FMLN commander Ana Guadalupe
Martinez, of the People’s Revolution-
ary Army (ERP), was interviewed in
Panama on June 27, eight days after
an FMLN commando unit killed four
U.S. Marines relaxing over drinks in
the Zona Rosa, a strip of nightclubs
and restaurants in one of the most
luxurious neighborhoods in the capi-
tal. Nine others were killed in the
spray of gunfire, although the FMLN
claims that “armed elements dressed
as civilians” in the restaurant were
responsible for their deaths. What fol-
lows are excerpts of an extensive in-
erview conducted by Epigmenio Ibarra,
a Central America correspondent for
NOTIMEX, the Mexican state news
agency.
Q: How do you react to the govern-
ment’s description of the Zona Rosa
killings as a sign of desperation, a ter-
rorist act?
A: Of course, it’s part of their psy-
chological warfare to try to stand real-
ity on its head. For example, the army
has been saying that the movement of
the FMLN into the western prov-
inces-which demonstrates the or-
ganizational advances of the war on a
national level-proves that we’ve
failed in the east. As if a shift in ter-
rain were enough to ensure success.
It’s not a very logical mentality.
Then there is the issue of our return
to the cities. They say it’s because
we’re unable to win in the mountains,
so we’ve turned to “terrorist acts” in
the cities. In fact, they have not been
able to implement their plans to con-
trol the cities, and they want to mask
that failure by calling Zona Rosa a ter-
rorist operation. [Deputy Minister of
Public Security] L6pez Nuila should
be ashamed of the fact that the FMLN
was able to carry out an action that
should have been impossible, under
his very nose, in the most luxurious
and most protected zone in the coun-
try.
In the last year and a half, they have
lived a very tranquil life, waging war
during the week and then going out
dancing on weekends, to nightclubs–
able to forget the situation our country
is living and refresh themselves to
begin anew on Monday. That situa-
tion is coming to an end: they are not
going to move around with impunity
anymore. They will be targets of the
FMLN wherever they are, just as we
are targets of the army, the [death]
squads and the security forces wher-
ever we are.
Q: What impact do you think these ac-
tions will have on the dialogue pro-
cess begun at La Palma?
A: We do not accept the most recent
thesis being used by the North Ameri-
can administration, the press and the
High Command, that these types of
actions endanger the dialogue because
the FMLN is not interested in making
progress toward humanizing the war.
What do they mean by humanizing
the war? For them, humanization of
the war means a series of unilateral
measures on the part of the FMLN,
such as an end to economic sabotage,
an end to alleged terrorist acts in their
own rearguard, a stop to the destruc-
tion of buildings such as city halls.
They want to reduce the war to a di-
rect military confrontation between
their army and ours, in total isolation,
so that it becomes a test of one side’s
resources against the other’s.
In other words, what they’re trying
to do, by delegitimating our recent ac-
tions, is to create more favorable con-
ditions for their own military, political
and economic plans.
Q: Actions such as the one in the Zona
Rosa could lead to a more direct con-
frontation with the United States.
President Reagan has already an-
nounced an increase in aid.
A: Well, we believe that Reagan’s in-
stant reaction showed how much con-
fusion the action provoked. Because
he says that he’s going to speed up the
delivery of economic and military aid
already approved by the Congress.
But do they really believe that filling
up the warehouses in El Salvador will
increase the capacity of the army?
It’s really more of a propaganda
move than anything else, because the
army has never suffered defeats for
lack of ammunition; no troops have
surrendered because they lacked guns.
The army has always had the material
means to fight-in abundance. So
Reagan’s latest move means only a
shifting of supplies from U.S. ware-
houses to Salvadorean warehouses.
As for the number of advisers, we
have said that the more U.S. advisers
there are in El Salvador, the more
likely they are to be reached by our
guns. Unless they come and shut
themselves in a house, or just go from
home to work and back, or unless they
live and work in the same place. But
no, as human beings they will have to
move around, they will have to try to
live a supposedly normal life in the
midst of a war. And that will make it
possible for our forces to find them.
Q: There’s a sense of optimism these
days within the army. They even say
that within three years, you will be de-
feated or at least dramatically weakened.
A: Look, the same criteria that were
used in the past to demonstrate the
FMLN’s strength are now being used
to demonstrate its weakness. We be-
lieve this is an incorrect analysis.
Why? First, because the FMLN has
changed tactics and therefore the ele-
ments that were used to judge the ef-
fectiveness and success of one set of
tactics are no longer useful.
In the past, the FMLN developed
the ability to concentrate its forces and
with that capacity, we were able to hit
and even annihilate important army
positions, take prisoners, capture
weapons. These were useful parame-
ters ‘with which to measure the previ-
ous tactic. Right now, the tactic is dis-
persion, the deployment of smaller
units throughout the national territory.
