MARIA Julia Hernandez used to drive everywhere alone at the height of the war in El Salvador. The human rights lawyer, currently in Ireland for Central American week, could not have it on her conscience that others might suffer if she was to be killed or tortured. Such was the atmosphere during a 12 year conflict in a country of five million.
Yet in this period of post war uncertainty, El Salvador is far from secure. Can we have peace without justice?" is the repeated cry. It is a lesson for Ireland, according to human rights activists and representatives of the fractured FMLN, formerly a tight guerrilla force and now a fragmented political party.
Ms Hernandez, who has received many international awards for her work on human rights with the Archbishop's office in San Salvador, is clearly worried. The El Salvador government, already censured for its slow progress on the peace accords, has a less than impressive record on human rights as testified by the "mile high" pile of files on the desk in Ms Hernandez's tiny office.
Onusal, the UN observer mission, has recommended legislative reforms which have not been agreed to. Land transfers are still unresolved. Having agreed to a new human rights ombudsman, Ms Victoria Marina de Aviles, the Arena government sought to discredit her, both in officials' public remarks and in the government's news bulletins.
Ms Aviles had stood up to the government on several issues. Army officer, Cot Michael O'Shea, who has distinguished UN service in El Salvador, is now attached to her office through APSO.
For Ms Hernandez, it is bad enough that there has been no serious investigation into the infamous "death squads" which have begun to emerge again. Figures published last month by the government record over 6,000 people in prison without charge. In addition, the neo liberal policies of the Arena government and their partners have been described by Ms Hernandez as "choking the poor to death".
Earlier this month, the president, Mr Armando Calderon Sol, called on the UN observer mission, Minusal, to hasten its departure, due at the end of April. Now down to 12 personnel, Minusal maintains a very discreet presence in a wing of the Hotel El Salvador, without so much as a flag to signal that it is there. Its personnel deployed in the regions are counting the weeks, in the knowledge that so many peace related promises have not been honoured.
"Minusal, which was formerly Onusal until May of last year, has lost its function of verification," Ms Hernandez told The Irish Times in San Salvador. "Its representatives are really just observers looking at incomplete UN accords. Whether the UN stays or goes now is not important. Yet, it did have a significant contribution to make early on. Without it I don't know how we would have made that transfer from war to peace.
She continued: "It is a shame that the human rights mechanisms set up to protect people have not been pushed through. Abuses relating to the war have stopped, but there are still grave violations against the individual in this time of peace."
She is worried about the disintegration of the new civilian police force. "It accepted an amnesty in relation to abuses which maintains an environment of impunity."
Two years after the "elections of the decade" in Central America, opposition parties in El Salvador are still reeling from the shock of a return for the business backed Arena party which was linked to its infamous "death squads" of the 1980-1992 war years. US Congressional documents also confirmed that the US Reagan administration spent some $6 billion on the war and lied to the public about atrocities carried out by the US trained and equipped Salvadoran troops. The UN Truth Commission report indicated that 85 per cent of the war crimes were committed by that force.
"The problem is that the vices and structures of the past are still in place," Ms Hernandez says. Vigilante squads have taken the law into their own hands in relation to drug dealing, which is said to fuel the economy of one of the country's main cities, San Miguel. "The Black Cloud death squad there has systematically shot known criminals and has had clear links with the police," she says.
Ms Hernandez returns to Ireland three years after her last visit, when she met the President, Mrs Robinson, the Tanaiste and Minister for Foreign Affairs, Mr Spring, and other politicians. Now working for a more orthodox archbishop and member of Opus Dei who clearly does not offer her the same support as her former boss, Archbishop Romero, she is still intensely loyal to the Catholic Church.
Alter all, Archbishop Romero, who was assassinated 16 years ago this week, was very orthodox, she says. He was no adherent of liberation theology, she points out. "He just relied on the gospel."
During her Dublin meetings, she had warned that the El Salvador peace accords of 1992 would become a model for other countries now at war. If verification was not carried through, she had said, it could do further damage to the standing of the UN itself.
