Interview with Joaquin Villalobos, FMLN
The FMLN's positions
Our approach is based on two principles - carrying out a number of actions at the same time and trying to involve new forces. All these elements have led the FMLN to engage in the process of creating a situation in which the war makes more political impact. The aim of this whole strategy has on the elections been to show the situation in El Salvador as one that has not been resolved by the Reagan administration's policy. We consider that we have achieved this objective.
The FMLN has decided to go on a coun
THE INSURGENT front in El Salvador, the FMLN, made a proposal to the government on February 28 that included an offer to respect the results of elections if certain minimum conditions it considered essential for a fair contest were met. These included postponing the vote until June 30.1 The government rejected this proposal and went ahead with elections on March 19, which were won by the ultra-right ARENA.
The FMLN's approach is explained in detail in the following abridged interview that Joaquín Villalobos, one of the five commanders of the FMLN, gave on February
25 to Marta Harnecker, a Chilean journalist living in Cuba.
N THE FMLN's recent public statement, we noted a clear shift in focus on the elections. It seemed to us that for the first time, the guerrilla movement was going on the offensive in this area.
What led you to make this unexpected turn, when you have always tried to unmask the role that elections played in the imperialists' new counter-insurgency strategy? Does
Convergencia Democrática's electoral experiment of the last few months have anything to do with
In the first place, the conjuncture in which the FMLN launched this proposal should be explained. In September, a military offensive started that was intended to make a greater impact on the political camp, taking into consideration that this is the fundamental arena of the struggle. In order to change the relationship of forces, the FMLN began to make its weight felt in the cities with operations that tried to take more account of the political situation.
ter-offensive, considering that a new period was opening up as a result of several factors. There was the change of administration in the States; the elections in El Salvador; the clear failure of the reformist policy, which prevented the Christian Democrats from acquiring a social base and offering any perspective to the masses; and a grave worsening of the objective conditions of poverty in the country. The military plan was drawn up on the basis of this situation and regards the political field as the fundamental arena of the struggle. • What do you mean by the political field?
A more specific arena than that of the war properly speaking, constituted by the struggle of the masses and pacts or alliances that can emerge from the breakup of the ruling bloc.
On the one hand, a political corps of the mass movement has been being built up which encompasses a variety of sectors. But it is necessary that this force be further broadened and made more comprehensive. And this involves carrying out actions in the political field. It involves programmatic proposals that embrace the interests of all 1. For the text of the FMLN's proposal for dialogue, 23 see /V 160, April 3, 1989. May 29, 1989 • #164 International Viewpoint
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EL SALVADOR the popular sectors.
On the other hand, the breakdown of the bloc in power has been accelerating for the following reasons: Failure to resolve the war and the economic and social problems of the masses. The change of administration in the United States, which involves a more pragmatic sector having access to the government, which might create new conditions after eight years of the previous administration's failure in its policy toward El Salvador. The Defeat of the Nicaraguan contras. The Esquipulas II accord, which offers us a framework in which it is more difficult for the US administration to pursue its policy in the region. The existence in the region of a certain weariness with the Reagan administration's interference in its affairs.
In this context, we think that it is necessary not just to take military actions but to take initiatives in the political arena.
Since we don't want to get into a confrontation with a superpower like the United States, it is obviously necessary to fight to try to weaken US support for the government of El Salvador and all its counterinsurgency projects by pointing up the failure of the model that they have sought to establish. Along with this conjunctural basis, there is an underlying strategic basis - the FMLN believes that it is changing the relationship of forces, and that this will enable it to act already in the other arena. • In what respect, has it changed the relationship of forc-
The whole US strategy was built up on one assumption — that there was a democratic process in El Salvador and that this is what they have been defending with their counterinsurgency model. What our proposal does is lay down a challenge to this concept. Moreover, this problem is now graver than when the US took it on, because within El Salvador itself, the right, which was supposed to have been neutralized through the rules of the game proposed by the Americans, recouped their position. They hold the legislative branch and a good part of the judiciary. They have maintained their economic power, and have managed, from these commanding heights, to challenge the process of reforms and to undertake to reverse them.
