El Salvador-land of no compromise:
Lacefield, Patrick & Chapin, Jim
EL SALVADOR: LAND OF NO COMPROMISE WHAT CAN WE EXPECT NEXT? JIM CHAPIN & PATRICK LACEFIELD It was hot, dry, and dusty in the town of Ilobasco on the twenty-first day of February. The rains would...
...The problem is that no one wants to bargain...
...By the U.S...
...The first, and overriding, objective of American policy has been the formation of an army and a military strategy adequate to the task of preventing a victory by the five armies of the Farabundo Marti Liberation Front (FMLN...
...ARENA is certainly no more a democratic party at heart than are the Marxist-Leninists of the FMLN...
...Except the Salvadoran people-even under trying conditions-one of the friendliest peoples around...
...The FDR did not endorse any boycott...
...We give thanks for a table where we can see the door of the restaurant...
...There had been an upsurge in detentions and murders by the security forces-some in broad daylight and by uniformed personnel- since the FDR leader's visit in November...
...Building to a finale, Argueta concluded his speech with an appeal to the heavens...
...policy objectives has been to split the FDR from the FMLN...
...He has taken to blaming any act of violence, even the murder of Herbert Anaya of the Commission on Human Rights, on the FMLN...
...If the Christian Democrats are not cheating, they are trying hard to give the appearance that they are," suggested one observer...
...ARENA, like its allies in the private sector and the military, is an authoritarian movement playing (for now) by democratic rules and winning...
...This election will not do that...
...The campesinos are not motivated because they don't own their land, nor do they control the sale of what they produce...
...Security was a problem, he said...
...The continuing crisis for American policy in El Salvador is a result of the failures-and successes-in the prosecution of three goals...
...But even if the State Department doesn't remember this, the Salva-doran right does...
...If the U.S...
...The sense of unreality in these conversations appears also in apparently genuine guerrilla documents recently captured by the government which reflect the idea that the U.S., in the middle of an election year, would not respond to a "strategic revolutionary advance.'' The rebels tried this at the last change of administration with their January 1980 "final offensive" designed to present Reagan with a fait accompli...
...Besides, how can there be political freedom where there is no economic freedom...
...And, oddly enough, the Reagan administration has never been willing to let the left have a "piece of the system" in the idea that this will "moderate" them...
...There will be no further talk of bringing D'Aubuisson to the bar on charges of murdering Archbishop Oscar Romero...
...While conditions have changed somewhat in the last seven years, most notably with the startling decline in the number of human rights violations, the same forces still hold the power and the wealth while most Salvadorans have little of either...
...Penalties for not voting, which boosted turnout in earlier balloting, have largely been abandoned...
...The rains would come in May, but meanwhile there was an election to be run...
...Has Duarte been a puppet of the U. S. or of the armed forces, or both...
...On the one hand, it claims that Ungo and Zamora are nothing more than democratic fig leaves for Communist guerrillas, men who lack any real power...
...The PDC campaigned against the right by conjuring up visions of the death squads back in power and claiming that only the PDC had kept the FMLN from power...
...In reality, apart from a transport stoppage and a few bombs, the FMLN did not make a major effort to stop the voting...
...Going into the election, the PDC held thirty-three seats in the Assembly and 160 of the municipalities...
...After some initial explorations, the parties decided not to participate in the March 20 election...
...No one will rent me a house, because they are afraid it will be blown up...
...With the right to appoint Supreme Court judges and the attor-ney general, the Assembly majority can in-sure that there will be no prosecutions for death squad activities...
...government's pitch...
...His family remains abroad-in Nicaragua...
...adviser...
...That will now be put to the test...
...The collectivist structure of the agrarian reform is at the root of its failure," says ARENA president Alfredo Cristiani...
...The turnout was less impressive than it sounds: most estimates at Salvador's adult population put it at 2.5 million adults...
...Per capita income has dropped 38 percent in seven years...
...The Salvadoran army has increased in numbers from 12,000 to over 50,000 in the same period...
...The people of El Salvador want a free-market-oriented economy where private enterprise and private property are respected...
...embassy is reported to be "reassessing" its initial support for the FDR's return to political work inside El Salvador, given its refusal to break with the FMLN...
...Duarte cannot run for reelection, and the PDC must find a new candidate for 1989...
