honduras of pursuing a policy of genocide against the Salvadoran people, and both countries broke off diplomatic relations.

The final soccer game was prudently transferred to the neutral ground of Mexico City. When Salvador won, the Hondurans were outraged. In an outburst of machismo, they sent an air force plane streaking across the skies of El Salvador. The Hondurans may well have looked on the flight as only a bit of face-saving muscle flexing, but the Salvadorans regarded it as a grave provocation. They decided to launch a preventive war.

Air Attacks. As Salvador’s old C-47 unloaded its bomb on the Honduran capital, six World War II-vintage Mustangs, which comprise the bulk of El Salvador’s air force, hit several Honduran garrison towns. Next morning, Hondurans wheeled out its eleven old, fold-wing Corsairs and sent them to bomb Esso oil tanks at two Salvadoran ports, Acajutla and Cutuco.

El Salvador’s ground troops attacked the provincial capital of Nueva Ocotepeque, in Honduras’ southwest corner. A brigade commanded by Colonel Mario (“El Diablo”) Velázquez Jandres, a hefty green-eyed man who sports modish sideburns, pressed poorly led Honduran units into a narrow defile, then battered them and the town with 75-mm. artillery and mortar fire.

Chased by El Diablo’s troops, Honduran soldiers and civilians alike fled over the nearby Guatemalan border. American Franciscan Father Roderick Brennan, Ocotepeque’s parish priest, estimated that he saw 500 dead Hondurans after the battle, 100 of them civilians. El Salvador claimed losses of only 18 soldiers killed. The blue and white flag of El Salvador flew over the nearly deserted Honduran town.

At week’s end, both countries accepted an OAS cease-fire proposal. It called for a withdrawal of Salvadoran troops from Honduran territory in return for a Honduran pledge to protect the lives of Salvadorans in Honduras. An OAS peace-keeping force would stand guard along the border until tempers cooled. Since both sides seemed to have exhausted their ammunition and war planes, there was hope that the truce might turn into a permanent peace.