dangers threatening the Salvadoran revolution and the tasks of world solidarity garchy. panied by a comparable advance in the area of united action among the various underground revolutionary forces. were in fact serious hangovers of sectarianism and mutual mistrust. 1974-1975, a violent split broke out in the ERP over the question of the connec tion between mass work and armed ac-
The Salvadoran struggle has gone through major changes in the past few years. Passing from a pre-insurrectionary situation at the start of 1980, to one of full-scale civil war, to the present stage, which is marked by growing direct foreign intervention against the guerrillas. In each of these successive phases, the people's forces have faced crucial problems of revolutionary political and military strategy and of achieving unity in
The Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN), which was set up in 1980, has responded to these problems without ever conceding anything essential to the dictatorship or the imperialists. to its historical perspective of overthrowing the dictatorship by revolutionary action. This does not mean that the FMLN has not made any misjudgments in the conduct of its struggle, or that the evolution of the struggle has not had effects on its internal debates. In a recent balance sheet, the FMLN recognized that such errors had in fact been made, (hores, despite the polited and mi say en on to tee a tion, during which the poet Roque Dalton was killed. The FARN developed out of this split. These tragic events were to complicate organizations for a long time.
In velopment of unity in action by the revolutionary forces has lagged behind the tempo of the radicalization, you have to keep in mind, first that the origins and political trajectories of the Salvadoran revolutionary organizations are very different, and secondly that there was a sudden acceleration in the course of events after July 1979 leaders who came out of a split in the made." (1)
It is necessary, not only in order to properly understand the positions and the activity of the FMLN forces but also to clarify the pressing tasks Vincent KERMEL
The roots of the Salvadoran civil war are in the sharp acceleration of mass anti-dictatorial struggles and the accumulation of revolutionary forces that marked the decade of the 1970s. The accompanying political radicalization created the culture medium for the political-military organizations that arose in the same decade.
The Farabundo Marti People's Liberation Forces (FPL) were formed in 1970, the Revolutionary People's Army (ERP) in 1971, and the Armed Forces of National Resistance (FARN) in 1975. These organizations broke from the reformist orientations of the bourgeois Christian Democratic Party (PDC) and the vadoran Communist Party (PCS), which had held political hegemony over the workers and people's movement.
The growth of the underground revolutionary organizations that advocated armed struggle against the dictatorship was given impetus by the crisis of the political leadership of the people's movement. This crisis ensued from the failure of the electoralist strategies, which became evident after the election rigging by the dictatorship in 1972 and 1977. The PCS's policy of an electoral alliance with the Christian Democracy also lost its credibility, furthering deepening this crisis of political orientation.
Thus, a process of organization and radicalization gathered momentum a6 mong sections of the masses, with which the revolutionists proved able to build
The revolutionists were sensitive to the struggles of a large urban and agricultural proletariat for better wages and conditions. Moreover, they drew the lessons from the repression of the Salvadoran peasant rebellion of 1932 and from the failure of various guerrillist operations in Latin America in the 1960s. Armed struggle and the masses
So, the revolutionary political-military organizations oriented their armed activity in accordance with the development of the mass movement. Under their impetus, political mass fronts developed in the mid-1970s. Thus, the United People's Action Front (FAPU), linked to FARN, was formed in 1974. Then, in August 1975, the Revolutionary People's Bloc (BPR), linked constituted. Finally, in 1977, the Feb-
Leagues (LP 28), linked to the ERP, was set up.
These structures were conceived of as political fronts capping the networks of trade-union, people's and other mass organizations controlled by the underground political-military groups. (2)
In this way, the revolutionary left progressively gained ground in a burgeoning process of organization. It made advances also in the countryside, where it
PCS, which resulted from the internal debates provoked by the Cuban revolution and the so-called Football War of 1969 [with Honduras]. On the other hand, the ERP and the FARN have their origins in the radicalization of progressive Christian currents.
The Cuban revolution, to be sure, did provide a certain common pole for the radicalization of these various currents. But in their relationships with the mass movement, the various revolutionary organizations not only differentiated themselves from the reformists but also from the other revolutionary groups. This evolution was rooted evidently in real differences of strategic assessment, international perspectives, and in the problems of underground struggle. 1(3) As a result, divisions were to persist in the mass movement among the trade-union and people's organizations affiliated to the various political fronts of the underground organizations.
This state of affairs was not surmounted until the victory of the Nicaraguan revolution in July 1979 which speeded up the development of the political situation in the region, even though, overall, the revolutionary currents were in a posi1. Revolutionary Situation and Intervention ist Escalation in the Salvadoran War, General Command of the FMLN, Morazan, January 1984. Publication of Radio Venceremos, p. 28.
For example, at the end of the 1970s. the BPR claimed to have several tens of thou sands of members and included, among other organizations, the Federation of Agricultural Workers (FTC), the Revolutionary Trade-Union Federation (FSR), and the National Association of Teachers of El Salvador (ANDES). The FAPU included the El Salvador National Federation of Labor Unions (FENASTRAS). 3. For an analysis of the historical origins of the Salvadoran revolutionary currents, see No 70, February 21, 1980, of Inprecor, IV's French-language sister publication.
