On the democratic left in El Salvador
Lane, Charles
Inside a small and somewhat shabby little office building in a rundown part of San Salvador, a group of activists is beginning a political experiment that may shape the course of events in...
...For the FMLN, it has been an article of revolutionary faith that elections are a fraudulent part of the American FALL • 1988 • 405 Report from Abroad counterinsurgency plan...
...And it is largely that alliance with the FMLN which accounts for the symbolic importance of the democratic left's return...
...The ERP is a military-oriented group which is believed to be responsible for most of the guerrillas' recent drift toward terror tactics such as planting car bombs and assassinating mayors in guerrilla-dominated areas...
...And the FDR leaders themselves now believe that their very prominence makes the political cost of killing them higher than the army and the right can afford...
...In January 1981 and again in 1983, guerrilla offensives pushed the army to the wall...
...More recent demonstrations by pro-guerrilla groups have been more controlled, however...
...Meanwhile, the FDR must also look over its right shoulder...
...It is important to be clear about what this change means: Duarte and the U.S...
...But that's not true anymore...
...Meanwhile, as the election gets closer, the alliance is arguing over who should top the ticket, Ungo or Zamora...
...By going back to El Salvador, the FDR is trying to show its senior partners that moderation can work—that a political approach of the kind which the FPL has sometimes favored offers the best long-term hope...
...The result has been a near power vacuum which reflects a broader state of growing public apathy and disaffection...
...Those names are now being verified by the Central Elections Commission...
...It won't be easy to work up our people's enthusiasm for Ungo," says one MPSC leader...
...The reason Zamora's job is risky is that throughout El Salvador's history, democrats of the left have been lumped together with Communism by the (usually military) authorities, and repressed accordingly...
...If things go the way we think, three months from now the FMLN will be moving more toward political solutions...
...Recently Air Force helicopters were seen dropping leaflets on working-class neighborhoods...
...Yet well before his terminal cancer was revealed in May, it was clear that the president could neither reactivate the economy nor negotiate an end to the war which has dragged on for over eight years and, along with related political violence, claimed over 65,000 lives...
...Right now, the Convergence's headquarters is a political beehive, with phones ringing, carpenters hammering, and rank-and-file workers jostling for position with foreign reporters eager to take a look at what's going on...
...Whatever happens, it's good for Villalobos," says a non-American diplomat who keeps in close touch with leftist leaders...
...and the Salvadoran authorities, but also from the hard left itself...
...Since the FDR is participating in elections, this seems to indicate that it has managed to persuade the FMLN that elections at the present time can also serve revolutionary interests...
...The U.S...
...The third party in the Convergence is the tiny Social Democratic party...
...Though the FDR has accompanied the FMLN in peace talks with the government and represented the guerrillas' point of view abroad, it is very much the junior partner in the alliance...
...At a meeting in July in Managua, Villalobos himself recommended that the FDR participate...
...That's why I don't think the FDR should be so happy...
...Duarte himself has been powerless to control the catfight and it is unlikely that the party will recover sufficiently to wage a strong campaign for president next year...
...While this has ensured their apparently indefinite survival as a fighting force, it has not helped them translate military power into political appeal beyond their hard core...
...Meanwhile, Zamora appears frequently on television and radio, sometimes in debate with figures of the far right...
...Salvadorans often say that Duarte chose his army, and the FDR leaders chose theirs...
...At the moment, the two groups and the FDR seem to be in a three-way debate over how to respond tactically to the government's disarray: to push hard for a military insurrection, or to emphasize negotiations, political work, and other efforts at moderation to rebuild popular appeal...
...Indeed, while ARENA won the most votes, the fastestgrowing group of voters appears to be those who don't cast a ballot at all...
...Still, such abuses occur at nowhere near the levels of 1980, when 800 bodies per month used to appear on streets and country roads all over El Salvador...
...If they get killed it shows there's no hope within the system...
...Having returned along with other leftist democrats in November 1987, Zamora is now embarked on the risky and complicated task of organizing a popular, democratic, civil movement...
...It is up to the civilian left to organize social forces in favor of a national consensus and a negotiated settlement to the war...
...After seven years of doing international work I have gone back to my basic vocation...
...The party's leaders have spoken on many occasions of a need for "total war" against the guerrillas, which to many Salvadorans sounds disquietingly like a return to open season on leftists of any stripe...
...Far from renouncing the guerrillas, the FDR says its task is to expand the available political space and use it to help the left —FMLN included—gain a say in how power will eventually be distributed in El Salvador...
...Necessity because the guerrillas, who seemed at the brink of military victory in the early 1980s, no longer seem to have the same prospects that they did when the FDR formed its alliance with them back in 1980...
...They don't like Duarte and they're afraid of the FMLN...
...So far the results have been mixed...
...q 406 • DISSENT...
...Although both the U.S...
...The U.S...
...They may break with the FMLN at some point, and you can already feel that coming, a formal break with the FMLN...
