AN EXCHANGE ON EL SALVADOR
Zaid, Gabriel & Berryman, Phillip
Far from being "perhaps the most comprehensive portrait yet drawn of the inner workings of Salvadoran politics," Gabriel Zaid's article "Enemy Colleagues" is a confused and confusing...
...They announced to the press that the ERP would support the coup: "we expect to learn their position this afternoon, which should agree with our own...
...Alliance for Progresstype programs were no answer: cooperatives do little for people with no land...
...358 (b) In January, 1981, the guerrillas formally called on local forces to take up arms in a simultaneous insurrection of all armed groups, accompanied by a general strike of indefinite length until power had been seized...
...When I arranged a meeting with Sandinista leaders in Costa Rica in November 1978 the representatives of the three "tendencies" could not sit at the same table...
...Most of the leaders on the left sided with Ungo, not Duarte...
...The results were mixed: the strike was largely successful in the countryside but not in San Salvador (where the reporters stayed), apparently because people there were not ready to risk all without greater guarantees...
...Accordingly in 1976 the government of Col...
...I remember hearing peasants say, "Better to die of a bullet than of hunger...
...What amazed me was the matter-of-fact and disciplined way the people reacted under fire...
...Naturally, the rupture of the leftist coalition in power was much celebrated by the guerrillas, who moved to step into the army's role within a new coalition of the left, now in opposition...
...ZAID CORRECTLY DEBUNKS the literalness of the "14 families" in El Salvador, seeming to imply that there is no significant "oligarchy...
...It saw itself as holding two basic bargaining cards with the army's right wing, the oligarchy, and the United States: first, the popular support demonstrated in the earlier elections, and second, the guerrilla pressure...
...He accused it of being a "variant of imperialism" and, the day after the coup, set out in effect (by his own statements, deliberately) to provoke the armed right, which thus had an excellent pretext for adopting a hard line...
...During this period, early 1977, systematic attacks on both Catholic church personnel and popular organizations began...
...23, 1980) estimated that there were 100,000 demonstrators (twice the number that turned out in support of Duarte...
...The prelude to such a shift would be land reform (as in Taiwan...
...While the Carter administration had paved the way for a deepening U.S...
...In the first, the armed camp, failing to win control of the PCS, abandoned the party in the early '70s to form guerrilla groups...
...A: When we receive aid, it doesn't necessarily mean that we have become the tool of any particular political position...
...Napoleon Duarte and Guillermo Ungo, fellow members of the civilian left and cowinners of the 1972 elections, wound up at opposite poles: Duarte with the army (as president of the Republic), Ungo with the guerrillas (as president of the Democratic Revolutionary Front...
...It is reasonable to suppose that very early and perhaps even from the beginning there were some guerrilla members in the popular organizations...
...Sympathy and the sheer abundance of material have had a "permissive" effect on publishers and readers alike...
...Clearly he believes that the "taxes" the guerrillas demand on the highways or the food they collect from the rural populace are handed over without fear, as a voluntary contribution...
...However, while Col...
...Joaquin Villalobos tacitly admitted the Cuban aid in an interview (Proceso, March 29, 1982): Q: The hardening of the U.S...
...Salvador Samayoa, the minister of education, appeared on TV to announce he was joining the FPL guerrillas...
...Government forces are killing large numbers of the civilian population (about 1,000 a month) but few guerrillas...
...If Berryman believes that the guerrillas are nobly willing to be murdered by their own comrades, it will be very hard for him to see any sort of terrorism...
...Military officers were afraid, knowing that Somoza's army had fallen apart when he left—with officers hijacking planes and troops running away in their underwear— despite the agreement made with the Sandinistas that those not personally guilty of crimes could form part of a new integrated armed forces...
...involvement—with "nonlethal" military aid and, at the end, more money, advisers, and equipment—Reagan and company immediately made it a "test case" of American resolve to stop Soviet expansionism...
...The first Salvadoran guerrillas were Catholic university students who became radicalized, joined the Salvadoran Communist party (PCS) and ended by finding it insufficiently radical (Dalton considered it to be center-right...