International Viewpoint 30 July 1984
tion of strength within the mass movement.
It was the offensive that the revolutionary forces unleashed, following the military coup of October 15, 1979, that toppled the regime of General Humberto Romero, that blocked the attempt by Jimmy Carter's administration to defuse the developing revolutionary situation by means of a few reforms.
the coup, a junta was put in representing a coalition the PCS and the Revolutionary Nationalist Movement (MNR), a small petty bourgeois formation with links to the Second International. ment tried to offer a reformist alternative, but this collapsed under the combined effect of the sharpening class conflicts given impetus by revolutionary action and of the stubborn resistance by the ruling strata to the application of the program of reforms proposed by the junta (agrarian reform, nationalization of the banks, curbing the death squads, etc.)
Contrary to the hopes of the US imperialists, the new situation opened the way somewhat more for a revolutionary solution to the crisis of the dictatorship that had been maintained intact. The departure of the PCS from the government on December 1979, and the subsequent withdrawal of the MNR, were the direct consequence of growing response among the poor masses to the proposals advanced by the revolutionists.
So, in early 1980, a new wave of radicalization developed in the workers and people's movement, reflected in gigantie International Viewpoint 30 July 1984
Salvadoran guerrillas occupying a village (DR) street demonstrations. The acceleration of these class confrontations, and no doubt also the Nicaraguan example, then led the revolutionary people's forces to begin systematically building unity in action. This was situated more and more explicitly within the perspective of preparing for a general insurrection.
The new course led to a process of gradual unification, propelled by the rapid rise in the mobilization of the working masses. After about a year, it culminated in the formation of the FMLN on October 9, 1980
This advance toward united action by the workers and people's forces, led by the revolutionary organizations, contrasted with previous experiences of unity in the mass movement, which were dominated by reformist or bourgeois currents. By the end of 1979, the PCS, the FPL and the FARN set up a structure for political and military coordination.
The joint manifesto front of workers organizations, published
10, 1980, said: should make any mistake about it any more. The only real and effective alternative for solving the national crisis in the the people is an armed people's revolution, for which the condiare ripening rapidly within the masses." (4)
Because of its differences with the FARN, the ERP stayed out of this regroupment, even if the FPL maintained bilateral relations with it and with the Central American Revolutionary Workers Party (PRTC), of more recent origin.
On January 11, 1980, the process of unification took a decisive step forward with the formation of the Mass Revolutionary Coordinating Committee of the People's Organizations (CRM). This structure brought together the mass fronts of all the political-military organizations (FAPU, the BPR, LP 28) and the Nationalist Democratic Union (UDN), linked to the PCS. Later it brought in the People's Liberation Movement (MLP), linked to the PRTC.
The CRM organized the biggest mass demonstration in the history of El Salvador, assembling around 250,000 people in the capital on January 22, 1980. This process of unification under revolutionary leadership further increased the following of the political-military organizations and reinforced their capacity for mobilization, as well as their links with important sections of the people's movement. Revolutionary unity
This unity was deepened with the formation in April 1980 of the Revolutionary Democratic Front (FDR) on the basis of a platform calling for the overthrow of the dietatorship and for thoroughgoing reforms. In addition to the member organizations of the CRM, the FDR included various trade-union and people's organizations and forces of bourgeois origin, such as the Social Christian People's Movement (MPSC), a splitoff from the PDC, which was then in government; as well as forces of petty bourgeois origin, such as the MNR. It represented a more extensive unification of the antidictatorial strata and thus a further step toward the FDR was placed under the leadership of the revolutionary armed forces, since it recognized the authority of the FMLN.
During this time contacts continued the underground organizations, and on May 22, 1980, the Unified Revolutionary Leadership (DRU) was formed. It included the FPL, the FARN, the ERP and the PCS. The DRU then defined itself as "a unified leadership responsible for drawing up and executing a single political and military line for all the organizations, for leading the revolutionary war of our heroic people to victory, to of a revolutionary democratic government, and to the introduction of deepgoing political, economic and social changes...."
The DRU was to experience internal difficulties, reflected in the withdrawal of the FARN from this coordinating body in August 1980. The difference seems to have had to do, among other things, with a disagreement over a strike action organized in the capital city by FENASTRAS, a union organization controlled by the
Quoted by Rouge, weekly paper of the of the Fourth International, January 7
FAPU, which is linked to the FARN. More generally, the FARN made it clear that it intended to keep this process of unification at the level of coordination.
At the time, the DRU issued a communique violently denouncing ualist, hegemonist, adventurist and even putschist tendencies on the part of the leaders of the National Resistance, which have been reflected in actions undertaken outside the framework of what was decided in the DRU and in failure to apply in practice the decisions adopted." (6)
A few months later, however, on October 9, 1980, the FMLN was formed. It was defined as a "single military organization" with a single command operating in the framework of "the strategy and tactics of a single people's war." After several weeks of discussion, the FARN and the PRTC joined the FMLN. Nonetheless, the debate on the FMLN's conception of unity was not closed. It reemerged a few months later over the question of how decisions were to be made by the general command of the
The formation of the FMLN as a united-front framework for the military and political struggle to overthrow the dictatorship came, however, at a time when the situation of the movement had changed, since repression had limited the possibilities for open work. In the wake of the February 1980 strike actions, the dictatorship launched a drive back the mass mobilization.