...Many of the guerrillas' recent attempts to expand their political base have backfired...
...More important are the guerrillas' actions...
...The fundamental job of our party would be to serve those people...
...Air Force commander General Rafael Bustillo followed that up with a sharply worded letter to the MPSC telling them that they were free to act politically, as long as they avoided "direct or indirect" support for the FMLN—which General Bustillo reserved the right to define...
...advisers, helicopters, and hundreds of millions of dollars in military aid...
...Mindful of the risks of what he is attempting, Zamora never goes anywhere alone, and wears a bullet-proof vest wherever he goes...
...But he is obviously enjoying the challenge, too...
...But the very radicalism of the guerrilla message and violence of its allied groups' methods have alienated potential supporters...
...That threw the Christian Democrats into a fratricidal internal dispute...
...But that was before the arrival of dozens of U.S...
...since 1980, the group has drawn most of its political muscle from its alliance with the Marxist guerrillas of the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN...
...Opportunity because Duarte is in political eclipse...
...But the Convergence remains small and little known outside San Salvador...
...Death squad killings still happen, and have indeed increased during 1988...
...And many Salvadorans are still afraid to associate openly with any leftist group...
...What Zamora and Ungo are doing now is trying to see if such a space can be opened and sustained, if not exactly on their terms, at least on terms they can live with...
...This was confirmed last March, when the right-wing ARENA party swept municipal and legislative elections...
...Since 1986, when the guerrillas first succeeded in reactivating pro-FMLN unions and student groups in San Salvador, they have repeatedly used strikes, marches, and vandalism to destabilize the capital and stimulate a climate of popular insurrection...
...Inside a small and somewhat shabby little office building in a rundown part of San Salvador, a group of activists is beginning a political experiment that may shape the course of events in Central America for years to come...
...But we have to accept it, because it's in the political interest of the country...
...Twice, the FMLN has broken what the FDR thought were agreements to cool its violent tactics—once in launching a violent boycott of the March elections and again on May Day, when pro-FMLN demonstrators erupted into vandalism at a rally attended by both UNTS and CTS contingents, at which Zamora was a featured speaker...
...To name one example, the Salvadoran Workers' Central (CTS) pulled out of the National Salvadoran Workers Union (UNTS) federation a year ago...
...Transport stoppages and blackouts the FMLN sees as necessary to weaken the "economy of war" make life difficult for ordinary people and turn them against the FMLN...
...The most recent such official rampage took place in the early 1980s, when thousands of people were killed by the army, police, and right-wing death squads...
...Zamora and Ungo, as well as many of their colleagues in the Convergence, were once allies of President Jose Napoleon Duarte, who has governed El Salvador in collaboration with the armed forces for the last four years...
...Not only did the rightist party, founded by reputed death squad leader Roberto D'Aubuisson, win the March elections...
...and its Salvadoran allies...
...The FMLN is an alliance of five groups, the two most powerful of which are the People's Revolutionary Army (ERP), and the Popular Liberation Forces (FPL...
...Its main component is the exiled remnant of that sector, the Revolutionary Democratic Front (FDR), which itself is a coalition made up of Zamora's Popular Social Christian Movement (MPSC) and the National Revolutionary Movement of Guillermo Ungo...
...I feel like a reborn politician," he says...
...The FDR is not very large...
...never got rid of the impunity that rightists and military men still enjoy—no senior officer has ever been put on trial for the thousands of killings in the early 1980s...
...In other words, guerrilla actions themselves would appear to be one factor contributing to the country's political anomie...
...Yet from the point of view of democracy, that hasn't solved anything...
...has forced changes on the army and security forces, making it clear that gross misbehavior will cost the military its U.S...
...Embassy and the government initially sounded hostile about the possibility of the FDR's returning without first formally renouncing the FMLN, a more pragmatic and patient view has prevailed since then—a view that was perhaps best summed up by Salvadoran Army Colonel Rene Emilio Ponce in a recent conversation with a group of foreign reporters...
...So there is space, and there is opportunity...
...Since his election in 1984, Duarte has personified the U.S...
...The FDR has so far adamantly refused to present such a "gift" to the U.S...
...And if that happens, for us it would be the greatest thing...
...Sometimes FDR activists have compared themselves to a grown-up son who is, for the first time, trying to convince his father to do things his way...
...its leaders cited FMLN "manipulation" of the UNTS...
...Eventually, however, objections to this proposal may come not only from the U.S...
...It is far from clear which faction will gain the upper hand, or how even a moderate ARENA would behave in power...
...Efforts to accumulate a broader base for the FDR have succeeded in bringing some groups, such as the CTS union, to the Democratic Convergence banner, and in establishing an initial presence in areas outside the capital...
...As an editorial in the influential leftist weekly Proceso recently summed up the situation: "Despite the fragility and ambiguity which characterize the traditional participants in the democratic process, the fact that space seems to have been opened to the political work of the left constitutes a truly positive sign which must not be underestimated...
