Borderlines

These are not useful you know. School. Violence in El Salvador has spilled over into American schools and American streets in San Francisco President Jose Napoleon Duarte's appearance brought forth a noisy uncontrolled confrontation between his detractors his supporters and police. A dramatic illustration of the internal problems of a small Central American nation have repercussions far from its borders or Tay acknowledges.

Thousands of refugees from El Salvador are fleeing his country making their way through inhospitable Honduras Guatemala and Mexico risking life and fortune to cross borders without proper documents seeking safety in America especially in a traditionally hospitable city San Francisco. One hears of the city of Central America a certain sameness about them but also a dramatic compelling intensity. They are personal tales of adventure tragedy and hope they relate how innocent peoples lives and fates can be caught up in the complexities of war revolution and international politics. What is the light here in the

West. It's like you're just another one of the militia. Nearly 200000 Salvadorans are leading disrupted ill fed lives in refugee camps within their own country afraid of violence in the countryside forced away from their homes by a war between government forces and guerrillas in many cases male family members are missing taken away by the authority leaving the women struggling to keep the children together and alive in a dangerously chaotic situation. It is little wonder then that the sent people a Terro has gambled everything on an undocumented trip north to the United States hoping he can eventually bring his wife and four children here and somehow get them to the Bay Area.

Tara works as a handyman at a machine shop in San Francisco. His troubles not yet over his past is very much a part of his present in El Salvador. But Tara was a tugboat operator and a union member. The National Guard began to look for me at my home but they didn't find me that way because I was working. I was labeled red on the work loss which the guards had to get us in and. What has happened I thought is that they are now dead that some were found he kept a table and yet others were found machine and got it for the simple reason that they were members of the union to which I belong. I talk about this here. If I had not left my country I would be dead today decapitated. Because that's the latest fashion in which we're being massacred in my country. Refugees like Le Taro often arrive in the bay area with little more than the clothes on their backs. They travel light. Most of their money paid out along the way and bribes to

officials and fees to co-opt is to smuggle them across the border. They arrive for the most part without papers sometimes seeking out friends or relations who have established a home or at least a refuge in the Bay Area. For since World War Two the San Francisco region has played host to multitudes of Central America. So often they gravitate to the Mission District which is long been home to the city's Latino population. Signs of the refugees presence are all around although the refugees there. Selves lending to the population and become essentially invisible. Casa Nicaragua was and to a lesser extent still is a center for those who escaped from civil war in Nicaragua in the late 70s as honest as yes a Moses regime began to crumble although most of CASA Nicaragua's original members have returned home. A small cadre remains in San Francisco supporting the leftist Sandinista government back home. Casa Nicaragua also lends support to its much newer counterpart.

Heres an offer of contacts and a place to wile away the idle days for refugees waiting for the civil war to end. Waiting to hear it's finally safe to go home. Most of the 200 or so Salvadorans who make it to San Francisco each week are young men who left their families at home or somewhere along the way or death. Most are anxious that word of their presence here not get back to El Salvador where family members would be endangered or their own eventual return would be jeopardized. Jose Rene Franco That's not his real name isn't quite so worried about that since his family has left. He has found shelter with the sympathetic San Francisco couple in their small three room apartment where he helps with the chores in his home country. Jose taught mathematics in physics. He was a member of a Teachers Association and that got him arrested.

I went home and I didn't like the fact that all these teachers were asking for better wages and what they felt was an insurrection. When you were arrested what happened with the Buddha. He hit me with the butt of a rifle and pistols and they burned my legs. But the psychological and physical torture right. Like putting an empty 45 to your head and pulling the trigger. Or they leave you hanging by your arms up all night. When he finally escaped Jose Franco like many Salvadoran refugees got help and advice from amigos Del Salvador a Catholic sponsored refugee operation housed in an unused Catholic school in San Francisco and run by Sandra Gutierrez she has arranged lodging and clothing for many of the Salvadorans who somehow find their way to this vacant convent. She also finds them shelter elsewhere and tries to arrange for jobs. But that's more difficult for the refugees are for the most part undocumented

illegal aliens. What was it. Sometimes she counsels refugees on how to apply for political asylum in the United States but most Salvadoran is like 62 year old farm worker Manuel will not risk contact with any officials American or Salvadoran. In fact the stories Sandra has heard have convinced her that the Salvadoran military forces are responsible for most of the deadly persecution in El Salvador. Yeah well when looking for his missing son and was tortured by the soldiers he asked for help even without being let out the sergeant went and got a glove and

