"No pictures, no pictures," shouted the black U.S. Marine sergeant to a group of photographers waiting at Ilopango Air Force Base on the outskirts of San Salvador, the capital of El Salvador. The sergeant, a helicopter maintenance mechanic, is understandably camera shy: as one of the 19 Americans sent to El Salvador by the Carter Administration last January, he is a prime target for leftist guerrillas. Anonymity is his best defense.
Those 19 trainers were joined in El Salvador last week by a six-man naval training team that will help repair engines and radar equipment on Salvadoran patrol boats. The Reagan Administration is also sending four five-man training teams within the next few weeks to instruct Salvadoran troops in such subjects as intelligence, combat techniques and the use and maintenance of helicopters.
The trainers, for the most part, are senior noncommissioned officers who speak some Spanish; many have served on training teams in other Latin American countries or at U.S. Army bases in Panama.
The training of Salvadoran troops by the U.S. began in early 1980 at Fort Gulick in Panama, where the School of the Americas specializes in teaching antiguerrilla warfare. At the urging of the Carter Administration, school officials designed a special curriculum for the Salvadorans. Formally titled "Aspects of Human Rights in Internal Defense and Development," the three-week course offers basic training in how to search and take a prisoner, with special emphasis on protecting the prisoner's rights. Some 250 Salvadorans took the course last year, and another 150 are expected to graduate this year. One recent visitor to a session of the course listened as an instructor asked his Salvadoran NCO students: "Even if we think that the person whose house we are going to search is a guerrilla, do we still have to establish a friendly atmosphere when we question him?" The instructor's rhetorical reply: "Absolutely."
The U.S. is also readying some $25 million in new equipment for El Salvador, including helicopters, vehicles, radar and surveillance equipment, and small arms. But El Salvador's greatest need may be more ships for its modest navy: only three of its eight aging patrol boats are seaworthy. The navy's futility is proved by how poorly it patrols the waters between El Salvador and Nicaragua, the route by which many arms shipments are smuggled to the guerrillas. When asked how many shipments the navy halted this year and last, Salvadoran Coast Guard Officer Nelson Angulo formed a circle with two fingers and said simply, "Zero."