The Forces of the Right

EL SALVADOR’S CIVIL WAR EMBRACES TWO conflicts: one is the war between those in power
and the FMLN-FDR insurgents; the other, a dispute for power between the extreme Right and the U.S.-backed
conservative reformers of the center-Right.
The March 1984 elections do not set out to solve, or
even address, El Salvador’s primary problem. They
have a different-and lesser-purpose. The contenders
are out to resolve the question of who on the right shall
hold power, as a preliminary to the common goal of
stopping a revolution. For some, this means eliminating
Newspaper headline reads, “Vote Stops Violence.”
every last vestige of rebellion by means of a “dirty
war.” For others, the siren song of Marxism-Leninism
can still be resisted by making adjustments to an obso-
lete and unworkable economic system and the war won
by “cleaner” methods that at least pay lip-service to
humanitarian norms. In practice, the differences be-
tween the two are minimal.
The character and conduct of El Salvador’s active
political parties must be understood from this perspec-
tive, and in the context of elections imposed by
Washington as the supposed path to democracy. Ob-
viously, both the war and the lack of real political space
allowed by repression and current emergency legislation
conspire to reduce the number of “acceptable” political
parties to a narrow spectrum that ranges from moderate
Right to rabid Right. The elections, then, offer the
choice between the extremism of the oligarchy and the
reform proposals of the center-Right. Both seek stabil-
ity in some form of the existing economic order; neither
addresses the fundamental crisis of El Salvador.
The voting results of March 28, 1982, produced two
leading contenders for power: the Christian Democratic
Party (PDC), which registered 40.3% of the valid votes
cast, and the Nationalist Republican Alliance
(ARENA), with 29.3% of the vote. The Party of Na-
tional Conciliation (PCN) came in third with 19.0%.
The PDC projects the image of a centrist party, and
has been endorsed as such by the United States in recent
years. Formed in 1960, both its political programs and
its ideological stance-combining the social doctrine of
the Catholic Church with an emphasis on the indi-
vidual-appealed to the interests of the middle class.
Nonetheless, the mere act of questioning the injustices
of Salvadorean society, its Christian identity and its
steadfast opposition role, won the PDC widespread
support among the poor. This popularity brought the
Christian Democrats the mayoralties of the principal
cities and victory at a national level in 1972 in coalition
with other parties further to the left.
Throughout the 1970s the PDC continued to ally
itself with parties and movements to its left, behind
demands little different from some of the revolutionary
groups. But the party’s ascent to power in January 1980,
in alliance with the armed forces, signalled its divorce
from the Salvadorean Left and provoked a crisis in
March of that year; the more progressive wing of the
party broke away to form the Popular Social Christian
Movement (MPSC), which joined the ranks of the
FDR. The PDC’s two years in office, during a period of
intense upheaval, left both the party and its conserva-
tive leader, Jose Napoleon Duarte, severely bruised.
REPORT ON THE AMERICAS
.,,ms n,-.,-, e…
IAnne Nelson
Pre-election rally by ARENA, March 1982.
The oligarchy and big business blame the PDC and
Duarte for reducing the economy to chaos by introduc-
ing reforms, above all in the agrarian sector; progressive
democrats and the revolutionary opposition hold the
PDC accountable for overseeing and justifying the mass
killing of thousands of Salvadorean democrats and the
systematic violation of basic human rights. Both sides
condemn the party for failing to bring peace-one for
its failure to exterminate the insurgency, the other for its
refusal to open peace talks.
Today, the Christian Democrats are again trying to
persuade the United States that they are the best vehicle
for Washington’s policies. In fact, the Reagan Adminis-
, tration placed all its bets on the PDC in March 1982, and
then faced the serious challenge of coming to terms with
victory by an alliance of the PDC’s opponents. This
does not imply that the PDC’s goals are identical to
those of the U.S. Administration. The primary dif-
ference is that for Reagan the Salvadorean crisis is sim-
ply a manifestation of the East-West conflict; for the
PDC, the country’s problems are the consequence of a
half-century of exploitation and dictatorship, and only
secondarily a focus of superpower rivalry.
