Where the Irish are no longer welcome

"Enormous respect for Ireland and for Irish people (Mr Michael D. Higgins, Labour TD, interviewed on links between Ireland and Latin America, March 1988.)

IN A mountain village on the coffee slopes of northern El Salvador, leaders of an 8,000 strong community think otherwise as they struggle to make a new life after more than a decade of bloody civil war. Named Segundo Montes - in memory of one of the six Jesuits shot dead by the Salvadoran military in November, 1989 - its refugees were exposed to some of the worst excesses of the 12 year conflict from 1980 to 1992.

Undaunted, they devised a unique model of social organisation which aroused much international interest and attracted much overseas aid. Their leader met the President, Mrs Robinson, in 1991. Yet mention Ireland now, and the response is one of disappointment, disenchantment, anger. There is a distinctly chilly welcome for the shamrock in this small but significant pocket of Central America.

They call it the "crisis" - the events that led to the dramatic expulsion of four Irish people from the community in 1993, which the people claims, have rebounded on them ever since.

On foot of the events, international funding has almost dried up, the community says, and it believes that its name has been blackened by APSO, the Irish state funded Agency for Personal Service Overseas.

APSO, set up over 20 years ago to recruit and fund overseas development personnel, rejects this claim, and says it is "completely untrue". Since it set up its Central American office, it has not received any funding applications from Segundo Montes, it says.

The Minister of State for Foreign Affairs, Ms Joan Burton, has ordered a detailed report on the claims and has instructed APSO, the Government's official aid presence in the region, to ensure that Irish development workers are not involved in "partisan party politics".

The Minister told The Irish Times: "With the passage of time and confusion, it may be difficult to clarify the situation".

The Salvadoran human rights lawyer, Ms Maria Julia Hernandez, who is in Ireland for Central American week, has called on the Government here to have its aid programme investigated.

Ms Burton, who holds responsibility for overseas aid, told The Irish Times she had been made aware of difficulties in the operation arising from political changes that have taken place in the Central American state. The facts were "not clearly established", she said, and there was a very clear divergence of views.

EL SALVADOR is the main focus of APSO's £500,000 technical assistance programme in Central America, as part of its £10.5 million annual budget.

Supporting the Salvadoran refugees' position is one of the main opposition parties in El Salvador, the FMLN, which broke up into factions after the war. Through APSO - perceived to be the unofficial Irish "embassy" in the region - the Irish Government is now accused of supporting a right wing regime.

A recent United Nations Development Programme report high lighting the failures of the Salvadoran administration, and the dominating US economic influence, criticised the international community for not exerting more pressure to ensure that the peace accords are fulfilled.

Still talked of in Segundo Montes as if it only happened yesterday, the "crisis" of 1993 has left a legacy of guilt, pain and confusion among those directly involved on both sides of the Atlantic. With close historical, cultural and religious links stretching back four centuries, Ireland has been a source of inspiration in Latin America, not least in El Salvador for Bishop Eamonn Casey's trenchant criticism of US president Ronald Reagan's policy there.

Irish church missionaries have, for the most part, played a progressive role; but now members of the Irish Catholic Church feel "sold out" by what they perceive to be current Irish policy in the region.

A Scottish Catholic priest, Father Tim McConville, describes the Irish Government's response in failing to investigate at the Salvadorans' request as symptomatic of a western "racist" approach.

SO WHAT went wrong? Why, in the year when the Tanaiste published a radical new programme for Irish overseas aid, did Ireland become synonymous with trouble in north east El Salvador?

Almost three years later, there are 15 different versions of events, which one German aid worker recalls as a blueprint of George Orwell's Animal Farm complete with denunciations, death threats, and the intervention of the United Nations peacekeeping force. Though there is little evidence now to support some of the allegations, the sequence appears to date back to 1990.

