Isolating the
EL SALVADOR time, has been the principal ally of the cause of the Salvadoran guerillas.
Mr. Villalobos must be about 40 years old; he rarely gives interviews and has spent a good part of the last decade in clandestinity, abroad or in the mountains of El Salvador, leading important struggles against the Salvadoran army and its US military advisors.
WE reproduce below extracts from an article on Joaquin
Villalobos, a member of the Revolutionary Army of the People
(ERP)' and of the leadership of El Salvador's Farabundo Marti
National Liberation Front (FMLN), which first appeared in the
New York Times in March 1991, together with a comment by
Mexican revolutionary Marxist Sergio Rodriguez. The
Salvadoran leader has made no attempt to disassociate himself from the quotations attributed to him in the article, which has been retranslated from the French.
DOCUMENT
N the course of his first public declarations since the collapse of the
Soviet bloc, comandante Joaquin
Villalobos said that his coalition would not achieve its objectives through armed struggle, but through participating, as an unarmed political movement, in a pluralist democracy.
Speaking of what he called an important transformation in the thinking of the rebels after recent international events,
Mr. Villalobos said that the guerilla coalition has gone beyond Marxism, which he characterized as "a political theory like any other, no more". He said that the military objectives of the FMLN had changed, its goal being no longer to impose a defeat or a reform on the Salvadoran army, but to seek on the contrary to obtain the permanent disarmament of the two parties, under the supervision of the United
Presenting orthodox Communism as an extremist position, comparable to that of the Salvadoran right, Villalobos said that the FMLN now thinks that the future of El
Salvador must be based on the model of major capitalist countries like Germany,
Japan or Costa Rica — this latter having no army and enjoying close relations with the United States economy.
"In El Salvador, it is necessary to isolate or cut off the extremes", said Mr. Villalo-
1. In 1972 the Party of the Socialist Revolution (PRS)
was formed, along with its armed wing, the ERP, out
1974, the ERP
In of radicalized Christian milieux.
experienced a split from which emerged the National
Resistance (RN) and its armed wing, the Armed Forces of National Liberation (FARC), led by, amongst oth-
- who was assassinated ers, the poet Roque Dalton during internal struggles between the FARC and the
ERP.
The ERP and the FARC have been part of the front of
Salvadoran politico-military organizations, the FMLN, since its creation in 1980.
The ERP has always claimed allegiance to Marxism-
Leninism and the Cuban and Vietnamese revolutions.
bos. "In our case, it is dogmatic Stalinism and classical traditional Communism. At the other extreme, it is the orthodox right which, in El Salvador, is worthy of the
The comments made by Mr. Villalobos in the last few days, in an unusual series of interviews, took place as news arrived of guerilla attacks and military confrontations in El Salvador, on the eve of the legislative and municipal elections. The guerillas occupied for a short period of time a part of the residential quarter of El Escalon, in San Salvador, and they attacked the principal hydro-electric plant of the country, in the province of Chalatenango, causing 23 deaths.
The content of his declarations and the period in which they have been made give the impression that their goal was to calm international criticism of the guerillas, and to present a moderate image on the eve of the elections, which the rebels have promised not to disrupt.
Comments far from traditional positions
The comments are nonetheless astonishing, for they are very far from the traditional revolutionary positions of Mr. Villalobos' coalition, which, for a very long time, has fiercely defended such doctrines (....)
These declarations seem also to clarify What the guerilla leader has described as the "new political reality" which his movement must face, after the dramatic political convulsions which have dealt a blow to its principal international supporters.