And the main objective of these smal-
ler units is not exactly to take prison-
REPORT ON THE AMERICAS 4ers, or to recover guns, or to defeat
large army units. Rather, it’s precisely
to wear out the army’s human re-
sources as they move in any area of
the country, and this means, well, to
inflict casualties, to kill and wound
them, to make it difficult for them to
move around. Of course, we do not
expect optimal results right away; the
new tactic has to develop.
So what was previously used to de-
fine success isn’t useful now. Why?
Because right now, with smaller
units-and they can range in size from
two compafieros to a platoon of 25 or
a column of 100-we can’t expect to
force an entire army batallion or com-
pany to surrender. We’re not talking
about a big operation every six
months, we’re talking about daily ac-
tions with no spectacular results.
Why? Because today we produce one
death, tomorrow two wounded and
the day after maybe there’s a confron-
tation with no casualties at all. But if
we add up the daily casualties, we get
militants and everyone who partici-
pates with the FMLN understand that
the prolongation of the conflict is an
integral part of our response to the
counterinsurgency policy of the army
and the United States.
So these three elements–the re-
thinking, the reaccommodation, the
change in mentality and the material
and tactical adjustments-have al-
lowed us to gradually respond to the
army. In the beginning, it wasn’t
easy, because the combatant’s mental-
ity is linked to the [large-unit tactics]
and, like it or not, this creates the
mentality of a regular army. And the
change in mentality of the guerrilla
unit, which has to learn to rely on it-
self, to act as both political cadre and
combatant at the same time, to survive
in isolation-all this has to be a gradual
process. And it’s in this period that the
army cries victory, saying that the
FMLN is defeated, that it can’t re-
spond to the technological, human
and material development of the army.
Why? In the first place, it would
force them to give up the technology they’ve acquired. Secondly, they would
need capable and motivated officers
to lead all these smaller units. And the
third and most important element is
the FMLN’s ability to reconcentrate
its forces, which would make the
army’s small units vulnerable. Be-
cause even though we have dispersed
our forces, that doesn’t mean we’ve
lost the ability to reconcentrate them.
Whenever the army has sent its
small units deep into our territory, it’s
suffered defeats. So they have to send
a whole batallion in, because if they
come in with just a platoon or a com-
pany, the FMLN immediately re-
groups, and a guerrilla squad becomes
a guerrilla column that can easily wipe
out or surround a smaller unit.
Also, as we wear the army down,
they’ll have problems replacing their
losses or expanding their ranks to
cover the national territory. And this
will force them to increase their re-
FMLN in Morazan: “the prolongation of the conflict is an integral part of our response to counterinsurgency.”
a number that’s as high or even higher
than the results of our previous [large-
unit] tactic.
Q: How do you evaluate the coun-
terinsurgency strategy, the new men-
tality within the army, since the end of
1983? How has it affected you?
A: First, it meant the need for a total
rethinking of the tactics the FMLN
had been developing. Second, once
all the basic elements of our response
were in place, it meant changes in the
thinking of the commanders, the com-
batants and all the militants. A third
important element was making our
Q: So is the army fighting you -as if
you were still concentrating .your
forces?
A: At this moment, the army hasn’t
found, or rather they haven’t de-
veloped (because we haven’t let
them), a response to our small-unit
tactics. The army wants to start using
smaller units themselves, so that in-
stead of two batallions they would
have ten units dispersed throughout
the terrain, making the mobility of our
smaller units more difficult. But they
still lack the capacity to adopt this
guerrilla warfare in response to our al-
ready developed tactics.
cruitment efforts that now center on
the poorest sectors and the peasants.
They’ll have to become more.’indis-
criminate. They’ll have to do what
they tried once before: forced recruit-
ment, or rather a legal draft affecting
all sectors of the population, which
immediately sparked a negative reac-
tion from the middle sectors, who
even began to search for ways to get
their children out of the country. In
other words, this would open up a
whole new contradiction with sectors
that up to now have not been directly
affected by the war.
With the decision of the U.S. gov-
ernment to give unconditional aid, we
JULY/AUGUST 1985 5know that if they lose one gun today,
they’ll be given 400 tomorrow; if they
lose one airplane, tomorrow they’ll
get two. But if they lose a pilot, then
they’ll have to train a new one. It’s no
longer the same audacity, no longer
the same concept. We believe that with
this new tactic we are striking pre-
cisely at their Achilles’ heel, which
is the long-term impossibility of sup-
porting a war without having to touch
other sectors which are going to im-
mediately reject the notion of becom-
ing cannon fodder, as the popular sec-
tors have become. So that is the basic
element for us to develop.