...However, wealth is tightly concentrated—Eduardo Colindres has gathered extensive information on the holdings of 20 extended families (in his book Fundamentos EconOmicos de la Burguesia Salvadorena, San Salvador, U.C.A...
...It would be unfortunate if Gabriel Zaid's observations, which might seem to reinforce the 356 understandable suspicion of all things Leninist in Dissent readers, would prevent them from understanding events in Central America and from acting responsibly to prevent the Reagan Administration from adding to the tragedy...
...There are perhaps some cases in which the notion of "responsibility" for death is stretched...
...3. When I wrote my article, I hadn't read any admission from leftist sources concerning the shipment of Cuban arms to El Salvador...
...The final result was evident in overwhelming displays of non-support for the guerrilla movement: (a) Some 500,000 Salvadorans (10 percent of the population) have left their homes and are in the situation of having "nothing to lose but their chains...
...Most of the quotes in my article come from those publications most widely read by the Mexican left: the dailies Excelsior, Uno mas uno, and El Dia...
...c) In March 1982, the guerrillas strenuously sabotaged the elections, in spite of which participation proved several times greater than during the June 1980 strike...
...A: The people and the revolutionary movement of El Salvador have the right to avail themselves of means and resources wherever and whenever necessary...
...One of them was Mario Zamora (Ruben Zamora's brother), who was still in the government...
...I have since come across two...
...In March 1980, 30,000 people attended the funeral of Archbishop Romero (New York Times, March 31, 1980...
...Since my article is a refutation of this simplism and since Berryman limits himself to offering his personal testimony in support of it, I have little to add, beyond a few clarifications...
...AN ELOQUENT ILLUSTRATION that the "centrist" military is a fiction is afforded by the fortunes of Maj...
...The teachers' union and the popular organizations called a general two-day strike (June 24 and 25) demanding his release...
...A few weeks later D'Aubuisson and several others were caught in a coup attempt and jailed under orders from Col...
...the weeklies Proceso and Siempre...
...Molina announced a mild and gradual land reform that would begin in one part of the country...
...Rather than aiming at any dramatic sweep, they seem to be almost imperceptibly asserting greater control...
...The strike was neither general nor indefinite...
...The clearest example of this domination was the ridiculous spectacle of the Popular Leagues-28th of February (taken over by the ERP...
...Whatever their excesses, however, these organizations were the most genuine expression of the aspirations of the poor...
...He even wrote a pastoral letter on "The Church and the Popular Organizations" (August 1978...
...This doesn't alter the general sense of my article...
...We've bought arms in the United States too...
...Could this formula have worked...
...Yet within weeks they had united and continue to work together to this day with the very different problems of making a revolutionary program work...
...And avenues of reform were systematically cut off...
...This came about in two stages...
...Just as he believed that the guerrillas "do not plan to put pressure on the people" in sabotaging the elections...
...sent a "Defense Survey Team" to study the Salvadoran military's "needs," they were not even informed (the Carter government seeming to follow a "two-track" policy— State and Pentagon...
...In January 1980 the leftist opposition coalition staged a massive demonstration against the repression...
...Perhaps the closest term would be "vanguardism" as used in left-wing vocabularies...
...Nevertheless, negotiations do offer the only sane way out of the present situation...
...The civilians in the government felt they had no power—for instance, when the U.S...
...Despite widely repeated charges that the guerrillas are "crazies" who would dump the suitandtie "bourgeois" politicians soon after taking power, I believe they are pragmatic enough to realize that they need the administrative, professional, and technical experience and skill of those elements of the bourgeoisie willing to work in a revolutionary context...
...Salvadoran opposition figures live here or pass through frequently...
...The very rationality of this suggestion insures that it will not be used...
...What I find totally unacceptable is Zaid's use of this episode to explain all the behavior of the guerrillas such as their self-hatred for being bourgeois...
...In both cases, the style is clearly collegiate, not peasant...
...both mutually accusing each other of playing the role of legitimizer, a la Kerensky, in the transition toward a hard-line regime...
...The late Archbishop Romero and after him Archbishop Rivera y Damas kept their distance from both the regime and the guerrillas...
...When a leftist faction of the army staged the October 1977 coup and launched a program coinciding with the objectives of the civilian opposition, it invited that civilian opposition into the government and they accepted...