Amongst these events one could cite the fundamental changes in the Socialist
International, in the countries of the Eastern Bloc, in Nicaragua and the deepening of the crisis in Cuba which, for a long
Villalobos, like other members of the guerilla high command, has lately tried hard to enter into negotiations with the Salvadoran government (...) "(..) We do not seek the reform of the armed forces of El Salvador, but their dismantling and the demilitarization of the country, for it is the best means of guaranteeing democracy and economic development" said Mr. Villalobos in closing. *
Theory
and
reality
WITHOUT attempting to give an overall picture of the evolution of the Salvadoran revolutionary process, or to draw definitive conclusions on the remarks attributed to comandante Joaquin Villalobos In the New York
Times, It is necessary to deal with certain questions which are raised by the new propositions of some Salvadoran leaders. SERGIO RODRIGUEZ
A FTER the events in Eastern
Europe, no one can doubt the necessity of a critical review of certain strategic hypotheses. The wind of democratic sentiments is blowing today through all the organizations of the left, putting in question the traditional schema of vanguards, single parties, of "national leadership, command!" and so on'. These are laudable developments and reflexes which, with the disappearance of what many considered the "van guard of the anti-imperialist revolution" (the Soviet bloc), illustrate the transformation of certain essential points of our strategy.
But there are many who wish to throw the baby out with the bath water; respond- 17 ing to the democratic aspirations of the May 13, 1991 • #206 International Viewpoint
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extremes
EL SALVADOR people should not mean making concessions to imperialism's ideological offensive. This phenomenon of distancing from Marxism, explained by its loss of credibility after the events in eastern Europe, is evident inside key sectors of the Latin American revolutionary left. In the process, all the nuances are jumbled together, in the name of generalities which do not particularly contribute to an understanding of the very complex political situation which the revolutionary process in El Salvador is going through.
We do not know if, as Joaquin Villalobos claims, the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN) has beyond Marxism, and we know still less by what new theory it claims to replace it. But, on the other hand, we know that the FMLN has shown political qualities that have inspired a whole generation of revolutionaries; it has been capable of making the link between Marxist theory and national reality, which is different from what Marx had analyzed in the 19th centu-
Struggle against Marxist
"orthodoxy"
This challenge had already been taken up, a long time ago, by another great Mariàtegui?. The struggle against a certain Marxist "orthodoxy" was essential for the elaboration of a specific vision based on the fundamental idea that, if the future of Latin America is obviously linked to that of the capitalist world - because of the pillage exercised by the latter - history cannot repeat itself in the same manner in our countries as in Europe or the United States. These national particularities have led us to attempt to build a system of thought which seeks a fusion between Marxism and national identity; in this domain. the FMLN has made an inestimable contribution.
There is a gulf, however, between echoing this and adopting an anti-Marxist ideology — very fashionable in recent times. From all the evidence, the self-styled "new modernity" has some damage inside the revolutionary organizations. Behind the slogan of "modernize or die" an important part of the Latin American left seeks supposed links with an authoritarian past. But such efforts risk abandoning the very essence of revolutionary thought, that is its emancipatory, subversive, egalitarian and popular character, and its political and moral opposition to capitalism. The tragedy, for those who wish to renew the left, is that imperialism and its allies are not raodernizing themselves at all and are continuing their old policy of the "big stick" "manifest destiny", and so on. The US intervention in Panama in December 1989, and more recently still, in Iraq, 18 show how far they will go to attain their objectives, which are far from being International Viewpoint #206 • May 13, 1991
Some say that it is precisely an analysis of the current imperialist offensive that has led a significant part of the Latin American left to revise some of its schemas; the imperialist offensive puts all the revolutionary currents in a very unfavorable position (it is terribly pathetic to hear Fidel Castro say that the Cuban revolution is not isolated; he seems tempted to wish away a very worrying reality, an approach that will be totally counter-productive in the long term). The pressure exerted on organizations like the FMLN is very much more grave than that suffered by other types of forces. When the Sandinista comandante Victor Tirado Lopez that the cycle of imperialist revolutions had reached its end?, we were far from imagining the extent to which these declarations reflected a more general sentiment of the revolutionary left. Even if the anti-imperialist revolution is not on the order of the day, our peoples cannot build democratic and just nations unless they maintain the longterm perspective of such a revolution. Any intermediary conception will turn out to be false and tragically utopian.
One is struck by comandante Villalobos' idea according to which the future of El Salvador could follow the model of capitalist countries like Germany, Japan,
Rica. East Germany believed that it had the possibility of becoming like the Federal Republic of Germany; today it is waking up from this
Actually, the worst thing that could happen to El Salvador would be to become like Japan or Germany, imperialist countries which subject, exploit and pillage others and which moreover finance immoral wars like that in the Gulf.