The regime's strategy for repression included "official" suppression of demonstrations, banning political parties, tight military surveillance of the cities and parallel actions by paramilitary groups (assassination of workers' leaders, provostreet demonstrations, etc.). By these means the dictatorship managed within a few months to deal serious blows to the mass movement in the capital city.
The method was to terrorize the population en masse by assassinations carried out by the death squadrons and by raids into poor neighborhoods. hand in hand with selective repression designed to decapitate the workers and people's movement. The effects of repression
The brutal repression against demonstration organized at the end of March 1980 to protest the murder of the archbishop of San Salvador, Oscar Romero, illustrated this transformation of the conditions for political activity by the urban mass movement in the capital. Between January and June 1980, about 2,000 people were assassinated. the aftermath of the strikes in June and August 1980, unions came under violent
The leadership of the electrical union STECEL were arrested. The electricity generating plants were put under military control, and some unions were banned.
In November 1980, part of the public leadership of the FDR was assassinated. And when these leaders were buried, the possible to organize a rally of only about 5,000 persons, who had to prepare to
The FDR had to suspend some of its mass initiatives because of the repression.
Having thus regained the initiative in the capital, the dictatorship managed to stop the development toward an urban insurrection, for which the momentum had been building up, with the incorporation of new sections of the working masses into the ranks of the people's forces led by the revolutionists.
This did not, however, mean that the relationship of forces was tipped back in favor of the dictatorship on the national scale. The deterioration in the situation of the mass movement in the capital was in fact compensated for by an expansion in the military action of the FMLN and a reinforcement of its bases of support in the rest of the country. This was made possible because the revolutionary organizations had carried out certain preparatory work and had a base in peasant movement in several
Moreover, the political weight of the workers and small peasants was far from negligible in a country where these strata represented 60% of the population in 1975 and where the land question and conflict with the oligarchy were central concerns for 60% of the peasant families. proportion of the peasantry made up of seasonal workers, migrant workers and without land or with plots of
This readiness of the FMLN to resist the dictatorship's military counteroffensive over 1980 and its ability to transform itself in a few months into a real armed force assured that the revolutionary process would continue. did not seem to exist any longer for caran insurrectionary strike in the immediate future.
This situation prompted discussions on the perspectives for struggle among the advocates of the various strategic conceptions held within the FMLN and on the means for making decisions within the framework of the front. At the time the political debate was polarized between the FPL, which supported a strategy of people's war involving the strengthening of the areas controlled by the revolutionists and a strict workersand-peasants-alliance orientation, and the ERP, which favored a perspective of insurrection in the near future, with broader antidictatorial alliances.
Under the influence of the ERP's conception to a certain extent, the FMLN launched a general offensive in December
1981, which some FMLN referred to on a number of oc casions as a "final" one.
The first was a military offensive on the national level. This action began in mid-December, and, despite certain weaknesses, was an undeniable success, insofar as it meant that the FMLN had seized the military initiative, exposed the vulnerability of the government forces, and achieved an advance in coordinated action by the people's forces.
The second prong was an unlimited general strike called in mid-January by the FDR, which was supposed to lead to a popular insurrection in the capital. This operation was a failure.
did not join in massively, and those sections of the masses that went on strike subsequently came under severe
Overall, the January 1981 offensive marked the entry of the revolutionary struggle into the phase of full-fledged civil war. US imperialism responded to the blows dealt to the government forces in particular by building up the first Salvadoran elite unite, the Atlacatl Political challenge for the FMLN
The FMLN, thus, came out of this period stronger on the military level but extremely complex problems on In a sense, these dit ficulties constituted a challenge to the revolutionists' schema of taking power by combining a guerrilla offensive with a general uprising of the Several elements were highlighted by the
First of all, at the end of the day the splits that were expected in the armed forces did not materialize to anything like the extent anticipated despite the call for rebellion raised by colonel Ma-
The most that happened was the desertion of a part of the Santa Ana garrison. The crisis of the government's armed forces did not, therefore take the spectacular form of the army breaking up under the impact of the FMLN's military action, with the large sections going over to the antidictatorial struggle.
Of course, there were tactical differences running through the military appa-
But despite creeping demoralization, a steady flow of desertions, and the losses of materiel and human life, the core of the military hierarchy, which is an emanation of the Salvadoran oligarchy, remained quite solid. In this respect the role of imperialism was becoming more and more decisive. In order to deal with this situation, therefore, the FMLN had to take up particularly arduous military tasks. In particular, it had to build up a real people's armed force.
Secondly, the masses in the capital, terrorized by the repression and partially disorganized, did not rise up spontaneously in response to the FDR's appeal in masses showed reluctance to get involved in an unlimited general strike. A whole in El Salvador." New Left Review, No 122, July-August 1980.