The Christian Democrats themselves have accepted this reversal, although the reforms were supposed to be a fundamental part of their strategy of low-intensity warfare. The privatization of banking is being proposed, along with that of a good part of the agrarian-reform sector, application of the free-enterprise policy 24 that is so much in fashion nowadays. Both ARENA and the Christian Democrats International Viewpoint #164 • May 29, 1989 have very similar proposals now in the economic field; they have right-wing programs.
The reforms were not implemented thoroughly; they failed to create a social base that would enable them to defeat the FMLN. It has to be said clearly that if the reforms had worked, the base of support for the FMLN would have been weakened and we would have lost the war. If there had been a real agrarian reform, the FMLN would not have been able to sustain a war whose theater of operations is fundamentally the countryside. So, what is the present situation?
On the one hand, the right has regained its economic power. The legislative branch is already in its hands. It holds the judiciary, and it is on the point of capturing the executive. Besides this, recouped its situation inside the armed forces, who are tired of the Christian Democrats and are looking for new alternatives and a certain autonomy for a policy to the right of the United States and the more or less center-reformist intervention that the Christian Democrats tried. So, unity is beginning to be rebuilt between the old oligarchic power and the army. The components of the classical dictatorship in El Salvador are thus beginning to develop a process of fusion under new conditions. • On what assumptions was this counter-insurgency strategy based?
On the one hand, on the belief that they had broken up, isolated and virtually annihilated what was supposed to be the political body of the left, leaving the FMLN reduced to a military apparatus without possibilities for political action in the country's vital centers. On the other, it was based on the conviction that they had managed to neutralize the right's potential for plotting in the army by taking direct control of the armed forces, and at the same time on their certainty that they could build a political center under the leadership of the Christian Democrats. They believed that the new rules of the game that they had established would make it possible gradually to push back the forces to the right of the government in the electoral field and relegate the right, essentially, to the economic field, and that in new conditions after the reform process.
In such a relationship of forces, in which they had managed to isolate and largely annihilate the left — you have to remember that 60,000 Salvadorans were killed and a half million driven into exile — they started to formulate the concept of a democratic process and proposed to recoup the situation. They put forward Duarte as an alternative, maintaining that he was not responsible for these crimes, and that he represented a possibility for establishing a democratic regime in El Salvador. They claimed that a reform process was being carried out that would provide a social base for the project. The basis for the democratization process was the fact that they were going to hold a series of technically better organized elections with the participation of the right that would make possible a transition to civilian governments.
Moreover, they proposed to profession-
It has to be recognized that for a whole period this scheme produced confusion, even in the FMLN itself, which, although it had managed to create dual power was not clear about what it was up against, who its enemy was. The US intervention was not direct. The dictatorship was not a classical one. We have spoken about a dictatorship of a new type. Nonewe have to recognize that the counter-insurgency project managed to gain a certain legitimacy for a time in the eyes of international public opinion and some sectors of domestic public opinion. During the period in which they managed to neutralize the right and isolate the left through genocide, this project had a certain
However, eight years have gone by, and in these years the relationship of forces has changed. The situation today is totally different. This policy is being questioned in El Salvador and the region, and its strategic content is beginning to be questioned. • You talk about honesty in the elections. Election frauds are an old story, not only in El Salvador but in many countries in Latin America. What conditions are there today for confronting a situation of this sort?
