Women and the Salvador Revolution
In the cities, special women's com- is only one women's clinic in the entire
Salvador is a liberated one. A million or mittees have been set up parallel to the country, in the capital.
The following report of and interview with a representative of the Salvadoran rebel women's organization AMES who is now touring Sweden has been taken from the April 29 issue of Internationalen, weekly paper of the Swedish section of the Fourth International. has been slightly shortened.
Salvador is a country in the midst of civil war. Actively or passively, a large majority of the population are against the government. It is also a coun try where the majority of the population
Traditionally, women in El Salvador have had at best a subordinate role in
The struggle against the oppressors has forced a change in that. Women are participating on all levels—in the political parties, in the armed struggle, in the work to organize coordination and supply of the movement.
"But there is a danger that women may come under pressure to go back into home when the struggle is over. AMES is working to raise the consciousness of women's ability to take on important tasks, to learn professions, for example, technical ones."
That is the way Ofelia Chavez described the long-range goals for which she and her numerous revolutionary sisters are working for in the women's organiza-
"If we did not think that women should continue to be active in society, there would be no reason for AMES."
Internationalen met Ofelia one afternoon last week. She is a young, purposeful person, who has clear ideas about of her country and of the women in it. She also gives a clear view of the needs of the struggle right now.
She is a living contrast to the sadistic, maddened rightist government that now rules the country with violence and terror. To be more exact, it rules parts of
In fact, a larger and larger part of El more of the total population of 4.5 mil lion live in the liberated areas.
Besides the liberated zones, there are zones that the liberation movement calls "controlled." organized in various ways to support the liberation struggle. But this organization is not as all embracing and open as it is in the liberated zones.
AMES works in both the liberated and controlled zones. It is also active in the cities, where most of its work is clan-
AMES stands in full solidarity with the FMLN-FDR, and carries on its work in the framework of this mass liber-
Many of the women who led AMES's work have been murdered by the
It all started in 1978, when a number of women in San Salvador-house. wives, workers, and teachers-joined together to help the refugees who had come to the capital city. Then, as now, a great many of them were children.
"There are 4,000 orphans in El Salvador," Ofelia Chavez said. «They are in bad shape, both physically and psycho-
The AMES women quickly found that they could not deal with the big pro-
They turned to the various parties and to the liberation organization and asked for help. That led to a difficult but was a problem of male chauvinism, even among the organized comrades," Ofelia said.
The discussion that developed was over the respective responsibility of men and women for children and other things, that is, for housework and doing the marketing, for taking care of the family, and participating in the armed struggle.
There was also a discussion over the respective opportunities for men women to participate in political life.
strove through its work, which quickly went beyond just helping the refugees, to activate more and more women, and thereby to strengthen the revolution. It became a mass organization that today has about 15,000 active members in the country and many others in the refugee areas outside it.
"AMES is a broad, democratic orThere are various political currents and tendencies within it. there are also many women who belong to no organized current. That is important, because our main aim is to bring in not been active people's committees that are the base organizations of the FMLN-FDR. kinds of committees work underground
"The women sometimes take both fruit and communiques to "A lot of women work in the women's committees doing tasks that are closer to what they learned in the home. Later on, they can get involved in more and more tasks of the people's resistance.
"Women work in all areas of the liberation struggle, both political and mili-
In the liberated zones the situation is qualitatively better than in the cities.
The entire population is organized and elects its leadership.
A liberated zone may embrace a hundred thousand people. In every town, the inhabitants chose a representative to
"All those in leadership positions in the liberated areas are elected by the people except those responsible for the military struggle. They are appointed by the
"But those appointed are people that we know and trust."
The revolution has its strongest centers in the countryside.
time the farmers are often conservative and find it hard to imagine their wives should not return to household has commented on problem, which is by no means limited to the countryside, in a document that
"The advance of the revolutionary process can be measured by the extent to which women are involved in revolutionary tasks. This point has great importance, because the aim of the revolution is to build a higher kind of human life, to revolutionize people and overcome the alienating aspects of life that make them into objects and reduce class to commodities. Under capitalism, women are doubly oppressed. Their total liberation is possible only to the extent that the revolution advances and deepens. There cannot be any real revolution as long as women remain oppressed and on the side-
AMES is for the right of women to contraceptives and abortion. demand that can be met when the country's resources are used in other ways. The government's attitude toward women can best be shown by the fact that there