For all that, the present-day PDC, under Duarte’s
rightist leadership and stripped of its progressive wing,
is in theory the best bet-domestically and interna-
tionally-for carrying out Washington’s intentions.
The main Christian Democrat leaders have shown that,
when it suits them, their anti-communism and thirst for
power can put their desire for serious reforms on the
back burner-witness their acceptance of a few Cabinet
and minor government posts after their electoral defeat
in 1982. The PDC opted to stay in a government dom-
inated by the very ultra-Right which it blames for El
Salvador’s endemic ills, despite its inability to exercise
any significant influence on that government. In so do-
ing, and in not taking up a critical and creative role in
opposition, the party may have seriously damaged its
credibility within its own constituencies.
A RENA WAS BORN OUT OF THE CURRENT
crisis in El Salvador, the newest instrument of the
oligarchy and big private capital in its dual fight against
the FMLN and the U.S./PDC reform package. It is the
offspring of a marriage between a political-paramilitary
structure headed by Roberto D’Aubuisson, an Army
major whose background is in the political intelligence
service (ANSESAL), and the organizational leadership
of large-scale private enterprise (ANEP). ARENA’s
forerunner was the Broad Nationalist Front (FAN), a
shock force created to resist the mass mobilizations of
the first months after the 1979 coup.
D’Aubuisson himself acknowledged to the Albu-
querque Journal that the FAN was set up as a “civic
organization” designed to give political support to the
armed forces, enhance their military intelligence gather-
ing capacity and curb support for the Left. Its main base
of support was ORDEN, a paramilitary body founded
in the 1960’s to prevent “the infiltration of exotic
ideologies” among the Salvadorean peasantry.
Declared illegal by the first junta after the 1979 coup,
ORDEN nonetheless survived under D’Aubuisson’s
MARCH/APRIL 1984 19EL SALVADOR 1984
EL SALVADOR 1984
control as the Democratic Nationalist Front (FDN). The FAN’s membership included private enterprise associations (coffee growers, cattle ranchers and young executives) as well as the Salvadorean Women’s Front and the Salvadorean Nationalist Movement, a militant youth organization.
According to the Albuquerque Journal, many ARENA members-including D’Aubuisson himself and his closest associates-see the need for a counter- insurgency war using what they believe are structures and modes of organization parallel to those of the revolutionary Left. Indeed, numerous ARENA members have confirmed their participation in clandes- tine organizations funded by Salvadorean oligarchs in voluntary or enforced exile in Miami-activities that predate the October 1979 coup.
The party structure of ARENA has also drawn on the inspiration and advice from the National Liberation Movement (MLN) in Guatemala, an ultra-rightist party
Messengers of Peace. The Right suppressed distribution of this poster during the Pope’s March 1983 visit.
founded in 1953 and the key force in overthrowing the regime of Jacobo Arbenz a year later. The MLN gave
ARENA not only its ideological tenents, its colors (red,
white and blue) and its emblems (cross and sword), but
also direct advice on establishing the first ARENA
shock forces and the rudiments of party organization.
Such was the skeleton on to which ARENA’s founders,
entering an electoral campaign sponsored by the United
States in 1981, grafted some of the ideological postures
and doctrines of the Republican “New Right.”
Everything about ARENA bespeaks its roots in the
oligarchy and in paramilitary activity: its ultra-rightist
ideology, which aggressively promotes the doctrine of
national security; its most active membership-the big
bourgeoisie and conservative military men; and its cam-
paign style of the macho caudillo epitomized by
D’Aubuisson. There appear to be three reasons why a
party of the oligarchy like ARENA should have won
29.3% of the valid votes in 1982:
1. A slick campaign with excellent technical advice
and solid financial backing;
2. Its image as the main opposition party, helping it
to capitalize on the immense discontent of every kind
among voters;
3. An aggressive style which convinced many war- weary voters that only a strong party could promise a
swift return to peace.