International Viewpoint 30 July 1984
section of the people's movement remained unconvinced that the FMLN could mount an effective self-defense of these actions against the repression and assure that they would develop directly and without undue bloodshed into a revolutionary overthrow of the dictatorship.
From the standpoint of the ripeness of conditions for class confrontations in the urban centers, it seems that the FMLN's military offensive came too late. This conclusion is in uary 1981 insurrection], while it was late with respect to the critical point of the revolutionary situation (January to June 1980), nonetheless brought a strong thrust in the accumulation of forces." (8)
Since then the FMLN has faced the need of finding the means for restarting a process to prepare the way for launching a general popular uprising. To accomplish this, it has had to look for bridges for bringing into the struggle sections of the popular masses not yet involved in it, especially in the capital. In fact, the existence of such sectors remaining outside the struggle offered the bourgeois forces room for maneuver.
did not seriously interfere with the elections in those areas where the government forces were able to assure protec-
The FMLN document quoted above, moreover, partially recognized this this problem, pointing out:
"The FMLN tried consciously or unconsciously to repeat the schema of the *great offensive on March 28, 1982. Although it did not achieve its principal objectives, it did succeed in accumulating new tactical experience that will enable it in the future to make a big qualitative advance in the military field. However, in the political field, a temporary crisis developed, lasting from March to
In this period, the FMLN readjusted its forces and its tacties." (9)
Nonetheless, despite the difficulties of remobilizing the urban masses broadly under its leadership, the FMLN did not lose the broad working-class and popular base that it held throughout the country, including in the zones directly control. But what did appear more and more was a differentiation in attitudes, which in fact was a feature of the civil-war situation that the population was experiencing. A gap developed bemilitary tactics. From that time, the cording to its assessment today, ideas that we could launch an insurrection when we wanted and the idea of the 'great offensive' ceased to be determining features in the FMLN's plans. This is because there was a better understanding of the characteristics that the revolutionary war had already assumed." (10)
The consolidation zones, the establishment of "Comandante Gonzalo Campaign" launched in June 1982 illustrated this reorientation in the
The FMLN's objectives were now to wear down the government's repressive forces and to aggravate the crisis of the dictatorship through a series of armed actions that were not aimed at an immediate seizure of power. US invasion looms
In the spring of 1983, the FMLN had to confront a very strong reaction by US imperialism. Washington imposed a new political military strategy on the government forces. It was designed to obstruct communications among the guerrillas and to try to deprive them of a part of their social base by maintaining military activity in the disputed regions.
The objective of the notorious CONARA scheme was to establish firm economic control of the most important regions in the country. The first major attempt to put it into practice was to be the operation "Well Being for San Vicente" in the central region.
However, the FMLN's capture of the city of San Miguel in the eastern part of
September 4, sounded the death knell for the hopes the imperialists and the dictatorship had held for containing the guerrillas in their traditional base zones in the north.
The economic part of the program for pacifying San Vicente province involved an investment of 10 million dollars. it was possible to take only a few first steps, generally in areas where this was tolerated by the guerrillas. A specialized
San Salvador, March 28, 1982: elections under military surveillance (DR)
Not only had these sections of the repression, but the FMLN's organic links with the urban mass movement had been weakened for similar reasons. parture of many leading cadre in the mass movement to the zones controlled by the guerrillas, either for security reasons or to help in the tasks of military organization, accentuated this disorganization mass movement in the capital. Indeed, this problem had by no means been solved when the dictatorship held its legislative elections in March 1982.
In the zones the FMLN did not control directly or where it had no regular active presence, the boycott it called for took the form of sabotage actions conducted by guerrilla columns. Mass participation was quite limited. This tactic International Viewpoint 30 July 1984 tween the involvement of the masses in armed revolutionary struggle in the areas controlled-by the FMLN, and where it was able to contend with the government forces for control, and the disorientation and fear that influenced the behavior of a section of the masses in the zones controlled by the government forces.
So, the FMLN found itself forced to stop looking forward systematically to a general popular uprising as an immediate response to all its large-scale military operations.
After 1982 and the FMLN's resistance to the offensive launched after the elections by the government forces against the zones controlled by the guerrillas, the confrontation assumed more and more the configurations of a full-scale civil war. The FMLN then modified its
"American officials admit that the program makes progress only when the project, they get the approval of the guer-
They also pay a bonus to the FMLN to assure that there will be no sabotage against the equipment and the
And they accept the guerrillas' conditions for the implementation of every project.
"For example, in a report in the National Catholic Reporter, the mayor of Santa Clara, Guadalupe Montano Choto, said that the pacification program was financing the rebuilding of schools and
FMLN document of January 1984, cited in Footnote 1.
the US got the endorsement of some Car- scant support from the Social Democratic paying the teachers' salaries. The FMLN allowed this program to go on, but only on the condition that an hour a day be devoted to an information session on the Salvadoran revolution, given by the guerrillas themselves." (11)
This failure of the government forces "led the FMLN to a new phase in the war, and the imperialists to the decision to intervene more directly. The strategic perspective in the enemy's plan now calls for a process of phased intervention."
