Land Mines Inflict Rising Toll on Salvador Peasants

OSICALA, El Salvador — Increasing numbers of peasants, many of them children, are losing limbs, eyes, and sometimes their lives in explosions of land mines that are buried throughout the countryside.

Although the Salvadoran army employs mines supplied by the United States, a majority of the civilian casualties appear to be caused by homemade mines that are planted by guerrillas of the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front, according to dozens of victims and other peasants interviewed.

The guerrillas and army both deny responsibility for the civilian casualties and blame each other.

The Salvadoran armed forces have launched a propaganda campaign, using photographs of maimed children, to try to make a political point in their counterinsurgency war. But neither the military nor the government of President Jose Napoleon Duarte has set up a program to help the civilian victims of the mines.

Not Closely Monitored

Human rights groups here and aboard have not closely monitored the rising numbers of cases of civilians wounded by mines. In a dozen hospital interviews with mine victims from six of the country’s 14 provinces, none had been contacted by a human rights worker.

“Nobody knows and nobody’s counting. The figures on mine victims are only an indicator of trends,” one Western observer said. “Most of the (medical) facilities are military and they are taking care of their own.”

Farmers interviewed along dirt roads in the eastern provinces of Morazan, San Miguel and Usulutan said they and their children are afraid to walk though the countryside but cannot avoid doing so to go to and from their fields and to get water.

Most of the victims interviewed said they stepped on the hidden mines while gathering firewood or fruit and told stories of others in their towns and villages who were killed or wounded by the devices.

Children Often Victims

Victims often are children, such as Ana Isabel Henriquez, 13, who lost her left leg and most of her right hand last March to a mine on the edge of this Morazan town.

“There was a cloud of smoke. I felt my body go to sleep,” Ana said. Her neighbor, Jose Santos Argueta, 10, lost an eye to shrapnel in January when he dropped his machete out of a tree, triggering a mine below.

Jose Hector Gonzalez, 40, the father of eight, was blinded in both eyes by a mine that exploded on the edge of his bean field last month in Usulutan.

Maria Incarnacion Lopez, 14, of Usulutan, and Maria Armida, 12, of San Miguel, each lost a leg on the same day in March.

Estimates of total civilian casualties are sketchy. U.S. Embassy figures from press reports show that 11 civilians were killed and 71 wounded in the first four months of the year. The army says 25 were killed and 165 wounded in the first seven months of 1986. The Roman Catholic Church’s human rights office, Tutela Legal, recorded 24 civilian mine deaths in the first four months of the year but has no figure for wounded.

Casualties Rising

Whatever the numbers, the tallies show that civilian casualties are rising.

“There are more civilian victims of mines than there are of (aerial) bombings,” said a reliable independent source. “This year, bombs have killed 10 people in the eastern zone and more than 100 people have been killed or wounded from mines.”

The source, who asked not to be identified, said that a majority of mine victims are not civilians but soldiers, who are the intended targets of the mines. Military officials say a majority of troop casualties are caused by mines.

While neither intends its mines to harm civilians, the devices are difficult to avoid. El Salvador is densely populated country, and the six-year-old civil war is fought among hamlets and cultivated farmlands.

Guerrillas, fighting to oust the U.S.-backed government, stepped up their use of explosives last year to counter increases in the size of the armed forces and the latter’s mobility and U.S.-supplied air power. The guerrillas shifted away from large-scale combat with the army, turning to economic sabotage, ambushes and mine warfare, which they call “popular armaments.”

Army Sometimes Warns

None of the mine victims interviewed said they had been warned by guerrillas that their areas were mined. Most said that the army sometimes warned them when troops laid mines.

Several victims said they believe that guerrilla mines caused their injuries.

“People say that it was the guerrillas, because when the soldiers put down mines they don’t let people into the area,” Juan Antonio Carbajal, 23, said.

Carbajal, a farmer, lost both legs to a mine that exploded as he tried to retrieve the body of a friend who died several hours earlier from another mine explosion near Guazapa in central San Salvador province.

The guerrillas assert that army patrols surround their positions with mines to avoid guerrilla attacks and then do not retrieve all of the mines when they move on.

Mines Retrieved, Rebels Say

The guerrillas “lay down mines as the enemy passes, confronting them directly, and once the enemy has pulled back, the terrain is searched for mines that have not exploded and they are deactivated,” a July 30 rebel radio broadcast declared.

“The FMLN (the guerrilla front) uses mines offensively, never leaving them, contrary to what the army does,” the broadcast said.

The army says it clearly marks mine fields around fixed positions such as garrisons. Officials say they sometimes lay mines to protect their positions at night, but retrieve them in the morning

The army uses U.S.-supplied claymore and M-14 mines that often kill rather than wound their victims, according to U.S. officials. A U.S. Embassy spokesman admitted “one or two” civilian casualties from army mines “in the last couple of years.”

The guerrillas use battery-detonated mines of wood or plastic, with explosive charges that tend to wound rather than kill, according to Salvadoran and American officials. Most civilian mine victims are wounded rather than killed.

‘Blind Weapons’

Aryeh Neier, spokesman for Americas Watch, a U.S.-based human rights group, said his organization only recently became aware of widespread civilian casualties and has not investigated thoroughly. But he criticized the guerrillas for leaving “blind weapons.”

“Our impression is that much of the use of mines by guerrillas is objectionable and violates the laws of war because they are placed where they indiscriminately kill civilian and military personnel,” Neier said.

He said that guerrilla warnings on mines “are not adequate.”

Last year, peasants often said that the guerrillas warned them about mines. A farmer on the road to San Agustin, in Usulutan, said the guerrillas stopped warning civilians about mines when soldiers moved into the town several months ago. When soldiers are present, the farmers also cannot listen to rebel radio, which sometimes warns of mined areas, the farmer said.

‘Victims of Both Sides’

Maria Julia Hernandez, director of the church’s Tutela Legal, said the army is to blame for many of the civilian casualties. She said two men were killed in separate incidents outside of Osicala on April 18 .

“The armed forces says they are all guerrilla mines, and they are not. There are victims of both sides,” Hernandez said.

She said that three boys who died April 21 near Tecoluca in San Vicente province exploded an army fragmentation grenade that they found, rather than a rebel mine as the military had claimed in one of its press releases.

Treatment here for victims whose limbs are shattered by mines is usually amputation because hospitals lack the resources and specialists to reconstruct mangled arms and legs.

“It is like the (American) civil war. You get shot in the arm, you take off the arm. You step on a mine, you take off the leg,” a relief worker said.

Few Get Artificial Limbs

Hospitals generally are unable to provide artificial limbs for victims, who must rely on crutches or wheelchairs unless someone takes a special interest in their cases, as occurred with that of Ana Henriquez. Foreign relief workers arrived in Osicala shortly after she was wounded and arranged to send her to Boston to be fitted for an artificial leg and to have her right hand partially reconstructed.

Ana sits on a mat on the dirt floor of her family’s two-room hut wearing a pretty dress and her new leg, but says she is afraid to venture out of the house.

Angela Agustina Bonilla, 6, of Sensuntepeque, Cabanas, also will receive an artificial leg from an anonymous donor.

But most victims, like farmer Carbajal, are on their own.

“It is very sad for me,” he said at a public hospital in San Salvador, the capital. “I lost my legs and my feet and now I have nothing.”