In the first place, it should be noted that we are putting forward our proposal without disarming. And since the Salvadoran
masses have already rebelled at previous election frauds, there is no doubt that today they would rise up in much greater force with the benefit of our powerful military backing. A fraud would be pure suicide. With our proposal, we are throwing down a challenge to them, since they have been claiming that the FMLN is a minority. • Are you absolutely sure that the masses - who have had a constant ideological bombardment from the ruling classes and imperialists in recent years almed at misinforming them about the FMLN, and portraying you as terrorists, militarists and so on - will be able to recognize who really represents their inter-
I think that in this respect, the work that they have been able to do has been upset by the relationship of forces produced by
You also have to take into account that we are saying that we are the majority eight years after proving resoundingly that the revolutionary left was the majority force in El Salvador. It has to be remembered that in 1980 the biggest organized and coherent political body that has ever existed in El Salvador showed its
What for all these years has kept the immense mass support for the revolutionary movement from expressing itself is in fact the terror created by the genocide. We have no doubt that under other conditions this support would express itself overwhelmingly. And, when we put the armed means in a context of opening up the political camp, what we want to do is open the door for the masses so that they can express themselves. This is one of the key elements in this initiative — to open up a larger space for the masses so that they show their capacity and their presence.
In this respect, we think that the ideological battle in El Salvador has been won. There is still some negative baggage. But if it were really true that their ideological campaigns had had a significant impact, we would have suffered a serious weakening in the war. To the contrary, our social base has been growing. We have rebuilt it. We have come through the difficult post1980 situation, when repression was on the rampage, by building mass popular • So, you think that you can successfully counter the ideological campaigns against the FMLN?
Of course. Imagine the impact that accounts of the horrible things that the armed forces have done in this country would have in the media, the impact of putting people in front of the cameras who have lived through the massacres of many hundreds of people, including children. • Why do you call for postponing the elections?
We need time to increase the number of registered voters. Only a third of those qualified to vote are registered, and not all those vote. The proposal would not have been serious if the time proposed had been • Another argument against the proposal is that you can't believe in a project that calls for legitimizing election results, and at the same time proposes a two-day truce before and a two-day truce afterward, implying that the war will continue regardless of what happens or of who wins. What is the meaning of
Those who argue that way reduce the proposal to a tactical proposition, seeing it only in the context of political confrontation. The truth is that the central element in the proposal the FMLN is making is recognizing the legitimacy of the election results. The thing about two days before and two days afterward is entirely secondary in the proposal. The central thing is that the proposal for legitimizing the elections is a blow to the idea of a military
Therefore, if the results are genuine, there will be no alternative but to recognize them. What would that mean for the armed forces, ARENA and all of them? They would have to accept a Convergencia government and the application of its program; and we support all the points in Convergencia's platform. • Are you, then, ready to give your allegiance to Convergencia's pro-
We were familiar with this program, and we agreed with it. It is a way of advancing toward a negotiated solution. It talks about • And if ARENA wins the elections?
In that event - which we are sure is not going to happen - it would be a very complicated business to be able to remain on a war footing. I say that because I don't think this is a question of what anybody wants but of objective conditions. Whoever breaks the rules of the game or fails to accept the results and tries to continue the war will be at a disadvantage.
You can only understand the FMLN's proposal correctly if you see that the central thing in it is the point that says that the FMLN will accept the election results if all the conditions of the plan are respected. The problem of the truce is entirely incidental. If it was put there, it was as a sign of the FMLN's goodwill, in the anticipation that this would generate a debate and demands for more clarity about what accepting the legitimacy of the elections results meant and around the problem of the duration of the cease-fire.
So, what we are doing is taking it a step at a time in order to test the intentions of the other side and to help to generate a political debate that will give life to the
EL SALVADOR proposal, and clarify what is happening. After we offered five days, one of the parties called for sixty, and we granted that. Later they asked for more clarifications, and we told them that we were ready to accept a truce lasting for the whole time leading up to the elections. We are clear that, from the moment the proposal begins to be implemented, the political arena will be activated. Military considerations will therefore have to take a back seat.
This is the logic implicit in the proposal. What we are doing is waiting for a moment of greater receptivity in order to put this forward, and also to give it more of the nature of an agreement, which is something fundamental, because on this level the idea of a unilateral truce doesn't work. It necessarily has to involve agree-
If we had put agreement with the army up front, that would have meant killing the proposal, because the armed forces would have said "no." If we managed to give it a certain political life, that would enable us to build strength, if not for today then for the future. In generating a climate in which, for the first time, an end to the conflict seems near, the proposal opens up great expectations, and various questions begin to arise about the legitimacy of the election results. What does this mean in terms of recognizing the government? Does it mean that the FMLN will lay down its arms regardless of the result?