...Even at that time the other groups criticized the ERP–LP28 actions (in which Zaid sees Joaquin Villalobos sacrificing "cadres and ordinary citizens") as reckless and adventuristic and particularly criticized its zigzag policies...
...Thus was formed the civilian-military junta, which excluded the leader of the Christian Democrats, Jose Napoleon Duarte—then in exile in Venezuela—and left out the guerrillas as well...
...The third popular organization, the LP-28 [February 28 Popular Leagues] takes its name from this massacre...
...Q: Then you have in fact received aid from Cuba...
...in the countryside members of ORDEN (Democratic Nationalist Organization), a military-linked paramilitary organization, and of the popular organizations frequently clashed...
...357 the ERP (People's Revolutionary Army) and murderer of his comrade Roque Dalton (under the false accusation that he was a CIA agent, which to this date he has not withdrawn), refused to give a chance to the non-guerrilla left just entering power...
...The triumph of the armed communists over the civilian communists and the apparatus of opposition in general carried a high political cost...
...In other words, approximately one civilian has died for every armed man on both sides...
...Important opposition leaders, such as Colonel Majano, chose to withdraw to the sidelines...
...In February 1980 he publicly accused, on TV, a list of people of being Communists...
...Some of the "unsolved social problems" (in State Department parlance) may be briefly alluded to: 50 years of virtually uninterrupted military rule, rapidly increasing numbers of landless peasants completely dependent on largely seasonal day labor (as much as 40 percent of the rural population today), with effects such as declining calorie intake (the lowest in the hemisphere except for Haiti...
...Majano and the "reform officers" were gradually shoved aside so that by the end of the year none of the original coup-makers were in the country...
...I certainly condemn the killing of Roque Dalton, and the facile rationalization for it...
...Joaquin Villalobos, commander of * A word impossible to translate, it pertains to foco, or nucleus, in Zaid's previous sentence...
...However, there is no documentation of a pattern of guerrilla terrorism against civilians...
...Further themes are the supposed mirror savagery of guerrillas and official troops and the opposition of both extremes to "conciliators" in the middle...
...The New York Times (Jan...
...In January 1981 the guerrillas launched the long awaited "general" offensive—which some enthusiasts called a "final" offensive, no doubt with Nica355 ragua in mind—and hoped to present the incoming Reagan administration with a fait accompli...
...They began to overcome their feuding, at least to be able to march in demonstrations together...
...Tens of thousands of people had been forced to flee their homes...
...Yet they have not taken up arms...
...Its publication, to the extent that it immobilizes Dissent readers with a "no decent alternatives" frustration, thereby serves current U.S...
...FARN had split off from ERP partly over the killing of Dalton...
...However, it couldn't count on the latter and was beginning to lose the former because the guerrillas would not accept a role that in effect subordinated them to the non-guerrilla left...
...The Christian Democrats, stained with so much blood...
...Again, this demonstration could not be interpreted as a direct support of the guerrillas, but rather of Archbishop Romero, and as a new repudiation of the regime...
...Roque Dalton wrote a book in Havana to defend Debray from "right-wing critics"—that is, the Communist parties, which preferred civil action in the cities (strikes, demonstrations, propaganda) over armed action in the country...
...SOMOZA'S FALL emboldened the popular organizations...
...Nevertheless, the offensive was hardly a failure since the insurgents controlled more territory afterward...
...Berryman's understanding of these painful necessities in the struggle of good against evil reaches remarkable extremes: his endeavor to comprehend the extreme discipline "of being willing to accept 'execution' if revolutionary 'justice' demands it...
...The opposition held a weeklong vigil to protest until it was attacked by troops...
...While Zaid is very intent on revealing the pathology of the guerrillas—devoting fully 40 percent of his article to the killing' of the poet Roque Dalton and extrapolating its significance onto the whole opposition—he virtually ignores the most important political force in El Salvador, the popular organizations that grew up in the early and mid1970s...
...each believing that, somehow, by his political weight, he could manage to impose himself on his respective militaries...
...The question of who should submit to whom goes back to Castro, who from a small armed foco, or nucleus, gained control of the entire opposition...