...The last two times the hard right was strongest, in 1979-81 and 1983-84, the government came closest to losing...
...At present none of the sides in El Salvador is likely to win...
...He had apparently granted a de facto amnesty for past transgressions by the armed forces even before the amnesty in December that freed both suspected leftist rebels and death squad killers...
...The right wing always considered Duarte a socialist because he nationalized the banks, carried on a partial agrarian reform, and gave the state a monopoly on export marketing of cash crops...
...As the Economist points out, this is less than one-half of the adults...
...ARENA'S economic program can be boiled down to a few words: "unleash the private sector...
...We accept ARENA'S triumph, we acknowledge the decision of the people," stated Salvadoran Vice-President Castille Claramount...
...In November, in accord with the provisions of the Arias plan, Ungo and Zamora returned to El Salvador (see Commonweal, December 18, 1987) inorderto, intheirwords, "take advantage of the limited political opening.'' While there, Ungo's National Revolutionary Movement (MNR) and Zamora's Popular Social Christian Movement joined with a newly-formed Social Democratic party to form the Democratic Convergence, dedicated to working inside the country to end the war and promote radical economic and social reforms...
...A U.S.-imposed austerity plan virtually guaranteed that the PDC base would shrivel up after 1985...
...the official election commission listed 1.9 million as eligible to vote...
...Now they hope to return to the "crony capitalism" which relies on the depression of wages and the repression of "agitators...
...aid was tilted to the private sector, while the agrarian reform sector was left as a classic public swamp: not enough credit, not enough technical assistance, not enough good land in the first place...
...Then-when the U.S...
...The FMLN, against its will, may-like the contras-be a bargaining chip...
...policy for El Salvador, you wouldn't know it from spokesmen like Charles Redman at the State Department...
...Father and son-President Duarte and his son Alejandro, the PDC candidate for the mayor of San Salvador-also conceded defeat...
...Milk prices have tripled...
...embassy, not to mention the military chieftains, turned thumbs down on these proposals...
...They'd still like to take power...
...PATRICK LACEFIELD is organizational director of the Democratic Socialists of America and worked for twenty months with the Salvador Catholic church in zones of conflict...
...Ruben Zamora and his party are looking to take their message on the road outside the capital in the next few months, but that may be a risky venture given the lack of civilian control in the countryside...
...Such rules would present a salable image of Salvadoran reality to the American public, make it possible to prosecute the war more effectively, and establish some modicum of civilian control over a "professionalized" military...
...The air was filled with typically grandiloquent oratory...
...Rey Prendes, the classic insider and a founder of the party, is a short, overweight bear of a man who is described by Zamora as a man without principles...
...Incredibly, Duarte went so far as to defend the armed forces against charges of corruption by ex-Colonel Sigifredo Ochoa, now a leading light in ARENA: "This is anti-patriotic," Duarte said "because the guerrillas will use it as propaganda.'' Meanwhile ARENA stuck to personal slander and pocketbook issues...
...The U.S...
...You wouldn't know that from the sparse coverage in the American media...
...ARENA is a Nazi-Fascist party," hedeclared, "trying to commit fraud by intimidating people into giving them a majority...
...insisted Commandante Villalobos in a recent interview (a perhaps more ambiguous choice of phrases than he intended...
...embassy's choice...
...Saying that ARENA will be more "moderate" now that it has a "stake in the system" begs the point: for most of Salvadoran history these people have been the system-they just don't want to let anyone else be...
...My driver has some training, but...
...We're not about to let them shoot their way into power,'' an embassy official says...
...contribution of more than $600 million, more than half the Salvadoran national budget...
...Given the PCN's tacit alliance with the PDC, this means a dead heat...
...The FMLN's jefe maximo, Joaquin Villalobos, called the elections a "farce," announcing that the FMLN would target polling stations to enforce a boycott...
...Just as Duarte's victory over D'Aubuisson in 1984 removed El Salvador as a point of contention in American politics, opening a bipartisan flood of economic and military aid, so ARENA'S victory in 1988 is likely once again to make El Salvador a point of contention in the U.S...
...As the war in El Salvador enters its tenth year, it is easier to see it lasting into the next century than to see it ending anytime soon...
...If this sounds like trouble for U.S...
...It is obvious that the Salvadoran conflict requires compromise to end it...