Over 1983, three major events marked the evolution of the situation: 1) Growing US intervention, which involved new dangers for the revolutionary process and put new international pressures on the
2) A grave internal crisis that occurred in this context
The resurgence of mobilizations for demands in San Salvador, which revealed the new importance of revolutionists intervening in the urban
The danger of foreign invasion against the guerrillas firmed up seriously over 1983. While the relationship of forces in El Salvador itself are favorable to the revolutionary and popular organizations, increased imperialist support for the dietatorship is becoming a more and more important obstacle to a revolutionary
Such imperialist financial and material aid is artificially prolonging the life of the regime, even if it cannot stem the crisis of the dictatorship. The only alternative the imperialists have, therefore, is to get more and more deeply involved in defending the dictatorship. military setback suffered by the government forces brings the possibility of direct intervention by foreign troops a
This was in fact pointed out by the Kissinger Report at the end of 1983, which considered that US intervention in El Salvador was "inevitable."
The big press played up this conclusion, as an article in the June 1984 issue
Monde Diplomatique "Since the end of summer 1983, the idea that intervention by foreign troops will be necessary has become an accepted fact for the American government."
However, the American imperialists stacles to carrying out their project. In particular, they have no prospect of be-
"Latin-Americanize" their intervention. This is not only because of the soured relations that have existed beween the US and some Latin-American countries since the Malvinas War but also and more generally because of the profound economic and social crisis that has gripped these countries and paralyzed their capacity for intervening alongside
This is the case notably of Argentina and Brazil.
Therefore, the imperialists would have to participate directly and on a large scale in any invasion, even if it were staged under the cover of a regional alliance, as was done in the case of Grenada, where ibbean countries. The regional alliance that would be used, obviously, is the (CONDECA), whose armed forces have been taking part regularly in joint maneuvers with US forces for many months in order to prepare themselves technically for intervention in the region.
However, even been weakened by the confliets that exist among some of the countries in the re-
What is more, the political crisis is also accelerating in the Central American dictatorships, as attested by the recent
This perspective of foreign invasion has thus become a new factor in the revolutionary crisis. And it means that a particular use of anti-imperialist appeals is on the agenda for the FMLN. In certain this makes the revolutionary seizure of power in El Salvador still more complex than in Cuba and Nicaragua. In the latter two countries, threats of direct imperialist intervention only became immediate after the revolutionary conquest of power. In the Salvadoran
US imperialism is clearly ready to oppose a revolutionary victory by any
It is only trying to reduce to a minimum the political price that it will have to pay for such an undertaking. It is obvious that the US is preparing the political preconditions (CONDECA, Duarte's victory in the elections) and the military ones (US bases in Honduras, regionwide maneuvers) for staging an imperialist inInternational pressures on the FMLN
This situation of intense military confrontation with US imperialism is making the Central American revolution into a focus of international class conflict. As a result, various pressures (military, political and diplomatic) are being brought to
Salvadoran revolutionary Thus, the more definite the imperialist invasion becomes, the more certain Latin American bour-
- fearful of the consequences that such an operation could have in the region — are intervening on the international political scene to try to persuade the parties to the conflict to accept a
For example, the Contadora Group -Mexico, Panama, Colombia and Venezuela - proposes that the Salvadoran question be taken up in the framework of broad regional negotiations aimed at stabilizing the political and military situation in Central America. For their own specific interests, some West European bourgeoisies and the international Social Democracy are aligning themselves with this campaign of diplomatic pressure. Their objective is to avert what they see as two symmetrical dangers, a revolutionary victory and an imperialist invasion.
To judge by what happened in the case of the US invasion of Grenada, it can be easily imagined that the FMLN will get parties in power in some West European countries or even from the Soviet Union in resisting such pressures. To the contrary, everything indicates that the Soviet bureaucracy behind the scenes is following the same course. It is one thing for the Soviet Union to take advantage of victories by the masses after the fact to advance its diplomatic interests. quite another to help carry a revolutionary process to victory when, as in El Salvador, it is being led by forces that Moscow does not control.
Thus, the Soviet bureaucracy can be expected to apply pressure to get the Salvadoran guerrillas to align themselves with its diplomatic strategy. And to this end it will not hesitate to use any means. It has no interest in fact in seeing the reinforcement of a revolutionary pole around Cuba and Nicaragua in the region that would enjoy a greater degree of political independence from the USSR.
Thus, the objective difficulty of co the development of guerrilla war with an advance toward an uprising of the urban masses is com pounded for the FMLN by the proble of finding means for averting a dire intervention, while militarily to thwart such an invasion From this standpoint, it can be said tha the Salvadorian revolutionary struggle is taking on a new anti-imperialist dimension, although this should not mean any lowering of the social aims of this strug
It was in this context of a discussion impelled by this new situation, by the strategic problems it posed, and by the question of what sort of unity had to be developed within the FMLN, that a grave internal crisis arose in the spring of 1983 in the FPL. The murder in April 1983 of Comandante Ana Maria and the subsequent suicide of Comandante Marcial removed two of the main leaders of the
This undoubtedly represented the worst blow suffered by the leadership of one of the largest organizations in the FMLN since the start of the civl war. Maria by FPL members, including a member of the central leadership, Rogelio A. Bazzaglia Recinos, was apparently intended to settle internal differences. respect, it recalls the most painful episodes in the history of the Salvadoran people's movement, which were the result of sectarianism, like the tragic and bloody incidents that accompanied the ERP split in 1974-75. In this way, the evils of murderous police-like methods reappeared within the FPL, after it was believed that they had been overcome by the experience and the political consciousness of the Salvadoran revolutionary movement.