...How do the sides line up...
...And, more important, the oligarchy is organized in many specialized "chambers of commerce" (of coffee growers, etc...
...media), they should note that his main sources are Mexico City dailies and that he gives no evidence of having followed events in El Salvador firsthand...
...This was seen by Regis Debray as a Revolution in a Revolution, in a book that circulated widely and served as the inspiration for this foquismo,* now theoretically repudiated (even by Debray) though still alive in practice...
...Again Zaid neglects to mention that Salvador Cayetano Carpio, founder and present head of the FPL, was not a university product but a baker and long-time labor militant...
...Into this context stepped the popular organizations...
...TO HIS CREDIT Zaid says that any "foreign intervention" would "aggravate the problem instead of solving it...
...EDS...
...Roberto D'Aubuisson...
...Afterward I briefly greeted some of the new cabinet members, told them of the attack we had seen in the morning—and could not but feel that they were in an impossible situation...
...but that has not happened...
...Commander Villalobos admits the significance of this fact in a recent interview (Proceso, March 29, 1982), in which he appears confident that a popular uprising will indeed soon be possible: "Now . . . far fewer will run away and far more will join in the fighting...
...Duarte returned at once to take advantage of the new situation and was greeted by a demonstration of over 50,000 sympathizers (New York Times, Oct...
...Two priests were murdered and perhaps two dozen were either arrested, tortured, expelled, or not allowed to return to the country...
...FARN–FAPU maintained contacts with some sectors of the military and put on pressure through demonstrations...
...4. Salvador Cayetano Carpio ("Marcial") is no mere baker...
...policy...
...The government, the press, the universities, and the artistic and intellectual circles are as a whole favorably disposed toward the Salvadoran opposition, which encourages the abundant publication of reports, interviews, letters, manifestos, and articles concerning El Salvador...
...In the wake of this initiative, the non-guerrilla left [government] occupied a very difficult position...
...It is not a case of "overlapping" as Mr...
...Zaid's own solution is a cease-fire, a de-arming of the violent groups, and elections under international supervision...
...The main development during 1980 was the unification of the opposition...
...position is due to your having received outside aid...
...aid and political support...
...4 and 25, 1980...
...The Salvadoran guerrilla movement was inspired by foquismo...
...The question of whether the armed communists should submit to the civilian communists,** or the other way round, was settled in El Salvador by the defeat of the civilians...
...EDS...
...Who could oppose it...
...Before readers are swept away by Zaid's seemingly encyclopedic knowledge (in comparison to the skimpy coverage in U.S...
...While the government called it a "life insurance policy for our grandchildren" to stave off peasant revolt, the oligarchy rejected the plan, rallying around Gen...
...They read and publish under simplistic formulas, despite the appearance of items in this mass of information (published but not read) that invalidate any simplistic formula...
...The Salvadoran military became increasingly dependent on U.S...
...These popular organizations, particularly the BPR, mushroomed despite the repression...
...354 The rate of repression went up sharply, from perhaps 100 to 200 a year killed in the later 1970s to about 300 a month in late 1979...
...Far from being "perhaps the most comprehensive portrait yet drawn of the inner workings of Salvadoran politics," Gabriel Zaid's article "Enemy Colleagues" is a confused and confusing polemic...
...Landowners would be paid the market value of their land and given incentives to reinvest in industry...
...Watching the growing militancy, a group of them decided to act preemptively and staged a coup on October 15, 1979 (less than three months after Somoza's fall...
...For example: I'm not the one who "sees Joaquin Villalobos sacrificing 'cadres and ordinary citizens' "; it is the statements of Villalobos himself and of the BPR (Popular Revolutionary Bloc), collected in my article, that speak of this sacrifice aimed at forcing the non-guerrilla left out of the junta...
...Recently he wrote a long epic text that he gave to the magazine Por esto (Dec...
...Mr...
...At this point it would be good to backtrack to 1970 and the founding of the major guerrilla groups, FPL (Farabundo Marti Popular Liberation Forces) and ERP (People's Revolutionary Army), splits from the Salvadoran Communist party...