tied my head yet he what he put me on all fours and he called me the Son of God or I that I shouldn't love and time and my son watch them hit me and saw how they were torturing me. Iraq and number many are only the ones that I don't think I can maybe and I don't. I'm not getting a bit out of it what they don't know I saw the law broke and then they went to get a rope and hung me about this guy and he said you still have the courage to keep talking Your son of a whore and that bitch your woman is saying that she's coming to get you out of that or find your head on the highway. But when a man well was recounting threats but as the world has come to know murder has become commonplace in El Salvador. In a country with fewer than five million people the death toll in the past two years has been estimated at up to 30000. The president today said that is exaggerated. Catholic priests nuns and bishops have been the most publicized of the

victims particularly the four US church women whose bodies were discovered in a shallow grave after they were shot to death on their way home from San Salvador airport in December of 1988. And Archbishop Oscar Romero was gunned down as well while saying Mass the day after he had given a speech asking Salvadoran soldiers to lay down their arms at the archbishop's funeral bombs exploded shooting broke out and an estimated. 40 persons were killed in violence against the church is obviously no accident. For just as Catholics have led efforts to help refugees in North America they have also taken a leading role in opposing repression in Central America. San Francisco Archbishop John Quinn says the church in El Salvador is being persecuted because it sides with the poor against the government. What was that about. Well you

know. Oh well. Oh. That translates directly into social action by the Catholic Church in helping refugees in San Francisco and in full fledged involvement overseas. The San Francisco archdiocese seems more involved than some others its commission on Social Justice delves into injustice on a worldwide basis with a strong concern for Latin America. The church has evolved a liberation theology an active involvement in the cause of the poor. Why. What do you mean. In

the news. If you are a San Francisco archdiocese report on El Salvador is politically explicit. The U.S. should stop aid to the Hunta government repression is widespread and the left is a growing broad based popular movement that kind of analysis is naturally at odds with what President Duarte believes. You won't hear it from the president. One solution in this along with you people that the rest of us would like you to the people. But peace is not what's happening or even in the offing. Therefore

citizens many of them a political rush to leave the country and end up facing the new problems of being undocumented. Illegal aliens hiding out again. That buys him time perhaps a couple of years and a temporary work permit from the Immigration Service. He commutes to his job by car and posies application for asylum alleges the government in El Salvador persecute anyone it believes opposes. His affidavit filed with immigration says his brother was killed because government troops confused their identities. If there is violence no Salvatore it's because reason or logic has been lost. I don't want my brother they killed my brother in a very savage way. My niece was 14 years old when they captured her and they confused her with somebody who they accused of being a gorilla. So they took her to the

military headquarters where they killed her and threw her body out into the street. Jose has received psychological help to overcome the harrowing mental problems that accompanied his arrival here. That help was paid for privately. It did not come from the city or state for illegal refugees have no claim to most government services. But Jose and nearly 2000 Salvadorans and their families have braved the crowded bureaucratic quagmire at the Immigration and Naturalization Service in San Francisco forsaking anonymity in an unpromising quest for political asylum. This is no longer the mare of a small Salvadoran city. His wife and two daughters are among the applicants who will try to establish to the immigration examiner that in the words of the law they have a well-founded fear of persecution upon return to their country for reasons of race religion nationality membership in a particular social group or political opinion.

And your uncle your cousin your brother in law. Right they think they get at the birth of a baby. You know I mean but this family and Jose Franco and in fact all the Salvadoran applicants have little chance of becoming political refugees for the State Department's Bureau of human rights must recommend whether such applications are approved or denied. But to admit political persecution in El Salvador would fly in the face of President Reagan's foreign policy which supports with military and economic aid. El Salvador's current government there for nearly every request for asylum is being denied with a form letter. Regardless of her personal tragedy and new applications for work permits are not being issued because the government calls the asylum applications frivolous. District director of Immigration David Elkhart.

