PAGE 4, THE BEHREND BEACON, MARCH 24, 2000
El Salvador feels agony of gringo scourge: crack
by Juanita Darling
Los Angeles Times
March 20. 2000
SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador
San Miguelito, a few blocks of ruined
mansions and improvised shacks in
the capital, is the nightmare that Cen
tral American countries denied they
would ever face. It is the reality that
has made the international war on
drugs their war.
For years, police here have said that
cocaine was a gringo white
problem and that combating it was a
costly struggle the United States im
posed on countries where people
were too poor to buy the white pow
der.
They have stopped saying that.
Colombia's drug traffickers, always
masters of marketing, have brought
the price down to the consumers'
level, just as they did in the United
States during the 1980 s. Now, crack
cocaine competes with model air
plane glue or half-pints of Tic-Tac
rum, selling for the change to be
earned washing windshields or
sweeping the floors of market stalls.
Here in San Miguelito, cocaine is
melted with bicarbonate of soda into
smudged little crystals that look like
industrial diamonds. Those crystals
are worth more than gems to the spin
dly children, aging men, and tired
women who, for less than a dollar,
can buy 20 minutes of escape from
their laminated shacks built into the
city's canyons, a bleak. 21st century
version of cliff dwellings.
The drive to buy crack unites ex
guerrilla lawyer Jorge Edgardo and
14-year-old Jeremias with Yvonne,
educated in the country's best paro
chial schools, and Raquel, a secretary
who became a prostitute after an af
fair with her boss. They gather at the
house that Wilfredo. a tall redhead
Kuomintan
by Jim Mann
Los Angeles Times
March 18, 2000
TAIPEI, Taiwan The devastating
electoral defeat of Taiwan's ruling
Kuomintang, or Nationalist Party, rep
resents an historic turning point both for
this island of 22 million people and for
China.
Not since the Japanese relinquished
control of Taiwan at the end of World
War II has anyone from outside the
Kuomintang held power here. The
party's rule has been part of the fabric
of daily life for half a century.
Even Taiwan's currency still carries
the image of Generalissimo Chiang
Kai-shek, who brought the
Kuomintang, or KMT, here in the last
days of the civil war he lost on the main
land.
' Now, the KMT is turning over the
presidency to a political entity, the
Democratic Progressive Party, that the
KMT didn't even permit to organize
until 14 years ago.
At the time, in 1986, the KMT be
lieved that it could continue to hold on
to power in Taiwan for decades -- in
the fashion of Japan's ruling Liberal
Democratic Party, which in those days
allowed other parties to participate in
elections, but not to win.
The Democratic Progressives arose
as the political vehicle for native Tai
wanese, who make up 80 percent of the
island's population and who were, un
til the late 1980 s, excluded from the top
ranks of the KMT.
In some ways, Chen's victory Satur
day was comparable to the victories of
Kim Dae Jung in South Korea and
Corazon Aquino in the Philippines. In
each case, Asian opposition movements
challenged authoritarian regimes for
many years until eventually, with the
help of elections and political liberal
ization, they came to power themselves.
In other ways, however, Chen's re
markable victory can't be compared to
what has happened anywhere else, be
cause of the huge, looming presence of
China in Taiwan's political life.
from a wealthy family, rents here in
San Miguelito -- part drug market,
part refuge, a Cannery Row of crack.
These lives intersect in this once
stately neighborhood that today is an
experiment in what happens when a
culture of postwar. post-earthquake
neglect is infused with a fast-spread
ing virus, and underfunded public of
ficials scramble to find an antidote.
The air is still crisp and the morn
ing sun reflects off the thin, wooden
steeple of the Don Rua, arguably the
Construc
tion worker
Nelson
Trujillo
smokes
crack in
what's left
of the
house he
shares with
1- ex-guerilla
lawyer
cn Jorge
Edgardo
and others.
most beautiful church in El Salvador,
when the cars line up on East 23rd
Street. One by one, the minivans and
late-model sedans pause at the side
door of Our Lady of Perpetual Help
School, allowing girls in navy blue
jumpers and starched white blouses
to scurry into the sanctuary of the
school patio, under the watchful eyes
of a nun.
Don Rua and Our Lady of Per
petual Help, nearly a century old, are
reminders of the kind of place that
San Miguelito used to he.
"It was a pleasant residential neigh
borhood," recalls David Escobar
Galindo. a writer who lived in the area
from the 1940 s until the 19705. "In
those days, the social classes were not
as clearly marked. That part of the
city was shared by people of all so
cial classes . ...then the middle class
land above moved away."