Some of the most right-wing sectors have gone so far as to pose laying down arms as a condition for accepting the proposal. That would be impossible. In that case, as I said, there would be no need to
In connection with this question, we are also spacing out our propositions in order to create a more and more positive atmosphere for our proposal. At this point, we are already explaining under what conditions the FMLN would be ready to stop the armed struggle, join in political life and recognize the existence of a single army, which would totally change the FMLN's previous political strategy of a negotiated settlement involving shared power. In the first version of the proposal, we said that we were not demanding political power. We were demanding a space for implementing this proposal, which turns around clean elections.
Later, we made it clear that we were not demanding military power but a recomposition, an arrangement, a restructuring of the present military power in order to provide guarantees for a real process of democratization. To that end, we proposed three points. In the first place, trying all those guilty of crimes, which is a demand raised by the US Congress itself, by the State Department, as a necessary element in order for there to be a democratic process, even one carried out only halfway, demagogically. tely his resp in Salvador, noten army 25 lutely nothing in El Salvador, not one army May 29, 1989 • #164 International Viewpoint
EL SALVADOR officer has been tried for the crimes that have been committed, and more than 70,000 people have been murdered. So, let us take up a demand that is legitimate in both the domestic and international context. It is necessary to stop the army from operating with impunity by means of the death squadrons, through uniformed agents, by any means.
Secondly, we said that it was necessary to cut back the army, and therefore to reduce its specific weight, its political weight in society. An over-militarized society conflicts with a democratic process. The specific weight of the military has to be such as to allow the political authority to develop fully. So, cutting back the military is a legitimate proposal, and we proposed reducing it to the numbers that it had in 1978, which would also have positive effects from the economic point of view — less spending and so on — and would also have geopolitical implications regarding the problem of the militarization of the region; it would relieve the Honduran army's fears of finding itself, whatever the situation, confronting another army, an army like the Salvadoran one, with which it has conflicts.
In the third place, we said that it was necessary to reorganize the security bodies, dissolving the present ones and building a single security force linked to the civilian state apparatus. They tried to do this, applying some ideas from the Venezuelans and from the Americans themselves, and establishing a sub-ministry of public security. But they never managed to put the country's armed apparatus under control of the civilian apparatus. The paramilitary groups did not give an inch, nor did the territorial service or the security
What we are proposing gives form to the feelings of the masses and of the middle layers who think that there should be democracy in El Salvador. We are taking this up, and saying, OK, if these conditions are met, we consider that there would be no reason for the armed struggle; we would be ready to stop the war and recog nize this army.
And I want to make it clear that this cannot be interpreted as a surrender. It is not at all that. The point is that the armed struggle would make no sense in these new conditions since a political struggle could be waged and so on.
Obviously having achieved that through all these years of armed struggle would not have been in vain. It would be an achievement that would completely change the situation of the country. We would have accomplished our objective, because our objective here is winning not a voluntarist demand but the demand most deeply felt by the population.
With its proposal, the FMLN is taking up and adopting as its own a general program, a general demand. It is not clinging 26 • to the idea that it has to be the goverment. Whether it forms the government or International Viewpoint #164 • May 29, 1989 does not is something that the masses and the situation will decide. At this point, what it is doing is taking up the banner of peace and democracy and putting its armed force and its political force in the service of winning this.
If these objectives are achieved, that will be a revolutionary change of great scope, and it will create the conditions for ending the armed struggle and for our integration into political life, in order to continue our fight on that footing. Life will show whether or not it is possible to go down this road. Life will also tell whether we have to become the government in order to be able to do this, or whether that is not going to necessary and if we are going to be able to accomplish our objective through a national accord.