THE THIRD CONTENDER, THE PARTY OF
National Conciliation (PCN), was the official
party for two decades, led by the ruling military of the
day. Ousted by the 1979 coup, it was kept alive by a
partly rejuvenated leadership that embarked on a new
course more receptive to social change. Resisting the
oligarchy’s attempts to take over the party or force it
into alliance with ARENA was a costly exercise for the
PCN: first it lost one of its most astute leaders, Rafael
Rodriguez, assassinated at the beginning of the 1982
election campaign; more recently, its right wing broke
away to form the Salvadorean Authentic Institutional
Party (PAISA).
The PCN has shrewdly managed to hold on to some
of the local power structures which served it well during
its years in government. This has allowed the party to
survive, and even to garner an impressive 19% of the
vote in 1982, strongest in rural areas. PAISA’s defection
could mean a lower PCN vote in 1984. However, the
election of Jose Francisco Guerrero as presidential can-
didate seems designed to offset that danger.
“Chachi” Guerrero, an old-time party militant with
government experience under previous PCN adminis-
trations, depicts himself as a link between the old and
new incarnations of the PCN, and portrays the party as
the builder of modern El Salvador. Every innovation in
the country is claimed as the work of the PCN-true
enough, in as much as the party held a monopoly of
power for 20 years. Guerrero points to the PCN as ini-
tiator of physical and economic infrastructure and
social benefits (minimum wage scales; labor legislation,
REPORT ON THE AMERICASVoting lines in San Salvador, March 28, 1982.
especially as it affects working women; extension of the
social security net to cover contributors’ families, etc.)
The close ties that the PCN forged with the armed
forces during its 20 years in office mean that it has a
special claim to understand the concerns of the military
establishment. The party enjoys the trust of a signifi-
cant number of officers.
TN ELECTIONS OF MARCH 28, 1982, INSTEAD
of strengthening the U.S.-backed reform process
begun by the 1979 coup, only undermined it and gave
greater legitimacy to the traditional approach of the
oligarchy. Although the PDC won a relative majority of
votes, it could not rally the absolute majority of
deputies required to remain in power. Instead,
ARENA-in temporary alliance with the PCN and the
Salvadorean Popular Party (PPS), a small party of the
industrial bourgeoisie-assembled a majority of votes
in the Constituent Assembly, sufficient to form a
government.
ARENA promptly attempted to drive home its vic-
tory by overturning the reforms (especially the agrarian
reform) and imposing its candidate, Major
D’Aubuisson, as president. But both demands proved
unacceptable to the United States, setting off a feverish
round of pressures and negotiations. Washington even
resorted to an emergency trip by special State Depart-
ment envoy General Vernon Walters to veto ARENA’s
plans. Eventually, ARENA was forced to accede to the
formation of a “National Unity” government headed
by an “independent” president, Dr. Alvaro Magana, who was selected by the armed forces. In return,
D’Aubuisson was awarded the influential presidency of the Constituent Assembly-theoretically the highest
organ of state power-and ARENA took control of the
key economic portfolios, allowing the party to dictate
the pace of reforms. But ARENA remained disgrunt-
led. As one of its spokesmen wrote, the elections were
won in Spanish only to be lost in English.
Though the formation of a National Unity govern-
ment at Washington’s behest carried the Salvadorean
parties over the immediate post-electoral hurdle, its very make-up embodied the critical divisions between
the parties and further paralyzed the ability of either the
Right or center-Right to carry out its program. The Na- tional Unity government simply provided a new, nar-
rower arena for the continuing inter-party strife.