Imperialist partition cannot be modified
But such a danger does not exist for El Salvador. After the agreement made by the imperialist states on the sharing out of the world, there is no chance of modifying this partition — in other words, El Salvador will never be Germany or Japan. It could, on the other hand, resemble Costa Rica — which, true enough, has no army, but has an extremely efficient police force for the purposes of repression, crushing strikes and nipping in the bud revolutionary organizations, and whose government has always obeyed the orders of Washing-
Today, the debate is over whether countries like ours have the chance of an independent development, in the context of contemporary capitalism. We do not think so. But while we know also that the revolution is not for tomorrow, and that the relation of forces between capital and the working class, between imperialism and the oppressed nations, is rather favourable to the former, we cannot base our strategic perspective on conjunctural elements of this type. Imperialism talks about a "new world order" which, as Chomsky says, has existed for over 400 years; it is far, however, from attaining a cycle of long term stability. We are perhaps on the eve of important working class struggles in the big imperialist coun
- industrial restructuring and the formation of new productive blocs will not fail to push the working class to resist Absence of victorious battles
One of the big weaknesses of the last cycle of struggles in the Third World has been the absence of significant victorious battles in the imperialist countries. The governments of these countries have thus been able to act in all impunity; international social democracy being the central factor which has blocked the radicalization of the workers. But all this is beginning to change. We must break with a vision of dependence, which translates itself by a sort of "third worldism" in our political action; the only possibility of transforming the relation of forces at the international level resides in the struggle of the workers in the imperialist countries. This does not at all mean that our coun tries are condemned to paralysis; on the contrary, our struggles are fundamental in the accumulation of forces which will change the existing relations between capital and labour, between imperialism and
Our divergences with the comments of comrade Villalobos do not hinge then on the fact that the FMLN seeks to transform itself eventually into a unarmed political force; arms are not and have never been the key element differentiating reformists and revolutionaries. The armed struggle in El Salvador has been and remains the expression of a population which, faced with the closed attitude of the oligarchy, has found no other road. Nobody knows better than the FMLN if the moment has come to make such a transformation. We are no more in disagreement with the negotiations that the FMLN is undertaking with the government of El Salvador; nor, still less, with what seems to us an excellent proposition, the demilitarization of society. The repercussions of 1. This was a slogan much used in Nicaragua, at the time of the Sandinista government. The national leadership comprised the nine comandantes of the FLN. 2. José Carlos Mariàtegui (1895-1930), Peruvian writer and revolutionary militant. Author notably of "Seven essays of interpretation of Peruvian reality" (1928), the first great theoretical work which applied Marxism-Leninism to Latin America, he also published the continental review Amauta. Mariategui founded the Communist Party of Peru and the Confederation of 3. In an interview in the Uruguayan newspaper Brecha on March 30, 1990, the Sandinista comandante Victor Tirado Lopez said, amongst other things: "I think that the cycle of anti-imperialist revolutions, in the sense of a total response, military and economic, to imperialism, is in the process of closing. It is necessary to seek
speeches of a revolutionary leader like Joaquin Villalobos could go very far. In the spirit of the revolutionary pluralism that we have always applied in our relations with comrades of the the FMLN, we launch an appeal for reflection and debate.
A generation of Latin American revolutionaries could draw erroneous conclusions from the current situation, which is certainly difficult, giving ground to the
"obstacles to utopia", to use the formula employed by the Guatemalan revolutionary Manuel Payeras to characterize the defence of this utopia through the fusion of what is best in social thought - Marxism - with our IndoAmerican identity, as Mariategui said; this is our essential objective. The rest is no more than tactical adaptation, which, however important, is not everything. *
EL SALVADOR / NICARAGUA February 1990.
The FSLN is paying heavily for the lack of democratic internal debate during the 11 years it exercised power.
Leadership from the top down, summed slogan "National leadership, command!", was the basis of the relations between the FSLN leadership and the Sandinista assembly (120 members, reinforced by some newcomers for the El Crucero meeting); between the national leadership and the leaderships of Sandinista mass organizations and the youth organization; and with the intermediary and base structures. This command structure was justified by reference to the state