From: rich@pencil.cs.missouri.edu (Rich Winkel)
Subject: Salvador: New opportunities after accords
Followup-To: alt.activism.d
Originator: rich@pencil.cs.missouri.edu
Organization: PACH
Date: Tue, 15 Dec 1992 07:03:26 GMT

/** reg.elsalvador: 145.0 **/
** Topic: New Openings in El Salvador **
** Written  4:33 pm  Dec 12, 1992 by ttomasko in cdp:reg.elsalvador **
New Openings for Political Action After El Salvador Accords
 
From The Militant, December 4, 1992
 
By Ron Roberts
 
SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador--"Attention FMLN zone" reads the 
sign at the entrance to a UN-supervised Farabundo Marti National 
Liberation Front (FMLN) camp located at the Nacaspilo canton in 
the San Vicente province.
 
	We arrive with Elmer Guzman, 37, the camp commander, 
after a two-hour car ride from San Salvador, the capitol. For the 
first time since he joined the guerrilla struggle 14 years earlier, 
he has been attending meetings without risking his life, making 
use of the newly won space for political activity under the UN-
brokered agreements between the government and the FMLN.
 
	Just before entering the camp-proper we pass a UN station 
with a sealed railroad car containing 60 percent  of the FMLN 
arms from the camp, pending final destruction with the 
fulfillment of the accords. This is one of dozens of agreed-upon 
areas for FMLN forces to bivouac, which are off-limits to the 
army. The camp, which originally housed 267 guerrillas, is now 
nearly empty. Most FMLN combatants here have been 
demobilized or have temporarily returned to their land to help in 
the harvests.
 
	The accords, reached through negotiations that began in 
April 1990 and signed on January 16, 1992, bring to an end a 
decade-long civil war. More than 75,000 died during the war--the 
vast majority peasants, workers, and students killed by the 
Salvadoran government and its death squads--20,000 were 
wounded, and nearly one million were displaced from their 
houses.
 
	Salvadorans joined in big rallies at the beginning of this 
year to celebrate the signing of the accords, echoing the deeply 
felt desire for peace by working people in this country.
 
	Contrary to the image presented by U.S. officials and the 
big-business media, this stage of politics in El Salvador was 
reached not because of, but in spite of Washington's efforts. The 
U.S. government financed the war and the brutal regime that 
carried it out--providing the Salvadoran government with $260 
million in military and economic aid in 1991 alone.
 
	Thousands marched here on October 31, the original 
deadline for completing the demobilization, to demand that the 
Salvadoran government comply with the peace accords. President 
Alfredo Cristiani and senior army officers had made defiant 
declarations demanding the FMLN completely disarm before the 
government would proceed to implement its pledges to cut the 
military and discuss officers involved in human rights violations.
 
	The FMLN has not projected mass protests, strikes, or land 
occupations to pressure the government to fulfill the accords, 
relying on its own military forces as leverage. "Our arms are the 
only guarantee that the accords will be fulfilled," said Guzman, 
explaining why the FMLN had refrained  from meeting the 
original deadline for demobilization. "The negotiations and peace 
accords are not the result of weakness but are the result of our 
military struggle," explained Guzman.
 
	Following a UN proposal and the announcement by the 
FMLN that it would proceed with the demobilization of its 
guerrilla forces, a new calendar for the accords was agreed to by 
the government, with the final demobilization slated for mid-
December.
 
	The FMLN has now demobilized 60 percent of its forces. Its 
troops are scheduled to give up their weapons, which will then be 
destroyed, by December 15.
 
	The main point of contention today is the purging of a 
secret list of 97 to 110 high-ranking army officers implicated in 
human rights abuses by an Ad Hoc Commission as part of the 
accords. The government does not want the list made public and 
reportedly wants to make the changes part of regularly scheduled 
retirements and command shifts at the beginning of next year.
 
	As established in the accords, the National Civil Police (PNC) 
will begin to be organized in 1993 and will begin functioning in 
1994 as the national police force. Sixty percent of PNC members 
are supposed to be newly recruited civilians, 20 percent former 
FMLN members, and 20 percent former soldiers from the 
Salvadoran military. The FMLN considers the PNC as a guarantee 
against further repression by the armed forces once the FMLN is 
demobilized.
 
FMLN SHIFT TO ELECTORAL POLITICS
 
	The FMLN was formed in November 1980 by a coalition of 
five organizations. Massive repression against students, trade 
unionists, and peasants closed off all avenues of legal protest, 
resulting in the decision by thousands to take up arms.
 
	While several U.S.-supported regimes were unable to 
defeat the rebels, the FMLN could not achieve military victory 
over government forces either.
 
	The initial political program of the FMLN, inspired by the 
course advanced by the Cuban revolution and at the time by the 
revolution in Nicaragua, called for struggle by workers and 
peasants to take power out of the hands of the landlord-capitalist 
regime and to act decisively to advance the interests of the 
toilers.
 
	Today the FMLN is proceeding to transform itself to an 
electoral party. Each of its member organizations, and the FMLN 
itself, have opened public offices across El Salvador. FMLN leaders 
say that the 1994 elections will provide real opportunities to 
improve conditions for the majority in the country.
 
	"The purge of the officer corps, demilitarization, and our 
participation in the 1994 elections will complete the democratic 
revolution," said Commander Nidia Diaz, of the FMLN negotiations 
commission, in an interview.
 
