El Salvador

The overthrow of the govern-
ment of General Carlos Romero in
El Salvador by reformist military of-
ficers has done little to end the in-
tense class struggle which has
made Central America’s smallest
country number one on the U.S.’s
Latin American crisis list.
After more than four years of
repression, torture, disappear-
ances and the growth of powerful
mass organizations of rural and ur-
ban workers committed to social-
ist transformation, junior officers
of El Salvador’s regular army in
collaboration with intellectuals
from the country’s Central
American University deposed
Romero in a bloodless coup and
retired 85% of the army’s col-
onels. Creating a civilian-military
junta which represents the in-
terests of Romero’s moderate
bourgeois opposition, the military
immediately faced demonstrations
and armed gun battles from the
three mass organizations and their
respective guerrilla armies which
had led the fight against the brutal
repression of both the Romero and
its predecessor regimes.
Within days, the largest of the
mass organizations, the 80,000
member People’s Revolutionary
Block (BPR), characterized the new
junta as “faithful servants of the
ruling classes and American im-
perialism pretending to give a new
iraage to the fascistoide military
tyranny.” The Block immediately
went to the streets in protest. They
occupied the Ministries of
NovlDec 1979
Economy and Labor, holding the
newly named ministers of each as
hostages until the junta promised
to try to meet their demands.
The other two mass organiza-
tions, the Front for Unified Popular
Action (FAPU) and the People’s
Leagues-28 of February (LP-28),
fought the security forces in the
streets as they protested U.S. and
military domination of their coun-
try. The Leagues attacked the U.S.
embassy in a forty-five minute gun
battle that left two American
marines slightly wounded.
After three weeks of junta rule,
over 100 leftist militants were
dead, killed by security forces of
the new government.
THE BOURGEOIS & LEFT
OPPOSITIONS IN CONFLICT
The intense conflict of the
junta’s first month reflected, in
part, a split that had been develop-
ing for the last five years within the
political opposition. As electoral
fraud and repression destroyed
the people’s confidence in chang-
ing their country’s unjust socio-
economic system, the traditional
opposition parties began to lose
popular support to a new form of
political organization: coalitions of
mass-based organizations with an
openly Marxist perspective sus-
tained by guerrilla vanguards. The
popular organizations have articu-
lated the frustration and rage of El
Salvador’s impoverished masses
-among the poorest in Latin
America.
THE POPULAR ORGANIZATIONS
The largest of them-the Peo-
ple’s Revolutionary Block-was
formed in 1975 and is composed
of organizations of rural and urban
workers, students, teachers and
slum dwellers. Its growth in the
last two years from 20,000 to
80,000 members has been phe-
nomenal. Its political strategy is
“prolonged people’s war” as it
works to create a farmworker-
urban worker alliance with “pro-
letarian hegemony” leading to so-
cialism. The Block refuses all
alliances with either the other
popular organizations or the re-
formist opposition.
The oldest of the popular
organizations is the Front for
Unified Popular Action (FAPU).
Like the Block, it is composed of
separate groups of workers,
students and intellectuals. In early
September it called for a general
insurrection against the Romero
regime-a line it still maintains.
Before that, FAPU had worked
toward an anti-fascist united front
against the Romero government.
The third and smallest of the
three popular organizations, the
People’s Leagues-28 of February
(LP-28) was formed in 1977 after a
post-election massacre. It tends to
be more student-dominated than
the other two groups. Originally
espousing a strategy of a national-
ist united front with emphasis on
involving progressive military men,
the Leagues called for a general
insurrection immediately after the
junta took power. Shortly there-
after, however, when the junta
pledged support to the Common
Platform-a statement of reform-
ist political and economic objec-
tives drawn up by the three tradi-
tional opposition parties, of which
the Leagues was also a signatory
-they offered the junta their sup-
port. But when the junta failed to
make an adequate initial account-
ing of the 176 persons who had
“disappeared” under the Romero
regime, the Leagues took to the
streets again.
THE GUERILLAS
Operating clandestinely since
the early 1970’s and continuing in
opposition to the junta are three
urban guerrilla armies, each
associated with one of the popular
organizations. The largest and
most feared is the Popular Libera-
tion Forces-Faribundo Marti (FPL).