But this tragic event also reflected the tenseness of the political climate within
Centroamericana, Guatemala,
FMLN document cited above, pp. 38-39
See IV, No 30, May 16, 1983, and No 46,
International Viewpoint 30 July 1984
the Salvadoran revolutionary movement, owing in part no doubt to the intense political and military pressure brought to bear on the FMLN by the imperialists. This was increased, moreover, by the diplomatic operations carried out by the Latin American and West European bourgeoisies and by the Social Democracy and the Soviet bureaucracy.
Thus, the crisis in the FPL was rooted in fundamental questions that probably also face the other forces in the FMLN. That is, the concrete forms for building workers democracy in a situation of civil war and militarization of the political or-
However, the successive explanations has offered of the circumstances in which Ana Maria was killed and the accusation finally lodged against Marmonths after his murder without producing a shred of proof, are hardly an instructive example for the Even in the dictatorship's prisons the FMLN radio is heard (DR) masses and the international revolutionary movement of the way differences and debate are handled in the FPL, and by extension in the FMLN. Differences in the movement
It is, in fact, clear that behind these events there were debates over real ques-
And there is no reason to think that such debates will not emerge again. The questions involved, insofar as can be ascertained, involved a debate over revolutionary strategy, the policy of alliances to advance given the threat of imperialist intervention, the urgency of building a revolutionary party and the role that the FPL should play in this process, the actual importance to be assigned to diplomatic initiatives and proposals for negotiation, and finally the proposal for a fusion of the organizations in the front proposed by some currents in the FMLN.
These debates, which were undoubtedly not confined to the FPL, came in the context of the discussion of a new programmatic platform for the FMLN, which was to succeed the 1980 program for a Revolutionary Democratic Government. This new platform finally emerged in the form of the proposal for a Broadly Inclusive Provisional Government, which was issued on January 31, 1984. (14) discussed were concealed entirely people outside the country and probably also, to some extent, from the rank and file of the Salvadoran revolutionary and people's movement justified simply by pointing to the civilwar situation that El Salvador is going
This veil of silence is all the more serious since, as a result of this crisis, activists were expelled from the FPL and formed a new organization, the Revolutionary Workers Movement (MOR), which claims to represent the traditional political orientations of Marcial and the
Moreover, a group called the "Clara Elisabeth Ramirez Front" has appeared, International Viewpoint 30 July 1984 which seems to be based mainly in the capital. also criticizes the present leadership of the FPL. Like the MOR, it denounces the internal regime of the FPL (militarization of the organization and the methods of internal debate). It follows to some extent its own political and military orientation, operating apparently mainly in the capital, while claiming that it wants to stay in the frame-
These revolutionary activists who are fighting the dictatorship should be able to find a place in a united framework of the working class and people's forces, regardless of whatever differences they may have with the FPL leadership to-
The method of discussion employed after the departure of the FARN to rebuild the unity that had existed in the DRU in 1980 and to bring the PRTC into the FMLN seems a good way for resolving the new problem that has arisen.
It has to be made clear, on the other hand, that this internal crisis of the FPL has not meant any decline in the fighting capacity of the FMLN. At the very moment that these tragic events were unfolding, the FMLN was able to checkmate the new military tactics to which the dictatorship and the imperialists turned during the summer of 1983.
A new element in the situation showed up in the last months of 1983, with the resurgence of a wave of struggles for immediate demands in the capital. There were big peasant demonstrations in September 1983, organized by the People's Democratic Union (UPD), a coalition of trade-union organizations set up in 1983. These were followed by a wide range of struggles for higher wages during the elecDuarte's installation as president in June 1984. All these struggles reflect the rise of a new protest movement.
Even though the content of the demands and the present limits of these strikes, especially in the public sector, are still a far cry from what occurred in the previous period of radicalization of the urban mass movement in the early months of 1980, the recent mobilizations are nonetheless the biggest urban actions since that time.
The UPD, which had made an election pact with the PDC and got two posts in the Duarte government, launched the first street mobilizations when the National Assembly began to go back on the agrarian reform at the end of 1983. This opened up the way for a whole series of sections of the working class and poor masses to start waging a fight for higher pay, which had become particularly urgent because of the economic crisis and the wage freeze the regime imposed. New urban upsurge actions represented a resump tion of social struggles by sections of the working people who had been largely muzzled by the repression in the preceding years. These strikes multiplied, spread, and sometimes were even coordinated, even though they came up against violent repression.