It was in that year that the 8,000 strong community had returned from its refugee camp to set up in Morazon, the north eastern province. The village, to be called Segundo Montes, was just a few miles away from where one of the war's worst massacres occurred, when 1,600 men, women and children were killed by the Salvadoran army in El Mozote.

Among the refugees were several international relief workers, including an Irishman from Cobh, Co Cork, Mr Adrian Fitzgerald. Mr Fitzgerald, an ESB fitter, had his first taste of overseas aid when he volunteered to serve in the Yemen with Concern. In 1981, he worked in Ecuador, then Costa Rica, and from 1983 he volunteered for Honduras and El Salvador with the Catholic Relief Service (CRS) and the Catholic Institute for International Relations (CIIR).

For the next decade, he would live and breathe the refugee's struggle. Co funded by APSO, he is widely acknowledged as a key figure in attracting the financial assistance required for reconstruction.

During their exile, the refugees had transformed themselves from "frightened campesinos" landless peasants - into a confident, self governing co operative community. Professor Beth Cagan, coauthor with her husband, Steve, of This Promised Land, El Salvador, recalls how, in spite of being surrounded by hostile Honduran troops, the refugees learned to produce most of their own goods - run their own workshops, schools clinics, through a system of committees.

There were banana trees, mangos, jute, for sure. But the land offered to the refugees on their return was some of the poorest in the country. A long term plan for their new "city", Segundo Montes, was devised, based on light industrial production, through co operatives. To attract investment, they set up a head office, known as the Segundo Montes Foundation, in the capital.

The former peasants learned about accounts, marketing, urban planning, business administration. In 1991, again through the good offices of Mr Fitzgerald and Irish colleagues, the leader of the community, Mr Juan Jose Rodriguez, was received in Aras an Uachtarain. A black and white photograph of that event still hangs in the foundation office.

Such was Mr Fitzgerald's influence that he was appointed Mr Rodriguez's right hand man - vice-president - and president of the Segundo Montes Foundation. Several other friends from home joined him and went to work with the community, while he spent most of his time in San Salvador.

But there were rumblings of discontent back up the mountain. Following the 1992 peace accords, and amidst continuing insecurity, the village had begun to experience an economic crisis.

As Ms Cagan analyses it, European Union food aid and subsidies had created an artificial economy in the refugee camp. Now this was beginning to dry up.

Women who had set up childcare units and collective kitchens felt the pinch first. Manufactured clothes, shoes and tools, which had formerly been made for the refugees themselves, could not compete with goods in the marketplace.

After much debate, it was decided to decentralise management. The concept appealed to many of the younger workers, including former FMLN combatants, who felt that the existing structures, run through a management committee, or junta directiva, were too hierarchical. The junta urged caution. It feared that resources might fall into the hands of a few during the transfer to worker ownership.

Impatient, the workers were encouraged to form a union with Irish help. In May, 1993, an Irish carpenter and some Salvadoran employees in the carpentry workshop left their regular tasks to finish a special project without permission from the junta. The following month, when he had only a few days of service left, the carpenter was dismissed.

The dispute escalated when Mr Fitzgerald took his compatriot's side against the wishes of his fellow committee members. The community split, with some taking the side of the "internationalists", including several north Americans and a Nicaraguan, and others supporting the management.

The power struggle became focused on the community's energy source - the electricity plant. Initially, attempts were made to ration supply. There were barricades, chains, protests, and accusations that the Irish were supporting privatisation of a community project.

By August, 1993, the Salvadoran Minister for the Interior was being asked to cancel the visas for four Irish aid workers. An advertisement dated August 20th, 1993, and placed with the national daily, Diario Latino, made claims about the Irish. A copy of this was sent by the Irish El Salvador Solidarity Committee to APSO and to the Department of Foreign Affairs.

Reports by both sides were made to the local police and to the UN observer mission, ONUSAL, in San Miguel. In spite of claims of corruption on both sides, there was judged to be insufficient evidence and the dispute was regarded as "political". By the time the UN arrived, the Irish had left fearing for their safety, some said.