Negotiations-
A new front in the Salvadoran struggle
Francisco Herrera, representative of the Salvadoran revolution- The interview was conducted in French and has been transfor Austria and Switzerland, passed Companero Herrera has not had the opportunity to review the English edited text.
The following is the second half of the interview he gave at This part of the interview deals in some detail with the poand Vincent Kermel litical perspectives of the revolutionary front, in particular the development of "people's power" in the liberated zones and the ary front, the FMLN-FDR, through Paris in early October. the time to Gerry Foley respectively of International Viewpoint and Inprecor, the English and French language journals published under the auspices negotiations that have been undertaken with representatives of of the United Secretariat of the Fourth International. the U.S. and Salvadoran governments.
What possibilities do you is very important for us because it is a try into two parts, one where its governsee for developing and extending People's Power in the next period?
We are rather optimistic about the possibilities. The PPL (Poderes
Local Organs People's Power) are one of the great successes of the process of liberation. We are not saying that they represent some kind
But for us, they are fundaThey have a strategic function in the war of liberation and will continue to play a very important role afterward.
In the zones where they exist, the PPL • are an administration of the collective life in the hands of the popular masses. They have already taken some important steps
For some time, the population has been organizing production, that is, what we call "war production," since we are in a war. The aim is self-sufficiency. And it is even possible now for some PPL to provide support for the guerrillas.
The PPL organize the health services, although they face enormous difficulties. We can say now that some of the chronic maladies that result from our poverty, from the capitalist exploitation we suffer, are disappearing. In confronting these the people are demonstrating enormous creativity.
The PPL are also combating illiteracy. This is very important. country, this is one of the curses that afflict us. For fifty years the regime has staged phoney literacy campaigns. But there are areas in Salvador where up to 80 percent of the population is illiterate.
In the controlled areas, the PPL have done a great deal to wipe out illiteracy. They take care of the children, since there are a lot of war orphans in particular. They develop craft production. This is quite important for a personal sense of value. Some of the peasants are quite old, and through craft work they regain a connection with the younger people.
The PPL also organize defense, that is, self-defense, direct evacuations when necessary, and prepare shelters.
This new way of organizing social life
Plated and edited. - the editors way of implementing, even before the seizure of power, certain aspects of the FMLN platform.
So, in May a national meeting of the PPL was held in Chalatenango. There the representatives made a balance sheet of the experience and laid the basis for the work of these bodies in the future. a big assembly, they set up a sort of coordinating committee of the PPL.
What this means in effect is a form of government, a truly people's government, a kind of counterpower. To build this under Reagan's bombs is a considerable political achievement.
This advance contrasts with the worsening situation of the Salvadoran government, which is being caught more and more deeply in its contradictions because of its difficulty in dealing with the economic problems. It has reached the point that every time it takes a step it just sinks deeper in its own contradictions.
The whole economy is focused on the
While the government makes a propaganda show of solving some probit is really not changing anything. It is in fact no longer a question of will. The situation is so critical that only fundamental reforms can help.
So, the embryonic government represented by the PPL is not just the answer of the Salvadoran people to a tyrannical regime that has ruled the country for fifty years. *It is a signpost to the future that will follow the liberation. You might call it a laboratory, in any case it is an example, for the new Salvadoran society.
Q. Is there any relation between this building up of people's power and the reports of the formation of a provisional government in the liberated zones?
A. You have to be careful about the
"provisional government." why I talked about a sort of regional gov-
In fact, it is a coordinating committee of the different PPL. But if you talked about a provisional government, that could open up the way for an attempt by the U.S. to divide our counment rules and the other. That's one aspect of the problem. But there is another.
There is an important part of the population in the zones controlled by the FMLN. But this is not, and is far from being, the majority. We do not have the right to consolidate Chalatenango and Morzan and abandon the rest of the coun-
In the rest of the country, the population is suffering. If we abandoned it, the political work that is being done by the mass organizations would have no meaning. Take ANDES [the teacher's organization], for example. Its main work is not being done in the controlled areas. The teachers are where the schools are, and this is mainly in the zones controlled
And ANDES is part of The FMLN is the Farabundo Marti Front for National Liberation.
That is, the victory we are aiming for is a national one, a central seizure of power, whether this is by an armed as sault on the presidential palace or by dipseizure of power that we are after, we are not interested in creating any sort of parallel government.
The PPL are spreading and developing. But they are a different thing might call this a sort of government. But it is not something like the Provisional Government in Vietnam. That's another process.
Q What is your assessment of the statements the imperialists have made about negotiations? What sort of policy do you propose to take in discussing with Reagan's envoy, Stone, and with the Peace Commission? How do negotia. tions fit into your overall strategy for taking power? Finally, what is your attitude toward the scheduled elections?
A. Reagan has been forced to make a move toward negotiations by very strong resistance to his aggressive policy in Central America from the American public and congress. This is a tactical concession.