This resumption of social struggles by sections of the urban masses is opening up new perspectives for intervention by the revolutionary activists and the left trade-union organizations. Since 1980, the trade-union picture has, to be sure, changed to the disadvantage of the left. But the organizations that support the FDR and the FMLN have not been entire. ly silenced. A certain level of activity has been maintained, even though the organihave lost activists. "disappearassassinations, arrests and
In fact, a process of recomposition developed in this period, reflected by the formation of the Movement for Unity
Trade-Union Professional Associations in El Salvador (MUSYGES).
On May Day 1984, this organization called a street demonstration that
For an English translation of the text of this document, see IV, No 50, April 9, 1984. 15. See IV, No 37, October 3, 1983.
11
drew 3,000 people in the capital city. influence in the union movement. left no longer holds hegemony in the mass movement, as it did in 1980. It has several years of repression and civil war engendered a certain among the workers, many of whom find it hard to see a way out of the con-
Thus, a desire for peace and reforms may develop among the urban
However, the revolutionary left has new opportunities for the fight that it is waging within the trade-union movement to hold its place in these mobilizations and, in time, to lay the foundations for regaining hegemony in the urban mass movement. The fact that the social needs (for higher wages) and the basic democratic aspirations (for reforms, peace, trade-union rights) felt by the urban masses go well beyond what the Duarte government is willing or able to offer also opens up the possibility for confrontations with the regime. This will give the revolutionists an additional basis for in-
It has to be understood, however, that intervention by the revolutionists in this movement will not automatically solve the problem of incorporating these sections of the masses directly into the revolutionary struggle of the FMLN. Achieving this objective will still depend on how effectively the revolutionists can respond to the various maneuvers of the unions linked to the bourgeois parties or the dietatorship and to the problem of the poItiical disorientation of a section of the The FMLN peace plan
The victory by the Christian Democrat Napoleon Duarte in the May 1984 presidential elections illustrates well the contradictory aspects of the present situa-
Duarte, who headed the government between 1980 and 1982, during a period of severe repression against the mass movement, has gained the presidency of El Salvador thanks to the support of the United States. But he also had the backing of the UPD, which has a certain influence among sections of the masses. These elections were completely "made in the US," rigged from top to bottom by the imperialists.
This election victory has not resolved the crisis of bourgeois rule over the long
It confirmed the transitional role of the preceding government headed by Alvaro Magana and imposed a certain readjustment, under close US supervision, among the various bourgeois forces. this respect, these elections reversed somewhat the balance that came out of the March 1982 legislative elections. that time, Major d'Aubuisson's ARENA party and the Party of National Concilia-
(PCN) gained weight in the bourgeois institutions, pushing the Christian Democrats to the
The latest elections have put Washington's candidate back in the saddle, in the framework of a veritable pact between the Christian Democrats and the But US imperialism is the sole guarantor of this new balance, since the rightist parties continue to hold the majority in the Assembly.
Duarte's government is a coalition between the PDC, the Democratic Alliance and the UPD. It has to deal with the political formations (ARENA and the PCD) that represent a landholding oligarchy that enjoys a considerable degree of political and social cohesiveness. Despite the Christian Democrats' concessions to the oligarchy, notably in abandoning the agrarian reform, some sections of the bourgeoisie publicly denounced Duarte's
They are only accepting the governmental he represents today because it has the backing of the Americans, which assures an inflow of imperialist economic aid for these bour-
For its part, the army, the oligarchs and the imperialists' main instrument for ruling the country, got the assurance even before the elections that it would keep its control over the conduct of the war, the Ministry of Defense, and get new supplies of military equipment. Since the installation of the Duarte government, moreover, the government army has engaged in a search-and-destroy operation against the guerrillas, involving the bombing of civil populations in the zones FMLN is active.
With Duarte's victory, the imperialists' search for a government that could gain broader international legitimacy for the Salvadoran dictatorship has scored a cer-
For example, 45 countries were represented at Duarte's inauguration, including Mexico. Moreover, the new president got a letter "sent in a personal capacity but in accordance with the ideas of the Socialist International"
Willy Brandt, Felipe Gonzalez, Pena Gomez in the Dominican Republic and Carlos Andres Perez in Venezuela. It declared that the elections had been "a victory for democratic ideas and for the aspiration of the Salvadoran people to in peace under a government of It also expressed support for negotiations with the FMLN-FDR. (16)
Nonetheless, it is clear that Duarte has no real perspective for applying a program of reforms, even as limited as that envisaged in 1979 after the overthrow of General Humberto Romero. The government's first "human-rights" actions, such as the transfer to other posts of some leaders of the death squadrons and the sentencing of the murderers of the five American nuns, were nothing more than an attempt to put people off the track.
The death squadrons, organized not long ago by CIA agents, will be put on ice momentarily by a joint operation of the CIA and West German police, whose aim obviously is not to open up the way for recognizing the democratic demands
This "clean-up" is part of a broad maneuver to create the conditions for drawing sections of the FMLN and FDR into the parliamentary and elec toral game. Legislative elections are planned for 1985 and it is believed that sections of the FMLN-FDR may be ready to make the ultimate concession of renounc ing the armed struggle. The pursuit of this tactic is not in contradiction to the perspective of a foreign invasion, since it is intended to open the way for dividing the people's movement and crushing the revolutionary forces that do not accept the parliamentary perspective.