To sum up, if the parties to an armed confrontation decide to play the game in the political arena, the one who loses in that field also risks losing the war decisively and rapidly. Today, if the election results are in favor of Convergencia, the FMLN will not claim all the power or anything like that. But such a victory would open up a process of peaceful transition to structural changes that would solve the problems of peace, democracy and the chance for large-scale social and economic transformations.
Convergencia got to the point of uniting the revolutionary, progressive and democratic movement in a single great political body, and that is what led us to the idea of challenging, by our initiative, the democratic process that the Yankees esta-
If the proposal is implemented, both Convergencia and the FMLN will have a single field of action. If the proposal is rejected, Convergencia will have its own field of action, because of the nature of its forces and of its objectives. Since it is clear that in the present electoral conditions, Convergencia is not going to win, it cannot expect to get a large number of votes. Its interest fundamentally is to build its organization and reinforce its communication with the masses. • Looking back, do you think that a proposal of this sort could have borne fruit in previous electoral per-
No, then an adequate relationship of forces for making a proposal like this did not exist. Let's skip over the last election of deputies in 1988 and look at the previous elections, the presidential elections in 1984, the ones in 1982. Then, the other side said that it would in no way accept a even with the deck stacked against it. I think that at that time they were still in the last stage of sorting out problems among themselves. And even if there had been a political space, we would not have had the military strength to guarantee a stable political presence. would have run the risk of seeing the left political cadres assassinated one by one, as is happening in Colombia.
Now that we have a broader body [of activists] that embraces everything from armed struggle to elections, including trade-union struggle, a political body that is uniting the revolutionary movement around it, and at the same time we have a powerful guerrilla army, the objective conditions exist to make our proposal viable. • And what do you tell your troops? Because you were preparing an insurrection. You had announced that, and then suddenly this proposal appeared. What is happening with those people who were preparing themselves for the insurrection? How can you get the fighters to understand this proposal?
In launching the proposal, we were obviously dealing with a totally new political schema, which represented a change from what we had been saying in previous offers of negotiations, in which the FMLN demanded its own areas of power. Now, what the FMLN is doing is fighting for a more general demand, a demand more deeply felt by all the forces - peace and democracy - and this is also leading to a change in the concept of how to sustain the fighting morale of our forces and our people. In what we might call our previous instrument for political struggle, what sustained us was more a principled definition, the proposal for negotiation on the basis of our own position. The FMLN demanded territory, military power, a share in political power, and so on. This was a strategy of a negotiated settlement. All these elements were linked to a situation of dual power. The firmness with which this was defended was a factor strengthening the morale of our fighters. Now, the FMLN is proposing a new strategy in which it it is trying to construct a program with which the entire people will identify.
The fact that today it is the FMLN that is most forcefully defending the banner of peace and that, at the same time, it is seen as the guarantee that this can be implemented, means that when its fighters come in contact with the masses, they feel that they have much more popular support. And that gives them the morale to stay in the fight, to continue fighting for these
Today, insurrection remains a second alternative. The first document that we presented with the proposal said this clearly. We are making our last efforts to prevent a social explosion. And that is clear for our fighters. That is, we are still fighting a war, with the plans that we drew up. But we are looking for a way out, an alternative. If that is rejected, then our war will be more legitimate. If it is put into practice, we are the guarantee that this process will be carried out honestly. So, there is no reason for this to hit at the morale of our people. To the contrary, the FMLN has acquired an unprecedented political role, and our people continue preparing them-
May 29, 1989 • #164 International Viewpoint selves, they continue with their plans, and therefore the slogan of preparing for an insurrection continues to be valid. • Is your proposal aimed at changing the rules of the [electoral]
The existence of a new relationship of forces makes it possible to change the nature of the playing field and the rules of the game. What the FMLN is after are conditions of equality and honesty that are precisely the problems in elections in the bourgeois democratic framework. We are proposing elections without repression. For that reason, we insist that the army should return to barracks. We think that the rules of the electoral game should be set by a consensus, that there should be guarantees of full access to the means of communication, since with the financial means we have we could carry out a large-scale campaign; that a committee should be set up to monitor the elections from which the government and parties involved in it should be excluded; and, finally and most important, we have an armed force able to defend the election results against any attempt at
Obviously, we could not join in the five previous electoral processes. How could you enter an electoral process when only a year before a dreadful genocide had been perpe trated in the country! When the first election process was conducted in 1982, headless bodies were still showing up in the streets. There was a terrible fear in people. There was so much skepticism that, in an agreement with the US embassy, they had to increase the
Then the most minimal conditions did not exist for taking part in elections. Besides, in those conditions, the electoral process served make the US intervention less embarrassing, so that it could increase its aid, so that it could give form to its
Today, the fundamental thing is the relationship of forces in which the electoral contest is being fought. There is an armed FMLN with eight years experience of war, which it has proved impossible to defeat. To the contrary, it has become a real factor of power in Salvadoran society. The political corps of the revolutionary democratic left has been recomposed. It comprises a spectrum running from guerrilla forces to the people's front and to the electoral front.