Parallel to this gambit by Washington,
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we have seen the formation of this famous Peace Commission. It was formed on the initiative of the political parties and then endorsed by President Magana. practice, it is the government's instrument for making contact with us.
Both Richard Stone have the objective of getting us to participate in the elections. These elections were first scheduled for March 1983, then for December of this year, and now they have been postponed again to March 1984. This indicates the problems they are having, and they are anxious to get us to lend some credibility to these elections.
Stone wanted to give people the idea that he arranged the meeting between us and the Peace Commission. that we decided to meet with this body for our own reasons.
The essential thing for Reagan is to calm his congress down a bit by this maneuver, so that he can get the aid appropriation he wants.
This negotiation gambit also has a wider political importance. In this context, it has been essential for us to keep the initiative, which we have done.
Washington wanted people to think 18 that we agreed to negotiate under their pressure. But in reality, the FMLN has proposed general political solutions to the conflict since 1980. Our offers have always been refused.
The FMLN wrote an initial letter to Stone that reached him through an intermediary in which we proposed a date. He accepted. Subsequently, however, there were difficulties in actually holding the
Certain mechanisms did not The Americans wanted to manipulate this first meeting. So, we demanded that there be witnesses.
Then, the FMLN-FDR wrote again to Stone to propose another meeting, and that one did take place. What we wanted to do was to demonstrate our readiness for dialogue and at the same time to show Stone what interested us was a deepgoing discussion of an overall solution to the conflict, and that we were not interested in the elections. That is essentially our
In the case of the Peace Commission, its members made a lot of statements to the Salvadoran press. They want to get us to participate in the elections. What we want is a national debate in San Salvador. They reject that. These exchanges are the very first steps in the first phase, which is one of dialogue.
What we want to do is to show our willingness to engage in dialogue, not to close the door, to demonstrate flexibility about the mechanisms. But at the end we want to achieve a national debate.
Q. By this you mean a public debate throughout the country?
A. Yes. We are not interested in any debate behind closed doors. We want the people to know what we are saying.
We don't recognize Stone as a mediator. The U.S. is a party to the conflict.
What in fact are dialogue and negotiations in the overall context of people's war? We can say that they are a new instrument. That is, it is the war itself that has produced this new front. We did not see this in Nicaragua or Cuba, where the processes were more rapid. But we did see it in Vietnam. So, dialogue and negotiations are an important new front, but one that has to be closely coordinated with the war.
Q. It's true that we saw such a process in Vietnam. But the conditions after all are hardly the same in both cases. The outcome was favorable to the Vietnamese for a whole series of reasons. You say that this proposal for dialogue and negotiations represents a maneuver by Reagan in response to the pressure of public opinion reflected in the congress. But it seems that there is another aspect.
These proposals fit into the framework of large-scale regional maneuvers. The U.S. is using certain states in the region to make proposals for regional solutions. And in the case of El Salvador, these proposals have been designed to gain time for the imperialists. They are continuing to build up their military forces and their military technical machine. Perhaps they hope to gain time either to strengthen their positions in El Salvador or else. where in Central America.
A Yes. That is one of Reagan's objectives. We do not have the slightest illusion about that. They have a time problem. They have a local army that is not living up to their expectations. They have the problem of strong resistance by U.S. public opinion. Reagan faces a very important test next year. They also face a phenomenon in Central America itself that they can hardly understand.
El Salvador is a very small country, without important resources. It is only two hours and 45 minutes by plane from U.S. territory. It's only 35 minutes from the Panama Canal Zone. And yet in El Salvador they face a people's war that they have not been able to stamp out. They have not been able to crush the re sistance in our country precisely because it is a people's war.
And in a people's war, time is an important ally of the people when their forces are strong enough to begin to hit the enemy's strategic centers. At that point, time is on the side of the people and workers against the army. That's what's happening now in El Salvador.
This arouses enthusiasm among many sec- for alternatives.
tions of the Salvadoran people, who for dietions between the regime and the U.S.
As I said before, they calculated that they could easily destroy us, and now they realize that it is going to take time. So, they are trying to maneuver, using various political and military means.
They are engaged in an escalation. No date has been set for these maneuvers in Honduras to end. Honduras is being made into a military staging area. In fact they are trying to gain time to reorganize their forces and readjust their strategy.
They do all this in the context of a regional plan. Because they start from the idea that if there were no Nicaragua, if there were no Cuba, there would be no problem in El Salvador. getting caught in their own game. have shown that we can fight effectively on the diplomatic front too.
Precisely what advantages are you trying to gain on the diplomatic front?
