A year after the FMLN
"space in formation" has accentuated the destructive effects.
Destructive policy
Even capitalism's own ideologues recognize this. The destructive policy has been more or less conscious. Even the socially destructive consequences have
ON NOVEMBER 11, 1989, the Farabundo Marti National Liberation been spelt out. At the end of August,
Front (FLN) of El Salvador launched a general offensive which
Lothar Julitz wrote an editorial in the succeeded in entering and occupying significant parts of the capital,
Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung dealing
San Salvador (see /V174, November 27, 1989). The far right with this economic policy.
government of Adolfo Cristiani responded by bombarding the poor
"through the valley of destruction" it foreneighbourhoods and massacring dozens of civilians, among them 6 saw a "creative destruction" thanks to the
Jesuit priests -- but it was forced to enter into negotiations with the intervention of the authorities.
revolutionaries, under the aegis of the United Nations (see /V 188 and
Otto Schlecht, the Secretary of State at the Finance Ministry in Bonn, has made
One year after, on November 20, 1990, the FMLN launched wide scale the same predictions. He affirms that in the military operations in several regions of the country (Chalatenango, next two or three years: "between 2.5 to 3
Morazan, Usulatan, Guazapa, and others) and, near to the capital, million people (from the ex-GDR) will become seekers of work", work which paralyzed the airport of llopango → the current upsurge has already
"does not yet exist". There is a "disposable claimed 400 victims in the ranks of the armed forces. The renewed fighting comes at a time when the FMLN has just announced its the presently employed labour force which is on the
Intention of bringing together the revolutionary forces in a single way to exhaustion. Thus "after the turnaarmy, at a time when the negotlations with the government have round..it will be no longer possible to reached stalemate — the latter above all not wishing to discuss the maintain structures at the expense of the demilitarization of the country. The United States Senate has decided
West German taxpayers simply to mainto freeze half of the aid earmarked for El Salvador ($85 million was tain jobs...."
One example shows the irrationality of
Mario Lopez, who is Interviewed below, is a member of the Diplomatic the market economy, whose end is not and Political Commission of the FLN. The interview was carried out human beings, but profit. The Pentakon firm in Dresden has declared total bankruptcy. This was the most important producer of photographic equipment in
Germany and one of the largest in the world. During the recent photo and cinema exhibition in Cologne, Pentakon presented a new model, which in the medium term, could have become competitive on the world market. But the "destructive force'"
of the market gave another verdict. It is more profitable from a capitalist point of view to close a big enterprise and put
4,000 workers on the dole than to finance a transition period of a few years.
It should be added that these 4,000 unemployed will cost some 80 million marks a year, without counting the overall loss to the national economy. Each year,
Pentakon produced 400,000 Praktika cameras. If the 80 million marks to be spent on unemployment benefit were invested in production, this would amount to subsidizofficially accorded to Cristiani).
by Sergio Rodriguez.
T HE negotiations between the
FLN and the government have attracted a lot of attention - what balance sheet do you draw from them?
Before drawing a balance sheet, I think it is necessary to consider the meaning of the negotiations in the framework of our strategy. The FMLN believes that the armed struggle is a necessity when all other options are exhausted - if there was any other alternative which could meet the needs of the Salvadoran people, we would have chosen that road.
In this context, the negotiations have, for the FMLN, a strategic character. Our struggle for a new society envisages a model of social organization where the problems of the population are the central preoccupation of the regime. This project can only be realized with human and mate rial resources - we all know that war destroys them.
If a negotiated solution is possible, a solution which, without smothering revolutionary expectations, reduces the cost of war and the destruction, it is necessary to understand it from a strategic point of view, for it preserves the means to rebuild the country and the new society.
On the other hand, it should be stressed that negotiations do not necessarily bring about a reconciliation — it is above all a question of the relationship of forces. As Loom as those, and those polo cal deto 15 nomic power, and those who contribute to
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offensive
International Viewpoint #197 • December 24, 1990
EL SALVADOR its maintenance, have the hope of being able to win a victory while conceding nothing, they will seek only to crush the FMLN. Negotiation is not only a problem of political will - even if this latter is important — but, above all, of the relationship of forces. • It is not then, as has been seen elsewhere, a process of negotiated surrender, but, as you have said, a question of the relationship of forces.
Exactly. The aim of fighting for a political solution is to economize on human and material resources and to obtain political stability in the region - the Salvadoran conflict has a direct relevance in Central
As long as the Salvadoran government hoped to crush us militarily, the dialogue underway had no chance of leading to genuine negotiations — what has changed the situation is the offensive of November 1989. Before then, starting from the analysis that the new situation was going to lead to the international isolation of the thought that the FMLN would accept a surrender and that it was only necessary to propose to it the legal framework for doing so - the concept of negotiations was only a tool to bring this about.
But the November offensive modified the co-ordinates of the problem - no longer could anybody believe that the PMLN was weakened and that it would accept a demobilization — the dialogue was thus transformed into a genuine nego• The FMLN analyses the November 1989 offensive as a success then, which has shown the true relationship of forces in El Salvador.