...One heard chants: Romero y Somoza / Son la misma cosa...
...He was retired at the time of the coup because of his connections with repressive forces and with paramilitary death squads (he is the reputed head of the "White Warriors' Union...
...353 TOWARD THE END of this period it became increasingly clear that there were links between the popular organizations and the guerrilla groups...
...For some time many technocrats and a small sector of the oligarchy had argued that the only solution for El Salvador was a "Taiwan model" for the economy, with export industries taking advantage of the country's only "natural resource," cheap, disciplined labor...
...As distasteful as a negotiated settlement would be to the Reagan administration, the alternative is worse: bankrolling and becoming increasingly involved in a long, dirty war that could be "won" only by something approaching genocide and that would cost international opprobrium and great domestic dissent...
...This prompted the belief that the beginning of the end was at hand, and preparations were made for a more intensive general strike, for August 13-15...
...At first they joined part of a larger coalition, called FAPU (United Popular Action Front), but after a complex history of government repression, demonstrations, and a dramatic occupation of the cathedral, FECCAS and UTC, together with ANDES (National Association of Salvadoran 352 Educators), formed the Revolutionary People's Bloc—BPR...
...At this point the Christian Democratic party, with strong U.S...
...Majano...
...Those civilians who entered the government were making one last effort, very late in the day, to solve the country's problems through serious reforms rather than war...
...During this period there was fierce ideological rivalry among the three main popular organizations (BPR and FAPU with LP-28 a distant third), both over questions of analysis and strategy...
...The power structure clearly saw the popular organizations and the Church as linked...
...BY LATE 1980, around 1,000 civilians a month were being killed by government or right-wing paramilitary forces...
...Berryman himself accepts the killing of peasants, if one translates the guerrilla newspeak, with its talk of "ears," traitors, and scum who give information to the army (or are simply accused of doing so...
...These pages include a passage of high "socialist realism" in which, under the strain of finding himself surrounded and under fire from army artillery, Commander Carpio listens to one of his men, "Ruperto, very young but brave in action, who says between sobs: 'I don't mind dying, just don't let our Commander-in-Chief fall.' " He also includes two poems by two guerrillas, one titled "Comrade Marcial" in homage to the commander and the other entitled "Emma Guadalupe Carpio" in homage to his daughter...
...I believe something similar would happen in El Salvador...
...Once again there was fraud...
...Given freedom to propose a serious alternative in an election campaign, the left would win...
...For instance: the declaration of the commander of the FARN (Armed Forces of National Resistance), confirming that the journalists the FARN had singled out would be assassinated if they didn't leave the country...
...Thus the reformist alliance went down in a crossfire and was forced to polarize: either leave the junta and submit in effect to the armed left, or remain in the junta and submit in effect to the armed right...
...In fact, much of the preparation had been done by Catholic church people in the late 1960s and early 1970s with a new kind of evangelization using both the Bible and Freirean "conscientization" and establishing "basic Christian communities...
...At that point all the country's officers (several hundred, divided into two groups) met and voted to have D'Aubuisson set free and Majano replaced as head of the Junta by Col...
...But they had to eat their words and line up against the junta...
...Majano and the "reform" minded officers went about making proclamations, the hard-liners, particularly Defense Minister Guillermo Garcia, secured control of posts with troop command...
...Zaid reflects the view, conventional in the U.S., that the left has sought to sabotage the reform process, fearing the loss of its own support...
...Throughout the year the insurgents gradually built up their strength, so that by August they had semi-liberated zones in about 30 percent of the country...
...Translated from the Spanish by DAVID PRITCHARD 359...
...Revealingly, the flow of refugees started with the "land reform," which was carried out by military actions in the countryside...
...12, 1980...
...There is some logic in their actions since those they deem "suspects" may indeed be guerrilla sympathizers...
...He studied four years for the priesthood, according to his own statements, and is a writer in the vein of "socialist realism...
...The true show of support for the guerrillas came a few months later, with the arrest of Salvador Samayoa, ex-education minister in the junta recently turned guerrilla...
...This fraud served to radicalize many peasants who were now open to nonelectoral types of organizations...
...It is impossible to overestimate the effect of this pastoral work in helping peasants begin to move toward active involvement...