Q: What role does the army’s modem
technology have in this new type of
warfare?
A: Well, the technology that the North
Americans provided to the army was
aimed at countering our tactic of con-
centration of forces. As we’ve varied
our strategy, all that technology-the
air war, the helicopter-borne troops,
the spy planes–has become relatively
useless against smaller units. It’s
more difficult to use infra-reds to lo-
cate our small units and the C-47s are
only effective against medium-sized
or large concentrations.
So that whole apparatus is now
being aimed at terrorizing the civilian
population. The most recent case is
near the Honduran border in Morazdn,
in the area of Nahuaterique and
Sabanetas, where the army is using C-
47s, A-37s, helicopter transports,
those famous “baby” Hughes 500s
that just arrived. Their objective is to
depopulate the area, to make it easier
for the Honduran army to cross the
border if necessary and support the
Salvadorean army; and to prevent the
people that live there from giving sup-
port to the FMLN. It’s the old theory
of “draining the sea” by every means
possible, including terror.
Q: You’ve said that the military vic-
tories resulting from the large-unit
tactics boosted the morale of the mas-
ses and gave them confidence. This
new tactic gives the impression that
you are defeated, a feeling that is rein-
forced by the army’s psychological
operations.
A: Look, you also have to consider
the development of the mass move-
ment. At one point, the presence of
the FMLN, its actions and its succes-
ses were a vital symbol of hope for
many sectors that had been terribly
hard-hit by the repression. That was in
1981 and 1982, toward the end of the
period of terror, genocide and death-
squad activities against the organized,
urban movement. But this situation
has not remained static. Today, while
the masses are still under pressure
from the intelligence apparatus, from
this and that, they have had to rear-
ticulate their organizations. They’ve
had to come out and voice their de-
mands for basic needs and even de-
mand punishment of those responsible
for so many deaths and assassinations.
There is one thing that we cannot
accept and that is the notion that the
FMLN is the cause of the resurgence
of the mass movement. The move-
ment has re-emerged precisely be-
cause of the popular masses’ own
need to struggle for survival. It is not
the FMLN that creates the crisis or
eases the crisis, that causes the mass
movement to expand or contract.
Rather, it’s the reality of the country
itself, the root causes of instability, of
crisis, of repression that make the
movement develop.
Q: Many people interpret what is hap-
pening in El Salvador as a democratic
opening. If this is true, will the de-
velopment of the popular movement
make the armed struggle no longer
valid?
A: We’ve always said that the appar-
ent democratic opening is a require-
ment of the counterinsurgency project
itself, and not a genuine desire to see
an end to repression. First they tried
the route of indiscriminate repression,
and our people refused to surrender.
The result was more than 50,000 dead
in that period. Of course, they have
not ruled out the possibility of going
back to that type of project, but the
negative results in El Salvador-and a
revision of the methods developed in
Vietnam-have made them take a dif-
ferent tack.
What are the main elements of this
new project? First of all, they say they
want to win the hearts and minds of
the people. What does that mean?
Well, to develop a series of dem-
agogic projects, both economic and
political, to make people think that the
situation has changed and that armed
struggle is no longer justified. From
there, to try to separate the people
from the FMLN and give a cover to
their military plan which is to annihi-
late the FMLN. In other words, it is
a very complex plan, not a simple
one.
They’re fighting the war on all
levels-political, economic, military
and international, with the United
States acting as the unpaid ambas-
sador of the Salvadorean government.
Q: You can’t deny, then, that the
army has advanced and become more
professional?
A: To deny the development of the
army is to deny our own development.
In other words, the army’s need to re-
spond to the development of our
forces is precisely what has forced
them and, above all, the North Ameri-
cans, to revise their previous tactics.
What has this meant? Well, they’ve
realized that the repressive, anti-popu-
lar and simplistic schemes don’t work
and they’ve had to modify their whole
way of thinking. And this has created
an image of change and profes-
sionalism that doesn’t really exist in
the heart of the armed forces. What
does exist is a readjustment, a reac-
commodation in order to better con-
front the FMLN. This is the global
counterinsurgency plan that the North
Americans have designed for El Sal-
vador.
When two armies confront each
other, to deny the development of one
is to say, well, we’ve already won the
war. And the war in El Salvador isn’t
won yet. That’s why we can’t under-
stand the army’s logic in saying that
the FMLN is falling apart, because
then they’re denying their own de-
velopment.
But that does not mean that the
army is winning the war. We believe
that each time they have to respond to
our tactics, it is one more defensive
step to avoid being defeated by the
FMLN.
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