ARENA, the PDC and PCN threw themselves into a
power-grabbing spree, fighting tooth-and-nail over
each government job in a search for party influence
rather than political solutions. So intolerable was the
situation that a new agreement was hammered out on
MARCH/APRIL 1984 21EL SALVADOR 1984
August 3, 1982: the so-called Pact of Apaneca. All par-
ties in power, except for the small Democratic Action
(AD), agreed on a “basic government platform” aimed
fundamentally at pacifying and democratizing the
country; to this end, it proposed improved respect for
human rights, economic recovery and consolidation of
the reforms. In good Salvadorean fashion, the Pact of
Apaneca set out to solve problems on paper while
changing nothing in reality. It created three commis-
sions-Peace, Human Rights and Political. Only the
latter would play a significant role as a mechanism for
inter-party negotiations, breaking the logjam in draft-
ing a constitution and speeding up executive decision-
making.
The Pact of Apaneca gave a temporary breathing
space. But at bottom its only solid agreement was on
pacification: that is, to continue the war against the
FMLN and fix a timetable for fresh elections. As Demo-
cratic Action noted perceptively in explaining its
absence from the pact, the new commissions only dupli-
cated existing government agencies, undermining gov-
ernment authority and responsibilities. The pact did not
settle the ARENA-PDC dispute; it simply transferred it
to a new forum. In the face of a new FMLN military of-
fensive in October 1982 and the accompanying proposal
for dialogue, all the fierce divisions within the govern-
ment resurfaced. Each new turn of events demonstrated
that a government formed by two warring political par-
ties was by now terminally diseased.
JmeE PERMANENT CRISIS IN THE GOVERN-
. ment had its exact counterpart in the armed forces,
with mounting conflict between officers more open to
reforms and traditionalists who opposed them. That
division was superimposed on a second split between
officers willing to accept U.S. military leadership and
those who insisted on their own conduct of the war. The
crisis in the Army was especially evident in 1983, high-
lighted by the military’s inability to make headway
against the FMLN.
The first example came in January with the rebellion
of Lt. Col. Sigifredo Ochoa in Cabanas, a regional com-
mander renowned for his military skills and resentful of
U.S. advice and pressures on the armed forces. The uni-
ty of the Army suffered badly in the resolution of the in-
cident, for Ochoa’s insubordination was not punished;
indeed, certain of his demands were met. The crisis was
revived in April, with a showdown between Air Force
commander Col. Juan Rafael Bustillo and Defense
Minister Gen. Jose Guillermo Garcia, closely identified
with the U.S. position, who was forced to resign. In Oc-
tober, matters slid further. After a series of apparent
Army successes, a new FMLN offensive showed up the
lack of real progress in the war and the splits within the
military. The latest and most serious stage in the crisis
came at the turn of the year, with the loss and destruc-
tion of the vital garrison at El Paraiso in Chalatenango,
and U.S. pressure for the armed forces to be purged of
death squad connections. At each stage of the crisis
ARENA sided with the most conservative officers and
the traditional “dirty” methods of warfare, while the
PDC supported reformist officers and U.S. strategies.
Conflict between the governing parties was most evi-
dent in the drafting of a new constitution-the transi-
tional government’s most important task. The parties
repeatedly reached deadlock at critical junctures of the
draft, postponing the final version and exasperating the
military. The most heated argument centered on the
definition of the economic system, particularly in rela-
tion to agrarian reform. The key conflict here was over
the maximum allowable size of private rural landhold-
ings, on which the continuation of the agrarian reform
program would hinge. The deadlock brought a rash of
threatening symptoms, from the mobilization of
peasants of the Salvadorean Communal Union (UCS)
in support of the Christian Democrats to a spate of
death squad killings and rumors of a military coup.
The United States and the armed forces both pressed
for compromises to break the stalemate in the Consti-
tuent Assembly. This has had two results: first, a con-
stitution was approved, representing more a minimal
temporary truce than a clearly agreed upon political
line. The constitution offered more to ARENA than to
the PDC, but was basically unsatisfactory to either side.