This is the broad policy of alliances that will widen much more in the conditions of the search for an electoral solution. We are able to count on a great financial capacity that will enable us to put forward propaganda that can meet the enemy propaganda.
If Convergencia's election victory is respected, that would be a very great improvement for the people, and if it is not respected they will be playing with fire. • You say that the country is on the brink of an insurrection. What are the objective bases for this conclu-
I ask you this because there are people who consider that it is difficult for those Involved in the guerrilla war to have an objective view of what is happening in the country, and that there is a natural tendency to extend to the entire country the perception of the relationship of forces that exists in the guerrillacontrolled zones, where there is a very high level of militancy.
I think that it is wrong to see the FMLN as guerrillas in the mountains. The first thing that should be clear is that the PMLN is not an isolated body. Our guerrillas are on the slopes of the San Salvador volcano, on the outskirts of the capital, and we have urban guerrillas in every city in the country. The army itself defines the confrontation as a total one, in every sector of society. Besides, the FMLN is active in both the political and military fields, although it applies different methods and uses different organizational instruments
For this reason, the FMLN leadership has the widest information about, and the best perception of, the mood of the masses. I think that it is necessary to distinguish between a serious, scientific prediction of how the mood of the masses is going to develop and their present mood. • Would that prediction take account of the trend in the mood of the masses?
EL SALVADOR
Yes. The FMLN is not saying that the masses are on the brink of insurrection and ready to storm the government. What it is doing is predicting what is going to happen, based on an analysis of the objective and subjective conditions that exist now. We are now in the worst crisis in the country's history. It is much more explosive than the one that touched off the war with Honduras. It is this situation that led us to adopt the insurrection thesis.
We would be making a grave error if we based our strategy on an analysis of the present mood of the masses, because what become mere spectators, we could not intervene in the political conjuncture. If we had not predicted that Reagan's policy was going to falter, as a result of the world and regional context, we could not have had any viable strategy, we could not have put forward the idea of a war of attrition, reinsertion in the cities and building the people's • How do you see the situation of those on top? In the case of El Salvador, this depends on an external factor - the American presence. There is unquestionably a new situation, which of course does Thin not mean that the Americans are going to leave overnight and abandon the government and the army. But they cannot continue a policy that involves spending huge sums of money and participation in a war, if the war goes on like this and they cannot win it. • Who is the main enemy now in your opinion? With the weakening of the US administration's policy for El Salvador, the oligarchy and the army are beginning to appear as the immediate enemies. And for that reason, when we make our proposal we say: What is being tested is whether there has been a process of democratization and professionalization of the army. If there has not, what conclusion do we come to? It is in this stage that the confrontation is going to be
And probably in the United States there are going to be changes. We do not say that they are going to cut off their aid overnight, but there are going to be changes, and we are going to have to readjust our political strategy.
We cannot talk about imperialism in an absolute sense; we have to take into account that there are different currents there, in the Senate, in Congress, in the State Department.
We are going to have to recognize the importance of the fact that the policy of the hawks has been weakened, and we are going to try to take advantage of that. We Logical question only on the basis of ideo. 27 logical questions. *