...Whether this "jiew" army will want to suffer the consequences of ARENA'S nationalist resentment of U.S...
...Still, they never blamed Reagan, assuming that he was being misadvised by sinister left-wingers in the U.S...
...State Department...
...Duarte's last year will be hard sledding if ARE-NA's majority holds up...
...One of the long-standing U.S...
...One thing is for sure: the longer it continues, the more polarized it will become...
...His kissing of the American flag last year on a visit to the White House outraged all Salvadoran nationalists, whatever their politics...
...Even the U.S...
...If I lie," he cried, "may God strike me down...
...Anyone with his eyes closed and blindfolded can see that this war is won...
...In addition, we came back not just to run candidates but to end this war and seek national reconciliation...
...The FMLN with its Marxist-Leninist leadership does not represent the majority of the Salvadoran people...
...In fact, even these successes have required a U.S...
...Ironically, as with the initial assembly balloting in 1982, U.S...
...Government intervened to force the choice of Magana over D'Aubuisson for interim president-as now, the U.S...
...Recently, an FMLN sympathizer claimed that the FMLN had 12,000 fighters, controlled 44 percent of the country, and would stop the election from happening in 200 municipalities...
...Now Vice-President Claramount is singing a different tune...
...The UP has been decimated by the assassination of nearly 300 of its leaders and members by hit squads composed of right-wingers, military men, and cocaine dealers...
...As to the goal of constructing a modern state, with a political consensus, fair elec-tions, and some kind of civilian control over the military, U.S...
...The rise of D'Aubuisson and Ochoa in ARENA will strengthen hard-liners in the military...
...It is also obvious that no such compromise is in sight or even likely...
...Abelardo Argueta, an activist in President Jose Napoleon Duarte's ruling Christian Democratic Party (PDC), took the floor to denounce in the harshest possible terms the candidates of the National Republican Alliance (ARENA...
...policies have strengthened ARENA...
...Zamora himself says, "We will not break with the FMLN because we have made an alliance between our two autonomous forces to push for a negotiated settlement and a democratic system that works for all Salvadorans...
...Despite this, the war shows no signs of abating...
...Up to now one of the few genuine successes Duarte and the U.S...
...The dialogue between the rebels and the government, resumed last fall in accordance with the Arias plan, broke down soon after the assassination of human-rights leader Herbert Anaya (presumably by right-wing death squads) upon Duarte's insistence that the rebels lay down their arms as a precondition to serious negotiation...
...Its tactics have changed as well, from a 9-to-5 army employing huge sweeps to a partially effective counter-insurgency force supported by air power, with officers and soldiers trained in the U.S...
...And-in perhaps the most significant impact of the Arias plan on El Salvador-Durate reluctantly managed to convince the army to allow 4,300 refugees from the Mesa Grande camp in Honduras to resettle in areas of guerrilla persistence...
...By nightfall, the cautious optimism with which the U.S.-blessed PDC had approached the election had been dissolved...
...What brought down the Christian Democrats in the campaign just concluded was the severe economic crisis...
...As an omen of things to come for the Christian Democrats, it was prophetic...
...could claim (a "success" based on an open checkbook) was the "professionalization" of the army and its wooing away from an instinctual alliance with the oligarchy...
...In fact, other evidence suggests half as many guerrillas, perhaps a third as much'' control,'' and at least 220 municipalities had elections...
...As one Salvadoran official sympathetic to Chavez Mena put it: ' 'The one silver lining with the ARENA victory is that maybe now the PDC will turn to Chavez Mena.'' Chavez cultivates closer ties with the private sector and is less in the populist/ communitarian mode that tends to drive the ' 'productive sector" (as the oligarchy arrogantly calls itself) to distraction...
...Not a pretty picture...
...Ronald Reagan's policies in Central America have prevented "another Nicaragua" in El Salvador, but he leaves to his successor a situation in that land not remarkably different from that he faced when he came to power.ferent from that he faced when he came to power...
...What they cannot do, in the face of American aid, is win...
...The political space that allowed the FDR leaders to return and which has seen increased student, labor, and human rights demonstrations may prove an extremely perishable commodity...
...Massive military assistance by the Reagan administration, rising from $6 million in 1980 to more than $120 million alone in 1988, has helped to stymie the FMLN...
...Throughout Sal-vadoran history there are examples of democratic forces allying themselves with revolutionary forces toward a common goal...