...Its founder, Enrique Alvarez, a former minister of agriculture and (yes, Mr...
...The nature of the war at present can be described simply...
...Far from being motivated by a capricious desire simply to be on top, the civilians who gave the junta formula a try reluctantly came to the conclusion that they had to join the opposition: what remained of the "center" joined the left...
...Through the middle to late 1970s the guerrilla groups' main activities seem to have been a series of kidnappings of wealthy businessmen and some government officials for purposes of ransom...
...Once again the UNO fielded candidates, this time putting up a retired general as presidential candidate and tempering talk of reforms...
...Robert Leiken testified before a congressional committee in September 1981 that a third of the people supported the insurgents and at most a fifth the government...
...During the early 1970s the guerrilla groups were scarcely heard from, except for a well publicized kidnapping in 1971...
...Neither Mr...
...In his account he implies that guerrilla methods are just as ruthless and terroristic as those of official troops...
...editores, 1977...
...The guerrilla groups formed the United Revolutionary Directorate (DRU), although there were some zigs and zags on the part of FARN, which continued to explore the possibility of alliances with the young officers in the military...
...More than the detailed "refutation" the editors graciously invite, Zaid's article calls for a framework to make intelligible the unfolding of events in El Salvador and at least less bizarre the behavior of individuals and organizations...
...During the 1977-79 period there was a dramatic increase in the militancy of popular organizations and in government repression...
...1. The popular organizations are certainly very important, and the entire Salvadoran picture would change if they could bring the guerrillas under their control...
...They met with extraordinary success: 125,000 people joined in the action, paralyzing 90 percent of the commercial activity (Facts on File 1980, p. 497...
...There was a split in the Salvadoran Democratic party...
...In late 1974 one such Christian community in San Vicente was attacked by troops when the people occupied idle land offering to pay the owner the going rate for rent, and several people were killed...
...That same day I heard Archbishop Oscar Romero, addressing a meeting of the families of the "disappeared" after arrest (under previous governments) issuing a challenge to the new government: if you cannot tell the families what happened to their relatives it will be proof that you have no control over the repressive forces...
...After this experience they formed the UTC (Union of Rural Workers...
...2. There is indeed documentation of guerrilla terrorism, but it remains invisible for a reader like Berryman...
...The PCS continued its alliance with the non-PCS left...
...In the case of the PCS, the line to be adopted was of communism under arms: the PCS itself soon took them up...
...Later in the year he was captured and eventually released—one of those family connections Zaid finds so intriguing...
...To an outsider like myself these discussions often looked scholastic—for instance, whether President Romero's government was properly called "fascist" or "fascistoid...
...On January 22, 1980 the popular organizations celebrated their unification into the CRM (Mass Revolutionary Coordinating Body) with what was surely the largest demonstration ever held in El Salvador...
...The "framework" Berryman proposes "to make intelligible the unfolding of events in El Salvador" does not differ much from the conventional wisdom here in Mexico: that the opposition is the entire Salvadoran people, which, in a desperate situation, has opted for violence...
...But among these latter there was "an overriding hatred of the military" and a feeling of "what can be worse than what we have...
...When I met Enrique Alvarez in El Salvador a few days before his kidnapping, torture, and death, he spoke with great admiration for the revolutionary groups, saying that their leaders were highly sensitive and intelligent and want the change to come with the least social cost...
...FAPU continued to organize and later emerged as the second most important popular organization, especially strong in urban labor unions...
...President] Romero and Somoza / Are the Same Thing...
...Archbishop Romero recognized this, and he counted some of the top peasant leaders among his friends...
...Zaid says, bewildered as he is by all the initials, but of different "levels" in the struggle...
...In 1952 he published a book (Secuestro y capucha) in which the author and "protagonist endures everything with a smile on his lips because the workers' movement sings in his heart" (Proceso, Aug...
...It is difficult for us to imagine what it is like to belong to a small clandestine group, living in daily danger of being killed, because of the slightest error or betrayal of a companero and subject to a total discipline, including the extreme (to us) of being willing to accept "execution" if revolutionary "justice" demands it...