Many houses destroyed in a 1986
earthquake were never rebuilt. Refu
gees fleeing the war squatted in the
shells, and others built shanties
around the original neighborhood.
Then crack arrived, and with u users
who support their habit by begging,
stealing, and prostitution. San
Miguelito became no more than an
obstacle for the students of Our Lady
of Perpetual Help to cross on their
way to classes.
The few who walk to school are
g loss to Progressives marks historic Taiwan turning point
The election of an opposition candi
date ruptures. at least for the time be
ing. nearly eight decades of on-again,
off-again ties between the Chinese
Communist Party and the KNIT. Those
ties in \ olve so much conflict, manipu
lation, and intimacy that a psychologist
might diagnose the tvio groups as
codependent.
In the early decades of the 20th cen
tury, the men who led the K MT and tlie
Chinese Communist Party knew One
another well. Many of them went to
school with one another at the Huangpu
Military Academy in southern China.
When Chiang ruled mainland China,
the Communists occasionally It rmed
"united fronts - with the KMT --- that
is, coalitions of convenience, designed
sometimes to tight the Japanese hut also
to give both sides time to regroup and
regain strength in their continuing civil
Eventually, the "united front" cam
paigns would break down, and the two
sets of antagonists would go back to
killing one another.
When the KMT fled to Taiwan, its
rivalry with the Communists continued
for decades. In Taiwan, pictures of such
Communist leaders as Mao Tse-tung
and Chou En-lai were regularly
stamped with the word 'bandits."
And yet, despite the enmity, China's
Communists also for years counted on
the KMT as its best hope for reunify
ing Taiwan with the mainland.
China's logic was simple: many of
the KMT leaders had fled to Taiwan
from the mainland, and eventually,
Beijing hoped, the KMT would want
to make a deal enabling them to return
home.
But this calculation began to erode
in the mid-1980s. Oddly enough, the
chain of events that culminated with
Saturday's Democratic Progressive vic
tory began with a Communist Party tri
umph: in 1979, the United States fi
nally granted diplomatic recognition to
the People's Republic of China and cut
off ties with the Nationalists' Republic
of China on Taiwan.
In the early 'Bos, Taiwan thus found
WORLD NEWS
firmly clasped by the hands of their
nannies or mothers as they pass the
corner where Raquel, in a worn black
velvet jacket, black teddy, and shut
green satin skirt, whistles to pass
ersby.
"I'm up early because I need some
breakfast," she says, shaking her
curly ponytail with an almost com
pulsive flirtatiousness. At this mo
ment, she wants money for food, but
she admits, "Most of us out on the
street are crack addicts."
She is the daughter of evangelical
Christians who sent her to secretarial
school. After an affair with her first
boss, she was fired and kicked out of
her parents' home. She got a job in
an exclusive brothel, where she dis
covered cocaine. That was 12 years
ago. Nowadays, at age 34, unbathed
and her face drawn by drug abuse, she
will accept a client for as little as the
50 cents that a rock of crack costs.
No religion or social status provides
protection from crack.
Just a decade ago, Yvonne was one
of those blue-jumpered school girls,
chauffeured here from better neigh
borhoods. She never expected to end
up living in San Miguelito.
In high school, she transferred to
the San Jose Day School, a Jesuit in
stitution considered the strictest and
most academically demanding paro
chial school in the country. She was
a second-year law student at the pres
tigious Matias Delgado University
when she first tried crack. That was
three years ago.
"I don't know what happened," she
says, shrugging. "Crack gets to you."
Today, Yvonne is an emaciated,
dark-haired beauty who walks with a
limp that she says she got in a heat
ing, maybe by police, maybe by
someone with a sadistic streak who
saw her sleeping in the gutter. Since
she was kicked out of Wilfredo's
crack house for some infraction that
she does not want to discuss, Yvonne
cannot always find a place to sleep.
She hangs around outside or in one
of the brothels across the street, beg
ging for money. When she has gath
ered the equivalent of 50 cents. she
approaches Wilfredo's barred door,
shows her coins, and is ushered in
side.
Yvonne walks past two guards
holding rifles, through a living room
with peeling paint on the walls and
mismatched furniture and into a small
room with a bare lightbulb that illu
minates a huge wooden desk that be-
itself out in the cold. In the United
States it had little public support, be
cause the KMT was repressive and un
democratic. Taiwanese intelligence
officials were caught and eventually
convicted of murdering a Taiwanese
opposition writer on American soil.
Finally, in 1986, President Chiang
Ching-kuo, Chiang Kai-shek's son, de
cided to open up Taiwan's political life.
I e permitted the Democratic
Progressives to take part in elections.