At the start of the year, the Americans thought they were going to have a lot of problems in continuing military aid to the Salvadoran regime, be. cause of its brutality, its contempt for
The unpopularity of Rea gan's policy in El Salvador put pressure on congress to place limitations on the aide to the regime. So, a discussion began to develop in congress about the need for the U.S. government to demonstrate flexibility, a spirit of dialogue.
was that if the Salvadoran regime did not go along with this, military aid should be cut off. This means was to be used to force them to engage in a
Now, if at that point we had shown inflexibility, that would have been used as an argument to justify continued U.S. aid to the Salvadoran regime. was a means of putting pressure on us. But at the same time it was a maneuver designed to make us look negative, like militarists, like extremists.
That is, they wanted to portray you as extremists not just to the American public but also to a section of the Sal-
A. Exactly. It was a trap. If we had it looked as if it was we who were unwilling to talk, then they would have used that to start a big propaganda campaign against us, claiming that we were versivos," terrorists, and so on. So, we did not want to fall into the trap.
But we also took a more rounded view of the question. We expected that if discussions started, certain contradictions would appear in the government, in the bourgeoisie, and in the army. And that is what happened.
But we also had to avoid letting ourselves be put in a position where we only reacted to their proposals. We had to make our own initiatives. We did, and they were obliged to respond to them, as I explained earlier.
Taking advantage of their signs of willingness for discussion, we make proposals.
various reasons want to see the war end.
Does this inspire enthusiasm or illusions in the possibility of a negotiated settlement with imperialism? you explain, for example, that always before when you proposed dialogue there was a strong reaction from the far right? But there does not seem to have been any now when you met Stone and the Peace Commission.
It's true that last October, when we proposed dialogue, ARENA [the main far-right organization] acted within 24 hours to close off any possibility. the Death Squadrons are more active now than ever. They have set up a radio station called "Radio Sovereignty." They have been assassinating trade-union and government minister not long ago.
The oligarchy, which is sort of the hard core of the bourgeoisie, is by no means ready to accept dialogue. It is for that reason that President Magana has declared several times there is no question of negotiating about power or the
Q. So, what does the FMLN-FDR intend to negotiate about?
We got involved in this struggle to change things in El Salvador, to end a tyranny that has lasted for fifty years, with an economic crisis that is not something temporary but has structural roots, to achieve democracy. achieve these objectives, we were forced to take up arms.
Our objective is to achieve a relationship of forces that will make it possible for the people to put on the agenda the questions of change and the seizure of
Our policy is to change the relationship of forces. For fifty years the people represented zero in terms of force. Before the civil war began, they represented zero. The army had 12,000 soldiers, so it was 12,000 to zero. Now this is far
There is a people's army, a guerrilla
We have a platform, a project, inrecognition, representativeOur objective to get to a position where the people can run the country for themselves, by the people for the people. We are not militarists. We have a rounded view of the process of liberation.
As Comandante Marcial said, there are several ways in which the war can end. One is by negotiations. But in every case, the condition is that the relationship of forces be favorable to the people.
Our concern is to hold the initiative, to combine our diplomatic activity with political mass work and military action.
creates contradictions among our enemies, because there are sectors within the bourgeoisie itself that want to see the end of a terrible civil war. That does not mean that they are with us. not mean that they want to see the victory of the FMLN. But they are looking
Q. This combination of three types of activity that you mention is something new and complex. One supposes that there have been discussions about this within the FMLN.
A. It is entirely logical to think that the opening of a new front, the diplomatic one - which is a very complex one - would arouse discussion in a young organization, one that has been forged in the fire of action. On the other hand, this organization has been consolidated over the last four years of struggle. Great advances have been made, and a great capacity for leadership has been shown. That could not be explained if there were not a strong desire to maintain unity, in a front made up of organizations that come from different origins.
So, it is entirely natural that the question of negotiations aroused discussion. What is important is what kind of dis-
Essentially it was over the content of the negotiations, what we are going to negotiate. Is there any danger that the working masses may lose something? Well, we are still in the first steps.
have to study the question more deeply.
Perhaps you could explain the principles on which your position in these negotiations is based
First, we are not going to participate in the elections. Even if the Salva doran regime agreed to postpone them, that would change nothing for us. not a question of dates. It's a funda mental question.
minimum conditions do not exist for the kind of elections we could participate in. There is more than enough evidence of this, such as comrades who were murdered when they tried to engage in dialogue.
There is no reason to put in question our call for a revolutionary democratic government. This demand is a historic fact of the process in El Salvador. It is not something accidental, it is not something dreamed up by some individual genius who stayed up all night and pro the synthesis of the struggles. be swept away so easily, and it will certainly have a direct relation to the dialogue in which we engage.
Q. Do you see the possibility of the dialogue leading to a truce?
No. In the first place, our people would never permit this, even if we ever took a notion to try it. Such a thing would simply be suicide. question of that. The U.S. wants to
It is possible, although we are a long way from such a point, that military questions could be taken up in the nego-
There could be local, limited ceasefires, among other things to test intentions. But we have no intention of accepting a general truce.