...Guerrilla actions were still isolated attacks and bombings of buildings...
...From their inception the Christian Democrats have always been motivated by both desire for reforms and for an anti-Communist stance, and the split in the party in early 1980 reflected this tension...
...Eventually it became clear that each guerrilla (or as they prefer, "politicomilitary") organization had its own popular organization, and its own "party...
...This was a genuine protest against the regime, but by no means a direct support of the guerrillas...
...Estimates of numbers vary widely but 200,000 seems reasonable...
...for example, the UNO (National Opposition Union), a coalition of Christian Democrats, Social Democrats, and a Communist-front party, with Jose Napoleon Duarte as its candidate, won the 1972 election— but lost the vote count...
...Jaime Abdul Gutierrez...
...What I find most significant is the process by which immature, militaristic, and inturned organizations of a few people became the spearhead of a genuinely national and popular insurrectionary movement...
...They target their violence at official forces, paramilitary groups, and orejas ("ears"), all of whom are responsible for the death of innocent civilians...
...In May 1977 there was a military sweep in the area of Aguilares as troops went looking for peasant leaders...
...Rather than either trying to make a deal or being overly provocative, the popular organizations seem to have decided to let the "reform" junta reveal itself by its actions...
...Some say 50 were killed, but the real number may never be known...
...Zaid does not mention either FECCAS or UTC, which later merged and became the largest and most militant peasant organization, either out of ignorance or because it would contradict his thesis of "elitism...
...According to Pierre Blanchet (Nouvel Observateur, March 13, 1982), the most serious recent estimates attribute 24,000 civilian deaths to the right and 6,000 to the left...
...Zaid seems to see the obstacle to peace in El Salvador as "those who believe in violence" on both extremes, although he puts more blame on the government side...
...The guerrillas are engaging in hit-and-run attacks on the military and forcing them to be spread thin or to mass large groups for attacks in one area while leaving other areas vulnerable...
...Only if the government could have mustered real power over the army and security forces and were able to weed out those responsible for the repression, and if they could have worked out some agreement with the popular organizations (and thereby with the armed groups...
...We come then to the case of Roque Dalton...
...Conditions for many Salvadorans became desperate during the 1970s...
...The balance of 1980 was largely devoted to a preparation for the impending showdown while some people still hoped for a way out...
...That it was "engineered in Washington" is plausible but not proven, and some say Washington's idea was that Romero should resign, and that special elections should be held, which the Christian Democrats should win...
...It hurt him when they were called "crazies...
...Recognizing their impotence the civilians in the government en masse announced their resignation on January 3, 1980...
...This in a city of 800,000, and a country with a total population of 5 million The march stretched on for several kilometers, and the last group had not left the starting point when it was attacked and people had to flee...
...urging, agreed to take the civilian part of the government, but a number of the more honest members (among them Ruben Zamora, and also Hector Dada, a junta member) quit within weeks...
...The guerrilla groups sought to take over the popular organizations and ended by each having its own party and its own popular organ...
...Mexican or Mexican-based journalists arrange frequent trips to El Salvador, openly or in secret...
...Firsthand testimonies, such as Phillip Berryman offers, are plentiful in Mexico...
...But this turned out to be a startling failure: more than 80 percent of the stores remained open (Facts on File 1980, p. 633...
...Zaid is (I presume) nor am I privy to the inner secrets of the guerrilla groups and both of us are dependent on documents...
...which are all members of the powerful ANEP (the National Association of Private Enterprise...
...The sweeping popular support they were expecting never materialized...
...Hans Jiirgen Wischnewski, vice-president of the German Social Democratic party, has stated that Castro "does not hide having in the past sent arms to the opposition and does not rule out a change in his position [the suspension of deliveries] if the Salvadoran military should oppose a political solution...
...FPL–BPR was always profoundly skeptical of the army's ability to "change its spots" after 50 years in power...
...There are other examples documented in my article, but Berryman doesn't read them...
...A military candidate...
...Shortly afterward people told me of seeing trucks carry bodies away and fire hoses used to wash the streets...
...the resulting funds were used to build up a "war chest...
...In any case, the party was largely an apparatus without a base...