At the same time, he also groomed a
native Taiwanese leader, Lee Teng-hui,
to he his successor.
Both actions served to revive
Taiwan's flagging support in the United
States. After the 1989 Tiananmen Sgare
crackdown in Beijing, Taiwan could
legitimately tell Congress that it was de
mocratizing while China was certainly
not.
Lee came to power after the younger
Chiang's death in 1988. That was, by
itself, a significant change: for the first
time, Taiwan's president did not come
from mainland China. The old KNIT-
Communist ties were beginning to fray.
And indeed, over the past 12 years,
Lee has given Beijing fits. Ile has car
ried out a series of initiatives to estab
lish Taiwan as an independent political
entity, culminating in his insistence last
summer that Taiwan should have "spe
cial state-to-state relations" with China.
On the mainland early this year, sev
eral Chinese scholars and officials said
they felt that any of the three leading
candidates in Taiwan's election would
be an improvement over their nemesis,
Lee Teng-hui.
Yet it turned out that the curious his
torical ties between the Communists
and the Kuomintang outweighed
China's irritation with Lee.
In the last weeks of the presidential
campaign, China was all but begging
Taiwanese voters to elect Lee's desig
nated successor, Lien Chan, the candi
date of the KMT.
It was the ultimate irony. For dt
cades, when the KMT ruled the main
land, the Communists had portrayed it
(often with good reason) as corrupt.
longs to Wilfredo.
With red locks falling across his
forehead, widely spaced green eyes,
freckles, and the band of lost boys and
girls who gather around him, it is easy
at first to mistake Wilfredo for a sort
of Peter Pan.
About a year ago, Wilfredo rented
a spacious fixer-upper for $ll5 a
month. It is one of more than 200
crack houses that operate in greater
San Salvador, police estimate. "It's
sort of a commune,"' he says. "If
someone has no place to bathe or
sleep, he can do it here." Customers
can also smoke crack inside an
important consideration, because Sal
vadoran law prohibits selling drugs
and consuming them in public, but
not using them in private.
Wilfredo built up a staff, including
Juan Carlos, a crack-using lawyer, to
get commune members out of jail,
and Angel, a muscular ex-guerrilla
who watches the door. Wilfredo was
arrested five times in the first six
months he ran the house, on drug or
assault charges. Juan Carlos would
always win his release.
Then, in November, police raided
the house, taking everyone into cus
tody, including Wilfredo. Juan Carlos
went to court the next day to post bail,
and he was arrested as well.
Margarita, Elizabeth and Jeremias
were hardly saddened by the raid on
Wilfredo's. They simply hustled for
coins down the block at Tutunichapa,
a labyrinth of shanties and open sew
ers that sprung up in the 1980 s to
house refugees from the war-torn
countryside.
"Five years ago, a gram of cocaine
cost 800 colones, - or about $9l, he
says. "It was too expensive for people
to buy."
That was when U.S. and Colom
bian authorities were breaking up the
Medellin and Cali drug cartels, which
controlled the international cocaine
trade. Those cartels were replaced by
smaller, more flexible organizations
that began to pay Central American
smugglers in kind, U.S. court docu
ments and government reports show.
The result: an ever-increasing
amount of cocaine began staying here
'" instead of moving "north ) '
Police raid Tutunichapa frequently,
but when they leave, the crack users
drift back.
Jorge Edgardo, 43, shares the shell
of a house destroyed in the earth
quake with several chickens and a
group that includes Nelson Trujillo,
This year, in Taiwan's election cam
paign, the main issue Chen's forces to win
used against the KMT was, once again, Now, China will have to begin a new
corruption. But this time, China's Com- history with a new political force.
Clinton spars with the NRA
by Virginia Groark
Chicago Tribune
March 15, 2000
Carrying an agenda for an unfin
*
is
hed second term and raising cam
-I,,V‘ to help his vice
p P re aig si n de c n as t h su W ccia him.
President
Clinton spent a g evening
in Chicago on MoodaY. March 13 .
promoting gun-c or 111 01dat1
help spur Demo
crats for the fall.
Clinton's vis
its to Stefani's
restaurant, 1418
W. Fullerton
Ave.. and the
Lincolnwood,
home of veteran"
Democratic ac
tivist Michael
I Cherry raised
nearly MAO
for the Demot,
cratic National
Committee.,
Those are "soft
money" contri4 , '
butions that can'
be used to help
Vice President
Al Gore's presi- K 44.0,4 ithY. ( 0-14 7rb.
h that
d p d a :i t il e go t s i . a es i weelalma; m t u , : t har C i hec to,n k ii : e s : •
Democratic conviiiiohar hew-Itdvertising cam paign,
But ' sAttiPcusing Clinton
'for an Wog the gun-rt is
Paign
gun 1
Bush,
tinue his
tiatud
ership
a construction worker; and Pati, a
homemaker whose husband intro
duced her to crack, then abandoned
her when she became an addict.