So I think that they're caught in the civil unrest in their native country and they would not experience any further or additional discomforts of fear if they were back in their own country what their own countrymen and now experiencing in in El Salvador. Even though they say they face death that people have been to their houses death squads looking for them. Well obviously the based on the best information that the Department of State has available to them and. When they formulated their advisory opinions as to this individual case those those factors have not been established. It may be a lost cause but activists are fighting that Immigration Service policy by trying to increase public awareness of the plight of the refugees and by contesting deportations and hearings held at INS headquarters in San Francisco Jose Rose allas has testified several times that he was a member of right wing death squads and took part in two assassinations in the Army in order to identify who is and who is

nice aversive does an analysis of the when orders are given I slyly orders what I think matters into their own hands. That will not only mean you know about your dissatisfaction that persecution actually takes place that returning these do in fact face death on being deported home has been an insurmountable problem for immigration attorneys like Mark vendor out there. When this happens I am single I'm glad I wasn't application for political asylum many individuals and some have from these I mentioned that and acted upon it nationwide. If the past is any indication all will be denied. Those who are denied political asylum or those who don't apply for it are caught. Face

deportation just as these undocumented Mexicans do. A one way plane ticket to El Salvador. And that outrages the few Americans like Father Who whole and Moriarty who are organizing help for the refugees and we've lost our right to be called foremost. You know in the US far as human rights go as I say we're just doing things that to me are very un-American and certainly you know humane. It's like sending you back to Nazi Germany is just to me a simple but former diplomat Laurence Silberman says it's not that simple. A San Francisco made a fact finding trip to Central America for the incoming Reagan administration Silberman supports U.S. government policy that denies asylum disarm refugees. Now a banker he says most immigrants come here for economic reasons. Let's

just marched. First the hike. That's it. Those conflicts and the civil war itself are played out with varying degrees of violence on the streets of San Francisco. Here demonstrators organized at Casa El Salvador march peacefully joined by activists from around the Bay Area. The demonstration in front of President Duarte San Francisco hotel was much more agitated as his detractors and his supporters grew excited especially when police became involved. Those San Franciscans who support Duarte and oppose the revolution in El Salvador form a far different group in outlook and style than the anti-government

activists. This faction which includes a few refugees indoors is a more rightist staunchly anti-communist policy for United Salvadoran patriotic forces is meeting at the San Francisco home of a supporter these Salvadoran say that most of the violence in their country stems from the guerrillas not the National Guard. And that is what causes people to flee the country. Hoopes organizer Renee come on. You know these rightists some of whom have lived in the Bay Area since World War to see the war in El Salvador and it's echo here in simple terms. The rightists even accused factions within the Catholic Church especially the Jesuit in

marital orders of supporting and protecting the gorillas and therefore the communists. San Francisco Archbishop Quinn was outraged when this group pope's sponsored a visit to the Bay Area of an outspoken anti-communist bishop from El Salvador. That was me. OK here we are at it that way. Well you know that story and how many priests and sisters of selfishness go oh to behave or are to be a part of anything that could be construed as communist.

You say you would like to believe that and yet I sort of you know they didn't one poll is one of them. Unlike most use in America illegally and is not anxious for officialdom either here or in Guatemala to see his face or know his real name now a resident of San Francisco's Mission District told plays guitar to earn his living without a work permit. He tells of war and persecution especially persecution of Indians who make up 60 percent of the Guatemalan people. I have seen some historians who have had their nails pulled out and there I assume you know that is how the government shows its power over the people. Another time the military arrived at a small town in a pile of people out of their haunts in the middle of the night because they said I said looking for guerrillas and said Where can we claim our right is and your link is he always like that and that is why the left in the ghetto and against the government of Italy. It is incredible that stories as frightening and shocking as that can sound so

routine because they are so commonplace in parts of Latin America. Father Ron Birkenau co-pastor of a suburban parish in San Bruno has his stories to his evidence of trouble in Guatemala that is having an effect in the Bay Area. Father Burke worked with the Indians in northern Guatemala for 12 years a missionary assigned to Central America from San Francisco. He left a few months ago in fear for his life. We

don't want to be with me. But the Guatemalan government and its New York public relations firm would rather leave the impression that progress is being made in social reforms. The country is at peace and that any so called refugees are leaving for economic and not political reasons. Meanwhile refugees from Guatemala and El Salvador just like their neighbors from Nicaragua before them continue to flock to California in the Bay Area. Nobody knows the exact numbers but immigration has apprehended about 14000 Salvadorans alone nationwide in just under a year mostly in California and more than half of those are sent back despite the efforts of support groups to publicize their plight and to influence American foreign policy.

For Jose Rene Franco on his way to work those political battles are best left to others. Like most refugees he claims to be apolitical caught in the crossfire deprived of a chance to teach math and physics. But without him whatsoever with the thought of that at all I would like very much to return to El Salvador but to a peaceful environment. Life here is difficult for me because of my customs and my profession and because of what I find myself doing here. Just a commonly thought I am not a communist. See you then tell them the earth is within myself I have a love for liberty and social justice. My country is not in a transition from capitalism to communism. That's a lie. So I have a thirst for social justice.