	The FMLN has shifted its principal demands to 
"democratization" and "demilitarization." In its newly adopted 
program as a political party, the FMLN declares that it represents 
the "Salvadoran nation," fights for "democracy and national 
development," and raises up the "family as the basic foundation of 
Salvadoran society."
 
	FMLN leaders such as Joaquin Villalobos call for a sharp 
break with past positions, claiming a symmetry between "extreme 
left and extreme right." Villalobos calls for rejection communism, 
which he identifies with the Stalinist anticommunist regimes of 
Eastern Europe and the former USSR. "We should correct the idea 
that socialism is the elimination of private property, the market, 
or opposition," he said.
 
	"In this framework it is correct to affirm that to enrich 
oneself is licit and contributes to progress." Villalobos continued. 
"These changes in revolutionary thinking imply the rescue of 
family values, property, the nation, religion, individual liberties, 
respect for nature, democracy, et."
 
	Asked about a socialist perspective, Diaz responded, "It is 
still good to dream and not forget utopia."
 
LAND REFORM AND WORKERS STRUGGLES
 
	Passing through Nacaspilo was Jose Rolando Rodriquez of 
the Land Verification Commission charged with making an 
inventory of the 4,600 properties ranging from a few dozen acres 
of land to hundreds of acres, which the FMLN proposes be 
redistributed.
 
	According to the accords, a three-part agrarian reform will 
distribute plots of 3.5 to 12 acres of land to 7,500 combatants of 
the FMLN, 25,000 of its supporters and 15,000 former 
government soldiers. A total of 407,000 acres is to be given out. 
All state properties exceeding 245 hectares [1 hectare = 2.47 
acres] are to be distributed and private landlords who volunteer 
will have their land purchased for redistribution. Rodriquez 
reported that those with poorer quality land are willing to sell at 
the government offer. However, the better land belongs to big 
landlords who are demanding a higher price.
 
	There are some 260,000 families without land in a country 
of some five million people. Two percent of the population 
controls 60 percent of the arable land.
 
	In early 1991 there were some 48 land occupations by 
peasants. On October 22 this year, the national leadership of the 
FMLN--in response to demands by the landlords and the 
government--issued a statement calling on peasants to cease land 
occupations in order to facilitate the fulfillment of the accords.
 
	The FMLN considers that strikes, as well as factory and 
land occupations, are obstacles to forcing the government to fulfill 
the accords. The organization calls on workers and peasants to 
direct all efforts toward "concertacion"--reconciliation of all 
sectors of Salvadoran society. Such a reconciliation "forum" which 
includes union and big-business representatives, has been 
established ostensibly to reach agreements on labor laws and 
wages.
 
	The economic situation for millions continues to worsen, 
however, with unemployment reaching 52 percent. Only 30 
percent of those who are employed receive enough to meet their 
basic needs. A majority of the population lacks potable water. 
There is also a housing shortage. The government continues 
payment on the more than $2 billion foreign debt, creating even 
greater hardship by forcing deep cuts in social services. 
 
	A number of protests over wages, labor laws, and 
privatization of state-owned companies have been called by the 
"Intergremial," a newly formed union coordinating body, which 
encompasses all union federations in El Salvador including those 
that had adopted progovernment positions in the past.
 
	Humberto Centeno, a national leader of the National Union 
of Salvadoran Workers (UNTS), which encompasses a number of 
trade union and peasant organizations many of who members 
support the FMLN, explained that they have launched a campaign 
to reestablish unions that were violently suppressed by the 
Salvadoran regime in the 1980s. The UNTS is also trying to 
organize at new plants. The organizing efforts have met resistance 
from employers and the government who have retaliated with 
wholesale firings and plant closings to break the unions. Some 
union leaders have been arrested. Union activity is increasing, 
however.
 
	In September, all 600 workers were fired from the U.S.-
owned Sheraton Hotel and were driven out by riot police after 
occupying the hotel. There was also a wildcat strike by teachers 
during the summer.
 
	Three sugar refineries, among seven state-owned 
companies targeted for privatization, have been occupied by the 
workers who have withstood three attempts by the police to 
dislodge them.
 
NEW OPENINGS FOR POLITICS
 
	Activities such as union organizing and public meetings, 
and the availability of books and other literature, represent new 
openings for political discussion and work, openings that had been 
closed off for some time.
 
	While threats and some attacks have taken place under the 
guise of combating "criminal elements," there have been few 
murderous assaults like those that marked the previous decade, 
Even notorious figures such as army Colonel Sigifrido Ochoa Perez 
denounced recent death threats against government opponents on 
October 23, saying that the death squads no longer have a place in 
El Salvador.
 
	Mario Ramos, a FMLN leader, reported that it is possible to 
bring political books into El Salvador although there is harassment 
and some confiscations. Books by revolutionary leaders like Fidel 
Castro, Che Guevara, Leon Trotsky, and Nelson Mandela were 
virtually impossible to obtain before and are in demand.
 
	Elmer Guzman, back in the Nacaspilo camp, plans to 
continue to dedicate himself to political activity. "We know that 
with the accords we didn't achieve all we fought for. Now we 
must dedicate ourselves to the political struggle," he said.
________
The Militant newspaper is a socialist newsweekly.  An 
introductory subscription costs $10 for 12 weeks. Write to The 
Militant, 410 West Street, New York, NY. 10014. 

** End of text from cdp:reg.elsalvador **

Newsgroups: misc.activism.progressive