...Zaid's main points are largely summed up in the cover blurbs: "Shuffling Back and Forth Between Junta and Guerrillas," "The Elites Change, The People Suffer," "The Power of Abstention" (during the January 1981 "final" offensive...
...This alliance of the civilian opposition, headed by the Christian Democrats, drew both on other parties and on the popular organizations for support, in a kind of popular front that won the 1972 and 1977 elections—though its triumph was never recognized...
...In April the FDR (Revolutionary Democratic Front) was formed, in effect a broadening of the CRM that includes political parties, dissident Christian Democrats, university people, church groups, and a small but important organization, with several hundred members, called MIPTES (Independent Movement of Professionals and Technicians...
...24, 1981), in which he continues his heroic self-dramatization: "Reader, you have before you pages written in hours snatched from sleep, conquering hunger and weariness...
...and half were "neutral...
...Zaid appears to use the word "communism" not to connote party affiliation but a spectrum of ideological opinion...
...Are most people in the middle "caught between repressive fires...
...In the meantime other peasants had revitalized FECCAS (Christian Federation of Salvadoran Peasants), which was Christian Democratic in origins, as a kind of peasant league...
...It should be made clear that the three main armed groups are FPL, ERP, and FARNthe Salvadoran Communist party and the Revolutionary party of Central American Workers being very late arrivals and occupying distant fourth and fifth positions...
...On the contrary, the guerrillas used their influence against the civilian coalition: they set out to destroy its popular support, provoking levels of repression unknown even a few months earlier...
...When they realized the seriousness of the military situation, Haig and others began to push for studies of options and unleashed another propaganda barrage from October to mid-December...
...However, all on-the-scene reports indicate the guerrillas are highly respectful of the civilian population (one journalist, for instance, said that an FPL guerrilla who raped a peasant woman was himself executed), and a recent New York Times article reported that guerrillas were told before battle not to shoot fleeing soldiers if they are unarmed...
...Among the documents found on D'Aubuisson was evidence that he had arranged the assassination of Archbishop Romero (Ambassador White later furnished copies of it to the State Department...
...A similar occasion was the funeral of Archbishop Romero...
...The armed opposition continues to number from 4,000 to 6,000 people...
...Afterward the army occupied the town of Aguilares and used the church as barracks...
...26, 1979...
...Zaid) "plantation owner" (who had instituted reforms on his own land), became the FDR's president...
...Perhaps the explanation lies with some of the "preparations": the guerrillas had carried out nine political assassinations a few days before (the New York Times, Aug...
...Typically the organizations would organize large demonstrations marching through San Salvador, strikes in the countryside, or occupations of factories or government buildings, demanding salary increases (the official daily rate was two dollars or so for agricultural work) and better conditions (such as specifying how many tortillas or how many spoonfuls of beans agricultural laborers should receive...
...Proclaiming their intentions of reform and making a special mention of the new Nicaraguan government (thus a kind of code word) the coup-makers gathered around them a mix of politicians, administrators, intellectuals, technicians, and businessmen in the government (two of the three civilians in the first junta were professors at the Catholic University...
...A few days later Zamora was shot dead in his house...
...Thus the tacit theme of my article is reading: a criticism of the hypocrite lecteur, mon semblable, mon frere—with the special meaning this has in Mexico, where (innocently enough, in most cases) the name of Roque Dalton is used to take up collections and gather signatures in support of his murderer...
...Reactions among the popular and guerrilla groups varied: ERP–LP-28 did call for immediate insurrection, perhaps dreaming of something like Nicaragua...
...These actions frequently met with repression...
...However, they followed their own dynamics and were the genuine expression of the peasants', workers', and slum-dwellers' aspirations...
...A WEEK AFTER THE COUP I was in San Salvador and saw a FAPU demonstration (actually a funeral for two militants killed while leafletting) attacked from the rear by armed troops, leaving at least three dead...
...From reading Zaid one would conclude that even if victorious, the Salvadoran opposition would split between the guerrillas and the political forces, and among the guerrillas themselves...
...A group of perhaps several dozen army officers were retired and some left the country...
...Humberto Romero, the official candidate for the next elections...
Vol. 29 • July 1982 • No. 3