Operating with 1,000-2,000
militants, the FPL is believed to be
the vanguard organization of the
Block. It was founded in 1970 after
a split within the Salvadorean
Communist Party (PCS) over the
role of armed struggle and takes
its name from the founder of the
PCS who was a lieutenant of
Nicaragua’s Sandino.
The Armed Forces of National
Resistance, the FARN, has at-
tracted the greatest international
attention through its kidnapping of
multinational business executives.
It is the armed wing of the National
Resistance and supports FAPU. It
emerged in 1975 from a split
within the third guerrilla force, the
People’s Revolutionary Army
(ERP), after the latter executed
Roque Dalton, an ERP member
and El Salvador’s most famous
poet.
This third group, the ERP, was
also founded in 1970. Supporting
the LP-28, the ERP is the armed
wing of the Salvadorean Revolu-
tionary Party (PRS).
Rumors have circulated that the
long-anticipated unity of these
three leftist forces (both the
popular organizations and
guerrillas) is imminent. But nothing
concrete has yet materialized.
THE MODERATE OPPOSITION
The left’s struggle for unity in
the weeks before the coup was
mirrored by a similar unity move-
ment among the traditional opposi-
tion parties. In fact, a kind of race
was being run as- each force
sensed Romero’s demise. Led by
the National Democratic Union-
the legal expression of the
Moscow-oriented Salvadorean
Communist Party-the two other
parties (the Christian Democratic
Party and the social democratic
National Revolutionary Movement)
and several CP and social
democratic unions drew up the
Common Platform, a statement
setting forth a program of political
and social reforms. This document
became very significant when,
among its first acts, the junta pro-
mised its implementation. The
Common Platform calls for the
release of all political prisoners,
the right to political organization
and to strike, an increase in the
minimum wage, and “access” by
the peasants “to the use and
ownership of the land.” It is a
reformist document, but in the
context of El Salvador’s political
economic system the possibility of
its implementation is dramatic.
THE NEW GOVERNMENT
The new junta itself is heavily
technocratic, particularly in the
persons of its two military repre-
sentatives and the junta’s spokes-
person, the U.S. trained engineer,
Ramon Mayorga. It also shows
considerable U.S. influence. Both
the colonels have received ad-
vanced military training with the
U.S. armed forces. In the late six-
ties and early seventies, Mayorga
was head of the U.S.-promoted
and aided national community
development program in El
Salvador. The private sector’s
representative on the junta, Mario
Andino, is manager of the multi-
national Phelps-Dodge Corpora-
tion, representing the industrialists
of the Salvadorean bourgeoisie,
whose development has been the
objective of U.S. economic policy
in El Salvador since the 1950’s.
The fifth member of the junta is
Guillermo Ungo, secretary-general
of the National Revolutionary
Movement (MNR), the small social
democratic party. He represents
the Common Platform on the jun-
ta. A year ago Ungo visited the
U.S. on a State Department fellow-
ship.
U.S. REACTION
The U.S. has given very strong
verbal support to the junta, cou-
pled with promises of military and
economic aid. U.S. policy in El
Salvador for the last twenty years
has been to foster a strong anti-
communist military while seeking
reforms that would make the
country more attractive to multi-
national investment. Since the in-
itial uprising in Nicaragua in 1978,
State Department officials have
worried about a similar explosion
in El Salvador bred by decades of
repression and failed develop-
ment. When the Sandinistas won,
a major effort was launched to
prevent “another Nicaragua.”
Although evidence of direct U.S.
involvement in Romero’s over-
throw is circumstantial, it is very
clear that, at least .for the short
term, the State Department
got what it wanted: a moderate
government pledged to respect
human rights, make modest social
reforms, and be respectful of U.S.
NovlDec 1979
interests. What U.S. policy makers
seem to be hoping is that the
fatigue and disgust with violence
and death in the country will over-
come Salvadorean desires for
radical social change.
The popular organizations,
however, will not go away. To
them, the junta and its U.S. sup-
porters aborted the people’s
revolution. They promise con-
tinued struggle. If they achieve uni-
ty, the junta’s days may be few.