The speech of General Maxwell Thurwell before the United States Congress in January 1990 proves the extent to which we have overturned the idea according to which a military defeat of the FMLN was possible. After November, Thurman said, 'there is no chance of arriving at a military solution in El Salvador". And this soldier is surely not a partisan of political solutions — he participated in the invasion of Panama and he was chief of the Southern Command of the US Army! • You have said something that seems to me very important - the armed struggle is born of the need for an expression of the people, as a democratic right in the face of a closed oligarchy. I think that the FMLN has always been guided by the concern to give priority to the interests of the nation. From this point of view, all military operations, all mass actions or any negotiation confronts the other forces in the 16 whole of Salvadoran society. country with the problems of the
It has often been said, for example, that it is the Sandinista revolution that has really created the Nicaraguan nation. The propositions of the FMLN - its last appeal to the nation, its practice, and so on - flow from this vision of the national interest, which, once again, shatters the idea according to which the Salvadoran problem is part of the East-West
In the doctrine of low intensity conflict, fomented by the US government, there is a strategic factor — the necessity of a political component which opens the road to the military solution. Democracy (CD) and Duarte have fulfilled this role. Before, this party was in the opposition and had a broad social base. Duarte was a popular leader and the best instrument through which US military aid could be justified. From the time when he left the military junta in which he had participated to become a constitutional president, unrestricted military support began. The CD became the cover for the low intensity war and Duarte was our principal enemy. Today we have every interest in the CDs' participation in the search for a popular solution.
The relations established with those who, not so very long ago, were our principal enemies, shows the national interests which guide us. For example, the CD used its trade union, the National Union of Workers and Peasants, created by Duarte, as a social base against us. For the FMLN, on the contrary, an alliance with this federation was justified even before Duarte left the government, because the National Union had its own specific inter-
After losing the last elections, the CD has ceased to be the ally of the Uniteed States, to become an opposition force that we consider as an allied sector — not as an organization which supports our positions, but as a force which, distanced from the government, must also participate in the national struggle.
The project today of the CD to retake political power situates itself above all on the electoral terrain; all its calculations are guided by this, but conditions have changed. For us, this change is positive.
The attitude of the FMLN is not rigid, it depends on the circumstances, role played by this or that force. • Today, despite the problems, negotiations are underway and the FMLN explains that their outcome on demilitarization. What is the interior and international situation of the Cristiani govern-
The Alliance for National Renewal (ARENA) has launched a clearly neoliberal economic programme, abandoning the clearly counter-insurrectional reforms of the CD.
To implement his project, Cristiani entered into negotiations — he had to lower the tension of war, and play for time, but he in no sense sought to resolve the conflict. Thus he said publicly: "We are agreed on a dialogue, but not on negotiations".
But the offensive of November 1989 has changed things - the project of Cristiani to reduce the military conflicts so as to apply his project collapsed. He was then obliged to admit that, to achieve his goal, he needs peace, without for all that renouncing his economic programme -but he maintains his project of dialogue without negotiating anything.
Before the electoral victory of Cristiani and ARENA, the international context favoured the CD — when ARENA came to power, the US administration was obliged to help them to break their international isolation and to construct a good image of the president, "the man who wants to modemise the country",
"he is reasonable" — but without great results, notably after the assassination of the 6 Jesuits in November 1989
In El Salvador itself, this government is still more isolated than during the elections. It should be recalled here that only 20% of the electorate participated in the elections - very many people were not registered on the electoral lists, and the majority of these who were did not vote. Finally, ARENA had led people to think that it would be capable of putting a final end to the war and that it could crush the FMLN. Cristiani had also promised that poverty would be eradicated. Today, numerous Salvadorans, of different social sectors, have been disappointed. • In Latin America, two interpretations are put forward of what is happening in El Salvador which are in my opinion false. Some see in the FMLN's proposals for negotiations the very essence of its strategy -"even the FLN has come to negotiate", they say. Others try to differentiate between the propositions of the FMLN and its strategic goal, as if the Front was Machiavellian.
I think that there are very close links between the two projects (how to make alliances? how to isolate the immediate enemy? what is the meaning of entering into negotiations?) and the very principles of the FMLN. To analyze all this separately runs the risk of analyzing events in El Salvador in a partial manner.
As I just said, for the FMLN negotiations have always had a strategic character — whatever our enemies say, we do not treat this subject in a tactical manner -which does not means that we ignore the tactical questions.
Those who claim that "even the FMLN negotiates" are wrong because they think that we have not been sincere in seeking to negotiate and that negotiations represent a turning away from the revolution. If
December 24, 1990 this was the case, they would be right, but we have renounced nothing. We desire that El Salvador should preserve a maximum of resources with which to build a more just society — that is what impels us to negotiate. If, on the contrary, the process undertaken with the government reduces the possibility of building a more just society, it would have no sense. The negotiations have a clear purpose - they must not undermine the revolution.
But obviously those who have pushed us to the situation where we have taken up arms wish to use these negotiations to maintain the present state of affairs and crush the revolution. Evidently we are not
The Salvadorans have a great responsibility today. They must make the revolution in totally new conditions and with supplementary problems; if we come to power we must take into account, in our international relations, the weight of capitalist forces, whether that pleases us or "socialist relations" or of "relations with the socialist camp". In general, the trend today goes in the direction of capitalism. The Salvadoran revolution must advance in this new, more complicated context —
EL SALVADOR / COLOMBIA in Salvador itself, we must establish a much wider framework of alliances.
International support could reinforce the popular sector of this alliance, otherwise the internal or international allies of a different character will have a greater weight. The Latin American left must reinforce that of El Salvador and I believe that this objective is not truly shared.
It is necessary to avoid any foreign intervention that will destroy the chances of the revolution and, for this, it is crucial that international, above all popular, solidarity is as effective as possible. * in agreement.