Duarte loses ground while
International Viewpoint 13 October 1986
EL SALVADOR Reagan administration's advisors to this transformation of the trade-union movement has been to create new, competing organizations.
Thus March 6 this year saw the founding of the National Workers and Peasants Union (UNOC). It was joined by the Confederation of Democratic Workers (CTD), which was founded in 1985. These two organizations are financed by the American Institute for Free Labor Development (AIFLD), active in the whole of Central America and unquestion-
AFTER TWO YEARS in the presidency, the balance sheet that
Christian Democrat Jose Napoleon Duarte can offer to his debtors in the Reagan adminstration could be summed up in the following formula: "I have lost control of the streets without regaining control in the mountains."
In spite of the repression, the capacity for action of the workers, peasants and students has been distinctly strengthened, as has the level of organization of the mass movement and the degree of unity of these forces.
The year of 1985 ended with a total of 116 strikes in the public sector and 56 in the private sector, in which 636,158 workers took part.
ARNOLD BERTHU
The population of El Salvador is five million, including overwhelming majority of peasants,
200,000 factory workers and 160,000 in the public sector. The
National Union of Salvadorean Workers (UNTS) now organizes
400,000 people. (1) The UNTS has the capacity to call mass demonstrations — more than 50,000 in February around 100,000 on May Day - and to call general strikes, such as the four-hour strike on April 24 this year which involved 350,000 workers in the student movement has also been reactivated, and has regained control of the national university - a stronghold of revolutionary organizations before 1981 - which again resembles the Mexican or European campuses of the late 1960s.
demonstration of over 2,000 people on July 30 this summer.
What immediately strikes a foreign observer is that the walls in San Salvador, empty of slogans during 1984 and 1985, are today covered again - even the ramparts around the American embassy. Everywhere you can
"Duarte plus read
Reagan equals war"
"Support the FMLN",
"Long live free Nicaragua" and so on. Elsewhere, the student movement and trade-union organizations have many re-established public headquarters.
Both
People's Democratic the
Union (UPD) and the Confederation of Salvadorean Workers (CTS) have broken with President Duarte. This, together with the formation of the UNTS, is a major element in the recomposition of the workers' movement. The UNTS came together from a number of organizations, including the May 1 Committee, and includes 75 class-struggle unions and the leading groups in opposition to the regime. Reward for supporting Duarte
UPD claimed 100,000 members in 1984, organizes mainly peasants and workers, and played an important role in ensuring the electoral victory of Duarte in 1984. Today, the leaders of the UPD say that at the time they received between 60-80,000 US dollars as a reward for mobilizing their supporters for Duarte. They were also promised governmental and places in the administration. strongly among state employees. For example, 55 per cent of workers in the Ministry of Agriculture are organized in this union. Like the UPD, they signed an agreement to give electoral support to Duarte, who did not honour his promises of social reform. Both the UPD and the CTS have drawn the conclusions of this experience.
The response of Duarte and of the ably controlled by the CIA.
In the past, Duarte had already pushed the creation of parallel unions to the main organizations of the May 1 Committee in the teaching, phone, electricity and postal sectors, but without real success. It does not appear that UNOC and the CTD will be able to re-gain a significant influence among these workers in spite of their using tactics such as threats, corruption spite of the enormous sums of money funneled to them.
The UNTS, on the other hand, has managed to broaden itself beyond its initial composition by incorporating the Confederation of Cooperatives of El Salvador (COACES), many of whose leaders are members of the UPD. The cooperatives organization includes 130,000 peasants - 650,000 people in total including members of their families.
The broadening of the front of the organizations regrouped in the May 1 Committee to include organizations like the UPD and the CTS has done nothing to diminish the radical character of the positions it has defended. The UNTS published an important document in June 1986 called "The UNTS and the need for peace and national reconstruction". This document outlines a balance sheet of social and political struggles since the 1970s.
