Salvadorans Turn Eyes Homeward as War Ends : Peace: Some refugees are eager to return to their native land, but many fear economic devastation and political uncertainties.

With the conclusion this month of 12 years of brutal civil war in his native El Salvador, Salvador Ayala would like to return to help heal his still-divided homeland. But Ayala, a former leftist guerrilla who lost his right leg fighting government soldiers, said he must first come to grips with his own physical and emotional scars.

“I left a part of my body there,” said the soft-spoken Ayala, 32, who emigrated to Los Angeles in 1991 and now lives in Lincoln Heights. “I must resolve my own situation before I can help with the social process in my country.”

Like Ayala, many of the estimated 350,000 Salvadorans in Central Los Angeles face a difficult decision now that the war has ended: Do they stay here or return to their native country?

The war officially ended on Dec. 15, when the leftist Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN) signed a final peace treaty with the U.S.-backed Salvadoran government. In 12 years of fighting, more than 75,000 lives were lost in the Central American nation of 5.2 million people.

“Salvadorans are happy the war has ended, but (Los Angeles) has been home for many of us for 12 years,” said Oscar Andrade, 33, a Salvadoran who heads El Rescate, a refugee assistance center in Pico-Union. “Our kids are teen-agers, and a lot of them were born here. They are more Americanized than anything else.”

Andrade plans to return to El Salvador within a year, but he said he doubts that a majority of his compatriots will do the same.

Two years ago, El Rescate polled 1,000 Salvadorans in the Central city area, asking them if they would return to El Salvador once peace was achieved. Nearly 70% said they would stay in the United States regardless of the peace process. Andrade said he doubts that sentiment has changed much since the poll was taken.

Blanca Cabana, 53, who lives in a modest apartment near MacArthur Park, says she has no intention of leaving. Selling clothes from a vending stand on Pico Boulevard, Cabana says she makes more money here than she could in El Salvador, where workers earn as little as $2.50 a day.

“I owe much to this country,” she said.

According to a 1991 study by the Center for Technological and Scientific Studies in El Salvador, 90% of workers there lived in poverty, which meant they were unable to afford the $282 a month needed to feed a family of four.

“A single egg (there) costs 75 cents,” said Isabel Santos, as she ate a plate of fried banana and beans at El Viroleno Restaurant on Alvarado Street. “It is so difficult over there. How could I live (there)?”

Like many Salvadorans interviewed, Cabana and Santos said the fear of returning to a country economically devastated by 12 years of war is overwhelming. They would rather take their chances here.

Under the peace treaty, the Salvadoran government agreed to legalize the FMLN as a political party and disband an elite army battalion implicated in the war’s worst atrocities--the 1981 massacre of more than 700 civilians and the 1989 murder of six Jesuit priests, their cook and her daughter.

The specter of those and other human rights violations during the war hangs heavy over the heads of Salvadorans here who would like to return. Although cautiously optimistic, some interviewed said they would wait to see what transpires in the coming months before making a decision about leaving.

“We have been without peace for so long that it will take some time for things to change,” said Oscar Dominguez, 22, a liberal arts student at Santa Monica City College. Dominguez said he would like to transfer to a four-year college and earn a degree in engineering before he returns.

Martha Arevalo, communication director at the Central American Refugee Center (CARECEN) in Pico-Union, said many of the Salvadorans who use the center’s services share Jimenez’s feelings. “There are some people who are going back (right now), but the majority is hesitant because they want to see some substantial improvement in human rights and the economic situation,” said Arevalo, who is Salvadoran.

For some Salvadorans who do not want to return, remaining legally in the country could become a problem next June, with the expiration of an immigration act granting political asylum to Salvadoran refugees who came to the United States before September, 1990.

That means that about 75,000 Salvadorans in Central Los Angeles are in a “limbo status,” not knowing whether they will be deported if the act is allowed to expire, said Madeline Janis, executive director of CARECEN.

She said civil rights advocates will lobby the Clinton Administration to extend the act.

However, for those Salvadorans who want to leave, the peace treaty has inspired hope.

“We may criticize the government, but we support the peace,” said Ayala, who is attending night school and wants to learn computer graphics before returning home. “Our compatriots did not die in vain. We will see the fruits of our labor.”