Second, the presidential elections planned for March
-originally conceived as a democratic way out of the
Salvadorean crisis-have been relegated to a device for
resolving the conflict within the “National Unity”
government. They have abandoned any pretense of
offering the people alternative programs of government
to solve the national crisis. Instead, the elections will
merely determine which party (PDC or ARENA) and
which option (center-Right or far Right) is to win con-
trol of the state apparatus. Many aspects of the
preliminaries to the elections make one skeptical of their
significance: the hasty inter-party accord on the call for
elections; the disregard for the judicial channels which
the Constituent Assembly itself created to safeguard the
“purity of the electoral process”; the absence of an
electoral register or electoral law; and the determination
of all parties to conduct voting only for a president and
not for deputies and local authorities.
The major parties offer conflicting reasons for their
insistence that only presidential elections be held. The
Christian Democrats argue that suspending legislative
elections will keep the door open for the FMLN-FDR to
run candidates for mayors and deputies in the elections
scheduled for 1985. ARENA, meanwhile, insists that
the complex nuances of the constitution mean that cur-
rent Assembly members must remain in place, as the on-
ly ones equipped to draft secondary legislation. Both
arguments seem spurious, a cover for both parties’ fear
of losing a bloc of seats large enough to force through
legislation (in the event of victory) or to block an oppo-
nent’s initiative (in the event of defeat). Self-interest
leads PAISA to the same conclusion, as the only party
that has deputies in the Assembly without having run in
the 1982 elections. The PCN and AD take the opposing
REPORT ON THE AMERICAS 22Anne Nelson
Morazan, 1982.
view: the PCN would like legislative elections, to
recover the seats “stolen” by PAISA, while AD is opti- mistic about the chances of increasing its representation
in a general election.
THE ELECTIONS OF MARCH 1984 ARE
incomplete elections. Nor is it by any means certain
that their outcome will be respected, no matter how
restricted they may be. Even in the pre-election period,
there are signs of the same tactics of intimidation that the
parties employed in March 1982, when less was at stake.
Paradoxically, neither ARENA nor the PDC could
guarantee a viable government in the aftermath of presi-
dential elections, even with an absolute majority of
votes. A PDC victory would win U.S. backing, but its
policies would be blocked or boycotted by the most
powerful private interests in the country and by signifi-
cant segments of the armed forces. There is no new
feature in the Salvadorean political landscape to suggest
that the PDC and Duarte could force through their
policies with any more success in 1984 than they did in
1980-81.
An ARENA victory, which would necessitate a
coalition with other, smaller right-wing parties, would
run into opposition from the United States, which could
neither alter its Salvador policy so drastically overnight
nor easily justify-at home or abroad-continued sup-
port for a government headed by D’Aubuisson and
pledged to stamping out any vestige of socioeconomic
reform.
Tne OPTIONS ARE SO BLEAK THAT THE Seed for an alternative arises. So once again the PCN comes to the fore, less as a third option than
perhaps the only viable option if the United States is to pursue its overriding goal of a military victory over the FMLN-FDR, coupled with some shreds of social reform sufficient to justify continuing U.S. aid. It may be that “Chachi” Guerrero, an old-guard PCN politican, could weld together the rightist coalition that would elude both Duarte and D’Aubuisson, and serve as a bridge between the private sector and the Army. This is perhaps the most savage irony in the political panorama of El Salvador today. After four years of war, with the door to dialogue and negotiation with the in- surgents slammed shut by Washington, there seems no way out but to return to square one and to restore government by the party that precipitated the war in the first place: the PCN. Most political observers agree that the first round of the presidential elections will not pro- duce an absolute majority for any one party. The elec- tions will then proceed to a second round-a run-off between the two candidates with the largest number of votes. Clearly, in this scenario, the PCN could only gain the necessary votes in alliance with another par- ty-either the PDC or ARENA. And that, equally clearly, would fail to resolve the problem of the relative coherence of the options offered by the Right and center-Right, which was the entire purpose of the elec- tions. The vicious circle of these elections would then be complete.