This explains Duarte's declaration that he is only interested in negotiating with what he calls the "democratic" of the opposition and that he is not going to negotiate with "guns on the table. The objective of this US-inspired maneuver is, thus, essentially to try to crack the unity of the forces lined up behind the leadership of the FMLN, with the aim of getting back to the situation that prevailed in 1979.
This tactic is aimed directly at a section of the FDR. Duarte said so, moreover, when he declared in his inauguration address that "sections of the political left have fallen into the grip of the guerrilla commanders, and have not so far demonstrated that they were the leaders of the subversive movement. In order to do this, in order to gain credibility, they have to demonstrate their control over the armed wing, to assure that any decision will be respected by the subversive movement as a whole." (17)
The present Salvadoran government is strategy for preparing the political conditions for stepping up their intervention in the civil war. The Christian Democ racy, therefore, than ARENA for legitimizing an intervention by foreign troops and providing diplomatic cover, perhaps in the form of an appeal for international aid from San
Among the policy, beyond even the armed resistance of the FMLN, there are the objective dif ficulties of relaunching, after such a long period of civil war, a credible reform project like the one attempted in 1979. Moreover, the resurgence of strikes in the capital, even in their present limits, is going to present a challenge for the government. There does not seem to be any way the system can absorb the democratic and wage demands that are being raised, at least as long as the civil war goes on.
A dynamic of opposition to the government and to the dictatorship is developing in these struggles. Their tempo and scope will, of course, depend to a certain extent on the recomposition of the internal relationship of forces within the trade-union movement.
In this political context, the FMLN's analysis can be summed up by what it
International Viewpoint 30 July 1984
said in a document written early in 1984:
"The tempo and phasing of the US in- trol. (19)
formulations document, or of its proposals.
"anti-oligarchic expectation that
Finally, the tervention plan depend on domestic
FMLN's operation
American political factors, strategic factors on the world scale, and the military advance itself that the FMLN is able to achieve.
If the FMLN's military plans deepen the moral crisis in the army, the
However,
US schemes will be made vastly more difficult to carry out.
Because this would remove the human agent necessary for putting them into practice.
The US would thus have to either redefine its fined as petty position toward the FMLN-FDR or inmiddle classes, and tervene militarily with its own troops at a politically inopportune time."
(18)
be touched.
It was in this general framework that the FMLN put its proposal for a broadly inclusive provisional government.
This was made before the recent proposal presidential elections, and, subsequently, a call for negotiations was directed at the Duarte government.
The FMLN seems to have been trying in this way to respond on several levels to the present problems. On the one hand, faced with the threat of imperialist invasion, the FMLN took this means of appealing to international public opinion
Central in a last attempt to stave off invasion.
The proposals were also aimed at maintaining the unity of the FMLN and FDR around a plan for negotiations and thus countering any of the pressures being brought to bear to crack this unity and isolate the armed section of the resistance.
This course was also designed to was lationship of within the mass
It has to demonstrate to those sections of the tion with masses that are not yet convinced of the forces.
of the revolutionary people's
Justness war that the FMLN is ready to accept a political solution aimed at securing the camp of the peace, the of the repressive purging bodies and the introduction of democratie reforms.
At the same time, the FMLN is continuing intransigently to refuse to lay down flict.
its arms in advance of any negotiations and maintaining its orientation of support for the democratic and social demands of the masses.
This last point, which is included in the Platform for a Broadly Inclusive Provisional Government, was reaffirmed on May 1. It has also just been confirmed in a communique in which the practice, that its military units
FMLN specified must support the demands of the workers in every part of the country and guaranteed that the wage demands would be
International Viewpoint 30 July 1984 against or ity movement.
18.
19.
El Dia
1984.
20.
in the sional
1984 uary and
21.
all
9, 1984.
The
Mexico, June 14
FMLN's in the advisors;
See IV. No 50, April
13
to sack immigrant workers and then to use their joblessness to question their right to stay.
Most immigrant workers have lived on average more than ten years in one or another European country. Most are there to find work. In 1980 in France, 38 per cent of the immigrant population was in work, while in West Germany it is 48 per cent and in Switzerland, 58 per cent.
The question of social integration, of equal rights, especially the right to vote, the question of the right to permanent settlement are all vital issues for this section of the working class and their families.
Promoting immigration was a conscious policy of the employers during the 1960s. The European economy needed a fresh and more mobile workforce, workers willing to take badly paid, unskilled jobs on production lines. This new workforce was brought in to suit the needs of profit. Now the bosses and the governments of Europe would like to be able to send immigrants back to their countries of origin and still blame them for unemployment and insecurity, in order to divide any possible resistance to the austerity drive.
There are no shortages of examples to prove how fraudulent the bosses' propaganda is. In West Germany, thousands of immigrants were expelled and
RAD immigration was halted in 1974, but since then unemSe ployment as need by nearly i me. The young victim of a racist attack is remembered(DR)