...The answer is complicated...
...and the armed forces along on a policy of dialogue with the rebels, he has opened some political space in the country, and he won army support for a "soak-the-rich" tax (later overturned by the oligarchy-dominated Supreme Court...
...He hailed the balloting as yet another demonstration of the maturing of democracy and the devotion of ordinary Salvadorans to the democratic process...
...Zamora explained the reasons over lunch in a San Salvador restaurant in late February...
...Still, the FMLN "objectively" serves the democratic cause in El Salvador, because without their existence, the U. S. would not have cared a fig for democracy in El Salvador...
...The FMLN, of course, begs to differ...
...Nor would the oligarchs and the military have been forced away from their chosen methods of keeping power...
...It is not at all clear that opposition to the present government's failure to gain peace, its corruption, and the worsening economic situation would lead to greater support for the FMLN...
...But the FMLN-FDR see a Salvadoran oligarchy and military still in the driver's seat, capable of returning to the terror tactics of the past whenever they feel it is ' 'necessary.'' If they needed a crystal-clear picture of what can happen when guerrillas lay down their arms to enter the political processato vie for power, they need look no further than the case of the Union Patriotica in Colombia in the last year...
...The FMLN, numbering only some 5,000-6,000 troops plus village militias and urban commandos, has demonstrated again and again its capacity to strike heavy blows...
...The loss of the mayoralty of the capital, a PDC stronghold since 1964, was a particularly devastating blow...
...Their preelection violence included setting off bombs in the capital, one of which wounded several children...
...Last spring, 800 guerrillas overran the supposedly impregnable military base at El Paraiso in Chaletenango for the second time in four years, inflicting 400 casualties, including a dead U.S...
...To launch a political campaign that's serious requires resources and meticulous organization...
...We don't choose sides in these kinds of elections," he declared, ignoring the estimated $2 million the CIA funneled to Duarte in the 1984 elections, through the mediums of the West German Konrad Adenauer Foundation and a Venezuelan PR firm...
...I try to vary my routine but the most dangerous time is when you are traveling around...
...That is like saying that the victory for the Nazis in the 1933 elections in Germany showed the strength of the Weimar Republic...
...Of these, 1.6 million got poll cards, and probably less than 1.1 million voted...
...An odd kind of double-speak characterizes the U.S...
...The eight transportation stoppages decreed by the FMLN so far this year have crippled commerce and have spread even to the capital...
...JIM CHAPIN, writer, political consultant, and a former national director of the Democratic Socialists of America, is the chair of the World Hunger Year...
...Embassy figures tout five years of "modest growth," pointing to a 2.6 percent rise in GNP, an inflation rate of "only" 25 percent, and an increase in net international reserves to $21 million...
...American policymakers, quick to praise the electoral results, say the ARENA victory is a victory for democracy...
...Initial pledges by ARENA and the PDC to work together-however unlikely-are now definitely out the window...
...He should know...
...Adolfo Rey Prendes, the minister of communications, is the front-runner, but not the U.S...
...The rebels have advanced an eighteen-point plan for the humanization of the war in which they would stop the use of land mines and economic sabotage in return for a government prohibition on air strikes and long-range artillery...
...One former high-ranking officer says, "The army knows the country is in turmoil...
...Reagan shocked the right when he backed the same program...
...support of the PDC is an open question...
...They expected Carter to back these plans: they knew he was a Communist because he talked about human rights...
...On March 20, an estimated 60-70 percent of the eligible Salvadoran electorate went to the polls for the fifth national election in six years...
...Third, the Americans have sought to find electoral rules of the game that can be adhered to both by rightist and mildly reformist forces...
...Congress...
...This will, at least, relieve Duarte, in his last year before next year's presidential election, from jousting with a sure ARENA majority...
...On the other, it claims that these supposedly powerless figures could turn El Salvador around by incorporating themselves into the current political process...
...The prevailing "low intensity conflict" strategy has put more emphasis on winning the hearts and minds of the peasantry with army-directed projects such as the "United to Reconstruct" campaign designed to build roads, water systems, bridges, schools, and to install electricity...
...The increased mobility of helicopter-based units and improved reconnaissance by U.S...
...none is likely to lose...
...Duarte and the U.S...
...It didn't work then and it won't work now...