...A senior military commander later told me that the leaflets "could be" part of a military psychological operations campaign...
...If they don't get killed, they can bring people into the street, where he can use them...
...Just about everyone in El Salvador from the U.S...
...Its leader, Joaquin Villalobos, is regarded as the guerrillas' most powerful comandante...
...For its part, the FMLN initially reacted by supporting the group in public statements but privately expressing doubts...
...The FPL, which has sought far more than the ERP to match its military wing with a political presence among the population, is seen as the force behind the recent attempts to re-enter the cities...
...He said 'you keep doing your thing and I'll keep doing mine,' " says an FDR source...
...I don't like it," he said of Zamora and Ungo's presence in the country...
...The FDR has returned to an El Salvador that is greatly changed from the one it left...
...It is also heavily favored to win the presidency next year...
...Others are still skeptical...
...If they succeed, it would mean a great step in the direction of democracy and peace in El Salvador and the region as a whole...
...As Zamora put it when he announced his intention to return last September: "A lot of people have nowhere to go...
...Says one FDR official of the FMLN's tactics: "They think the people will understand because it comes from them...
...Yet in the harshly polarized environment of insurgency and repression that prevailed in 1980, Zamora and Ungo felt their only political—and physical—security lay in a pact with the guerrillas...
...That social base would then give the FDR "counterweight" to the FMLN in making alliance decisions...
...Zamora is generally regarded as the stronger candidate, but Ungo has connections to the Socialist International and the financial support that would bring...
...To participate without some kind of nod from the FMLN would seem to place the very alliance itself in question...
...Indeed, FDR leaders frequently describe their return to the country as a kind of demonstration project for the benefit of the FMLN...
...These factors have combined to hamper the FDR's efforts on the electoral front, too...
...Indeed, a principal reason that it makes sense now to try to establish space for the civilian left is that much space FALL • 1988 • 403 Report from Abroad has already been opened...
...ARENA is on the rise politically...
...The FDR clearly feels that continuing on this course carries the risk of political isolation, both for the Marxist left and for itself...
...the leaflets carried pictures of "the butchers of the people," Ungo, Zamora, and Villalobos...
...But since it is still very much the junior partner in the alliance, the FDR also sees its organizational efforts as a way to accumulate a social base of its own...
...effort to build a democratic center in El Salvador...
...The FDR says this would be an alternative both to more years of U.S.-backed counterinsurgency and to the sterile insurrectionist dreams of the guerrillas...
...If they fail, it could have the opposite effect...
...For the three Convergence parties to run a joint candidate next year, all must be legally "inscribed" with the electoral commission...
...But it too is divided, between a faction for which moderation and adherence to democratic norms are real commitments, and another for which those things are necessary evils adopted for the sake of winning next year...
...Elections are the critical issue...
...And despite the friendly chats between ARENA and the FDR, ARENA has also made it clear that the FDR must eventually fish or cut bait on the alliance with the FMLN—a position that probably enjoys wide sympathy within a military that is still deeply suspicious of the democratic left's intentions...
...The guerrillas were obliged to break up into small groups and take to the hills, from whence they have concentrated mainly on a steady campaign of sabotage and harassment...
...And finally, there is necessity...
...In fact, the Democratic Convergence is a kind of incipient reconstruction of the broad sector of leftist politicians, unionists, professionals, and intellectuals that was smashed by that reign of terror...
...and Salvadoran governments have been seeking such a split for years as a legitimation of the democratic process they have built in El Salvador—and a delegitimation of the 404 • DISSENT Report from Abroad FMLN's armed struggle...
...aid, and drumming home the lesson that killing innocent people is not a good way to win hearts and minds...
...Ungo's MNR and the PSD are inscribed...
...The group is called the Democratic Convergence, and its most active and articulate leader, Ruben Zamora, is a democratic socialist who fled El Salvador after a rightist death squad brutally murdered his brother Mario in 1980...
...Ambassador on over will tell you that there can be no lasting democracy in the country without a secure space for the unarmed left to participate—the question is how, and on what terms...
...Though his popularity was still intact on Capitol Hill, where his centrist image assured support for military and economic aid from conservatives and liberals alike, Duarte grew increasingly unpopular at home...
...To the FDR, survival means moderating tactics and taking a chance on expanding the space available to political work...
...but it took two months for Zamora's MPSC to get the 3,000 signatures it needs...
...It is an effort whose next step will be participation in El Salvador's presidential elections next March...
...For now, ARENA is on good behavior, projecting a moderate image and even engaging in frequent and cordial meetings with FDR representatives...
...The second is better...
...But the FDR insists that this does not mean a breaking of the alliance, and that is where its work starts getting complicated...
...It's well to analyze what is more in our interest, to have them outside discrediting the country and mobilizing external support or have them here inside participating politically within the democratic process...
Vol. 35 • September 1988 • No. 4
