"We cannot continue with this
International Viewpoint 13 October 1986 that the FMLN has also scored some points. In the government-controlled zones, it is easy to appreciate immediately that everybody knows that there is a situation of dual power in geographical terms. The FDR-FMLN proposal to have some public debates with Duarte has elsewhere met with
EL SALVADOR a widespread response among the population. THE NATIONAL Association of Salvadorean Teachers (ANDES-June
The FDR-FMLN has been able to 21) organizes a considerable part of the teachers in El Salvador. An force the government to open negoactive participant in the May 1 Committee in 1985, and today in tiations solely with them inside the country, while basically, Duarte would the UNTS, ANDES has taken part in all the current mobilizations. like to see all-inclusive negotiations Saul Sanchez, the general secretary of ANDES-June 21, was interviewed between the Nicaraguan government the contras by Arnold Berthu in San Salvador in August, 1986. FMLN, the US and his own government. Duarte is negotiating while the FMLN is declaring that it will lay down its arms. He is directing his public speeches to the guerrillas, and the FDR is replying to him through the pages of the daily press in the capital in paid advertisements. addition, the FMN has decided to devote some of its best militants to work in the government-controlled
Of course, the situation in the towns is not yet like it was during 1979-80, when the degree of organization of the urban masses was very advanced. Then there were large organizations in the neighbourhoods and among the shanty-town dwellers. And mass demonstrations rallied hundreds of thousands of people in the streets. But it is undeniable that we are witnessing a tremendous recovery of strength on the part of the mass movement, and the bankruptcy of the pseudo-democratic alternative of Duarte. The situation is therefore not blocked in spite of the growth of the armed forces and the threat of direct North American intervention.
The weakness of the regime and the demoralization of army continue, and these phenomena, taken together with the growth of the mass movement and the reinforcement of the guerrillas, may lead to an open crisis for the regime and the armed forces. In that case, a US invasion might temporarily be able to limit the advance of the revolutionaries, but could not break it.
The FMLN bases itself on this analysis, recalling that the United States lost the war in Vietnam with a task force of 500,000 men and a one-million strong South Vietnamese army.
The price in human lives that the US would have to pay for regaining a grip on the situation in El Salvador might in the end create a new mass anti-war movement inside their own borders. The FMLN today is correctly fighting with a long-term perspective.
Question. What are your conditions of struggle at the moment and your principal demands?
Answer. The fight against arbitrary imprisonments and against assassinations remains a daily struggle. We have just obtained the release of ten teachers who had been arrested after a demonstration by our union in the offices of the national minister of education. The government is trying to stage more and more such incidents.
Thus, on the nights of April 18 and 19, some individuals broke into our premises, which are in an area where the military is everywhere. The armed forces could not have failed to notice the break-in. The minister of accusing the leadership of our union of being members of the FMLN. That amounts our imprisonment or our assassination
Our principal demands withdrawal of the austerity measures government; a monthly rise of 300
[5.4 colons equal one Us dollar]; improvements in medical and improvements educational resources and facilities.
The minister has just broken off negotiations by demanding as a precondition that we reveal to him the identities of all ANDES' executive council. This is therefore a basic question, a question of principle, because submit to this condition that he should know all of us. A good part of the members of our leadership, for security reasons, do not live at their official addresses. If we were to declare our real names to the landlords of the appartments we occupy, we could be rapidly physically eliminated.
Moreover, a scandal has just erupted. In the past year, the International Development Association (IDA) paid the Duarte government a grant of 86.5 million US dollars to buy school materials. Only an infinitesimal part of this sum has reached the schools in the form of some copy books and pencils. This year, the Republic of China gave aid that was to provide 80 million US dollars worth of educaand again, very little reached the schools. We demand government say where this total of 166 million dollars has gone.
In May, we organized meetings of teachers in 14 departments in the country. These very militant meetings brought together a large proportion of Salvadorean teachers. Around 2,000 schools are totally or partially closed in the country. A large percentage of youth of school age do not go because of the lack of schools or because of insufficient numbers of teachers.
A teacher with a family of six people needs 3,000 colons a month to be able to live. The average salary is 950 colons. Teachers' buying power, like that of other layers of workers, has diminished drastically. There is no index system for cost-of-living increases and so at the moment wage earners are going through a process of pauperization.
The constitution and the labour code specify that the government must increase wages proportionately to increases in the cost of living, but the government has done nothing in this regard. They say to us that because of the austerity, everything will be better in two years time. But why will anything get better when the people still do not own the land, the means of production, the coffee or the cotton that they produce? Only the landed oligarchy and the big capitalists profit from the austerity.
Q. How far has the process of strengthening the unity in action of Salvadorean workers gone?
A. :In the past year ANDES has joined the Coordinating Council of Public and Municipal Employees (CCTEM), and the May 1 Committee. This year, we took an additional step by participating in the creation of the UNTS. The UNTS consists of workers' unions, unions of publie service employees, and associations
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government"
of Indians, peasants, agricultural workers and cooperatives. It includes currents stretching from the revolutionary left to the base organizations of Christian Democracy.
Q. How would you interpret the steps forward that have been made, guerrillas disarm. This is unacceptable. In any case, the government is entirely under the thumb of the Reagan ministration.
Q. The FMLN's conditions involve change to the constitution, a change of government and a change in the armed forces?
A. Yes. We cannot continue with a government simply of the Christian Democrats. They must be replaced by a government that has broad democratic participation, a government that will really search for adequate solutions to the problems which the Salvadorean masses confront. • notably the fact that some of the base organizations of Christian Demochave joined the class-struggle racy