...God apparently responded: Argueta collapsed with a heart attack and died...
...bemoans the results its policies pre-ordain...
...advisers packing and deep-sixing "low intensity conflict" for something a lot more intense, on the Guatemalan model, but also less likely to work...
...This acceptance didn't last long...
...In fact the embassy preferred Rey Prendes's current rival, Planning Minister Fidel Chavez Mena, to Duarte even in 1984...
...Christian Democratic ads pictured ARENA leader Roberto D'Aubuisson with a kerchief over his face, surrounded by snapshots of his minions who had been implicated in kidnappings and death squad activities...
...Still, he brought the U.S...
...An ARENA victory, these ads trumpeted, would mean an acaba-do-a settling of accounts-a return to the Salvadoran killing fields of 1979-83...
...ARENA is threatening to take to the streets to protect its victory, backed by the threat of a capital strike by the National Council of Private Enterprise...
...ARENA, in turn, ran Duarte family photos claiming nepotism and rampant corruption and even hinting that one of Duarte's daughters was in an "improper" relationship...
...So I move from hotel to hotel until my old home-where I lived before I went into exile in 1980-is improved...
...In the absence of war, the FDR and left unions would be more likely to fill the considerable space to the left of the PDC...
...It is common wisdom that the guerrillas can strike pretty much anywhere they want and bring the country to a temporary halt...
...They were electing sixty members of the National Assembly and mayors and town councils in the country's 262 municipalities...
...He had returned to join others of his party Comrades on a permanent basis...
...As things stand now, he has the nomination sewed up, but the embassy still hopes...
...policy has not suc-ceeded...
...He explained the reasons for nonparticipation:' 'Our parties are at a disadvantage in terms of financing and organization...
...If anything, massive U.S...
...government is insistently against any "power-sharing" between the FMLN and the civilian wing of the Democratic Revolutionary Front (FDR) on the one hand and the government and the army on the other, as a prelude for genuinely free elections with all parties participating...
...ARENA has long talked of sending U.S...
...The average salaries for workers in the three main export crops (cotton, sugar, coffee) have dropped by twothirds...
...As for the FMLN, they have always survived without much foreign assistance though foreign inspiration and advice have always been important...
...When the tally was finally released, twelve days after the voting and on April Fool's Day, ARENA was credited with only thirty seats, the PDC with twenty-three, and the National Conciliation Party (PCN) won seven...
...That can't be either in our interest or in the interest of El Salvador...
...There was nothing new in his speech...
...There continue to be differences between the Marxist-Leninist FMLN and the FDR, the latter composed of opposition political parties and some unions and headed by social democrat Guillermo Ungo and social Christian Ruben Zamora...
...He approved the contras' resupply effort that operated out of Salvador's Ilopango Airport until Gene Hasenfuss was shot down over Nicaragua and brought the operation down with him...
...With Panama, Nicaragua, and Honduras dominating air time and copy inches, the Central American quota for coverage is just plain used up...
...Even Salvadoran Air Force General Rafael Bustillo, a hard-liner, recently compared the rebels' relative self-sufficiency to the contras' continuing dependence on U.S...
...aid has made the army more independent not just from the oligarchy, but from any civilian government...
...embassy's own estimates, the guerrillas have caused hundreds of millions of dollars of damage in the last seven years with attacks on the infrastructure, particularly targeting export crops and electrical supplies...
...aid for mere survival...
...We've only just returned...
...And there's been no change of heart on democracy and human rights...
...The second goal is the strengthening of the economy and the promotion of limited reforms aimed at undercutting the rebels and exploiting the conservative and entrepreneurial side of the Salvadoran peasantry...
...The airwaves and the print media were crammed with charges and counter-charges and gutter appeals that would have shocked the most hardened American machine politician...
...continues to insist on a "victory" in El Salvador we will get only more war...
...planes operating out of Honduras has forced the FMLN to break into small units and splintered most of its "zones of control...
...The ARENA victory won't help, even if ARENA stays on its best behavior, hoping to win the presidency next year...
...Exit polls indicated that ARENA had routed them, winning thirty-three to thirty-five of the sixty Assembly seats and over 200 of the municipalities...
...The elections of 1984 opened a possibility for El Salvador, but it seems that the elections of 1988 may have closed it...
...But not for long...
Vol. 115 • May 1988 • No. 9