In the face of governmental accusations which put the blame for the military conflict between the armed forces and the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN) on foreign interference from Nicaragua, Cuba and the USSR, the UNTS declares that: "The real causes at the root of the conflict are the unequal distribution of wealth, repression against the masses, driving the masses into the "informal' economy, unemployment and so on."
Against American intervention, the UNTS says: "It is not the Salvadorean government who decides our destiny, but the United States ... Since 1980 the US government has played
See "Trade unions unite", Inter. national Viewpoint' No. 97, April 21, 1986, page 26.
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workers' movement strengthens
Rally of Salvadorean workers (DR) a determining role in maintaining and aggravating the conflict. It is being continued thanks to military aid from this government, of which the only beneficiaries are the big US arms manufacturers. They get a market out of destroying children, women and, finally, our society. In fact, this 'aid' ...manifests itself in the submission of our country, which functions as an American colony."
In the same document, the UNTS makes a detailed and examination of Duarte's politics: "Two years of the Christian Democrat government equals hunger, war and misery." It goes on to denounce bombing of civilians, anti-trade union laws, (estimated at 500 people), the use of torture by the government's forces, the mining of mass organizations by AIFLD and so on.
The UNTS also makes a balance sheet of the agrarian reform. It was initiated in 1980 in order to defuse the mass uprisings at that time. To win the presidential elections in March 1984, Duarte promised to reactivate and deepen this agrarian reform by helping the already established agricultural cooperatives and by distributing to the peasants any land from properties that exceeded 245 hectares before December 1986 (this was written into the constitution!)
The UNTS has been exposing the fact that Duarte and the landed oligarchy behind him never had any intention of making good these promises.
A series of economic measures were also put forward by the UNTS. These included withdrawal of all the austerity measures taken by 12
Duarte in January 1986; deepening the agrarian reform and involving all the peasants in it; cancelling debt repayments for the cooperatives; and, on the industrial plane, reopening firms that have been closed and creating new enterprises managed and administered by the workers. Decent wages and social benefits demanded
In the social sphere, the UNTS demanded a general increase of wages proportionate to the rate of inflation, the creation of jobs and the development and building of health centres, schools, cheap housing and so on. concerning a solution to the military in making the following occupies us today has divided Salvadorean society in two .... Thus we have the governmental forces who have lost control of a large part of national territoryand who control that territory not controlled by the government."
The UNTS therefore demands that there be a third phase of negotiations between the government's forces and the FMLN (the date for these talks was subsequently fixed for September 19 last). They also denounced the conditions set by Duarte for finding a solution to the conflict - mainthe constitution, the army
If you look at the breadth of the UNTS and its radical character, you can see that Duarte has lost a lot of ground, including a lot of his urban in fact, re-established itself as a real actor on the political stage.
Duarte's isolation is demonstrated yet again by the coming together of a front between the UNTS and the National Federation of Small Salvadorean Enterprises (FENAPES), which represents 90 percent of this sector. The UNTS and FENAPES held a "National Forum for the survival and peace of the Salvadorean people" on April 3-5 this year, which very sharply rejected Duarte's politics and the US intervention.
The Forum agreed on the need for a cease-fire that could callow the people to decide on a solution to themilitary conflict. Such a referendum must be organized by a tripartite commission including the government, the FDR-FMLN and professional organizations. The Forum also demanded the removal of the minister of culture for his defamation and disinformation (he is in fact directly controlled by the armed forces and the CIA), amnesty for political prisoners and the establishment of preferential credit terms for small and medium businesses.
Lastly, UNTS and FENAPES declared that they were ready to go as far as a national strike to win their demands.
The third phase of negotiations between the FMLN and the government will begin in mid-September in a context of a strengthening of the FMLN. [This article was written before the talks began].
In spite of a quadrupling of the government's armed forces and American aid of nearly 2 million US dollars a day, the FMLN has reinforced its military position, although it is not yet able to deal decisive blows to the regime.
At the political level, it is clear International Viewpoint 13 October 1986