Jorge Edgardo came to the capital
in 1974, looking for opportunities.
He got a job at the National Univer
sity of El Salvador, began to study
law, and was drawn into the
university's leftist movement, an im
portant foundation of the Marxist
guerrillas who took up arms in 1980.
He visited imprisoned rebels and
joined in guerrilla attacks himself
before turning in his arms with the
signing of a peace accord in 1992.
He took a job in a law firm but then
watched with growing bitterness as
he saw the principles he fought for
negotiated away in the National As
sembly or pushed aside by political
infighting.
Two years ago, some friends of
fered him cocaine. "It was an escape
from reality," he says. "But when you
come back, the problems are twice as
bad."
Cocaine took over his life almost
immediately. He quickly switched to
the cheaper, more intense crack.
In contrast, Jeremias, the 14-year
old, says he does not remember a life
without crack. For the last four years.
he has awakened each day on the
sidewalk in front of an open-air mar
ket. When he gets up, he stands on
Espana Avenue, the neighborhood's
main thoroughfare. waiting for cars
to slow, expectantly.
The occupants send him to
STUDENT CONVICTED
munist regime was rooting for the KMT whose leaders have few if any personal
ties to the mainland.
White House of using gun deaths
to further its political interests.
"I'm just trying to keep more
people alive," Clinton told about
350 people at the restaurant, defend
ing his push for trigger locks as well
as a 72-hour waiting period and
background checks for firearms
purches at gun shows.
The NRA has'stepped up its criti
olf sof Clint
ale tone
w laws
I ,_ ° . r ? say is wrong,
When you know
'a a lie," Heston says
ion' commercials,
Wilfredo's to buy crack or cocaine,
and he keeps a little for himself. Ev
ery shirt, every piece of candy he is
given is sold to buy crack. No one is
sure how the skinny, ragged child sur-
Rosario Maravilla Rivera watches
him every day from the cart where
she sells fresh coconuts, and she frets.
With four children ages 3 to 15, drug
addiction is high on her list of wor-.
ries. When her husband lost his job
as a soil studies technician four years
ago, the family had to move to
Tutunichapa.
"I cannot leave them in the house,"
Rivera says. "They come from
school to the market and do not go
home until I do." So the children end
up doing their homework on the side
walk or on the hood of the pickup
their father uses to haul goods for cus
tomers. They walk home past rows
of addicts and hear the sounds of
fights and raids all night.
Police, with limited resources, of
ten must choose between the con
cerns of their own citizens, like the
Rivera family, and U.S. pressure to
stop the big drug shipments, Perez
says.
"We cannot stop the big drug ship
ments if we are concentrating our ef
forts on local consumption," he says.
"Salvadorans do not care how many
tons of cocaine pass through here on
the way to the United States; they care
about the crack being sold on the cor-
Joshua Cole, 19, of
Southgate, Mich., was
convicted of involun-
tary manslaughter and
mixing and mingling a
harmful substance on
March 14 in Detroit,
Mich. During a
January 1999 party,
Cole mixed the date
rape drug GHB into
drinks consumed by
Samantha Reid, 15,
and Melenie
Sendone,l6. Reid
died and Sendone
went into a coma
which are airing on network affili
ates and cable network&
In addition, NRA Executive Di
rector Wayne LaPim:: said Sunday,
March 12, that the President "needs
a certain level of violence in this
country" and is "willing to accepta
certain level of killing to further his
political agenda and his vice presi
dent too."
"I dicln'
that," Clinton re
sponded. "I've
met with a lot of
people who have
died from vio
lence and : I just
wants to keep
more people
alive,"
The ac-
cg
flying
between Clinton
and We NRA
also provide
added fodder for
,the fall presiditn
dal campaign.
Gun control, the
President Slid,
was one example
of the differ -1
*netts, that .enisti
betWeint*Pfo.
sumPtiveDefo o - 1
cretit
anei Re
publican nominees. •
Bush, as Tema gctirern94 gig*
into law a measure allOWing Via/i7
fied residents to natty Acat#Salsai
fueanns. Bush adolunisaidUesult.
ports mandatingthestde:oloo
locks wi ing
th fire 1410
ing their use, oanl..
would be unenfOtnelt It 'without
creating “t r igger loek pou04:0,