EL SALVADOR 5 The US effort in El Salvador has been a many-sided one. Militarily, it has revealed itself in a powerfully expanded programme of aid;6 in training programmes, the bulk of them on American soil, which have groomed hundreds of Salvadoran troops into crack battalions capable of neyv degrees of savagery; in the sending of American advisers; and in the promotion of regional cooperation between the military forces of El Salvador, Honduras and Gautemala—with harrowing results for the Salvadoran people, particularly those seeking to flee the country.7 In the economic sphere, US aid, supplemented by the efforts of a sympathetic IMF and World Bank, has shored up a near-bankrupt economy.8 On the political front, the US, in a throwback to the "battle for hearts and minds55 so emblematic of Vietnam era, has contributed a "land reform55 progiamme as the centre-piece of a reform package designed to undercut popular support for the revolutionary forces. Evoking further memories of that era, it has promoted elections, in the full knowledge that the terror would prevent the participation of genuinely popular organisations. In the domain of propaganda, the US has conducted a campaign of slander against the Salvadoran revolution, denying its historical roots, its decades of development and its mass following while seeking to prove to world opinion that its leadership is externally controlled.9 The immediate goals of this intervention, conducted with the, subtlety and finesse of a Bay of Pigs invasion, are clear: to prevent a negotiated settlement to the Salvadoran civil war (not to mention a revolutionary victory) by inflicting military defeat on the opposition forces. But larger goals have emerged as well, goals which invite further parallels with an earlier intervention in South-East Asia. For if, twenty years ago, Vietnam was the place where a btand had to be taken ag&inst a "communist menace55 supposedly creeping its way towards Japan, today that privilege has fallen on El Salvador—characterised as the next step, after Nicaragua, on a communist march through Central America, across the sea lanes of the Caribbean to Mexico and Americans own borders.10 In the name of anti-communism, on soil much closer to home, in a region long subordinated to its interests, the US is fighting to reassert its inlperialist will; to reverse the humiliation suffered in Vietnam; and^to overcome that distaste, at home, for new foreign adventures that has come to be known as the "Vietnam Syndrome.5^11 The dangers inherent in this bid arc already apparent. "Taking a stand55 in El Salvador—with a local ^rmy unable to make headway, indeed growingly on the defensive, and with American domestic opinion inclined strongly to oppose any direct involvement of US combat troops whatever the pretext — has meant searching beyond Salvadoran borders for military reinforcements and "base facilities. Thus, Honduras, an immediate neighbour with a pliant government, already exhibits features of an American command centre, with a substantial population of CIA operatives and US military advisers.12 Recent reports indicate that it