EL SALVADOR Medea's Children
Fried, Mark
"If the co-ops help the guerrillas," the thin, tired woman told me, "then the guerrillas must be our little babies." She pointed to her five children playing in the thick dust of...
...FEDECOOPADES was formed in 1980 by 32 co-operatives which, rather than join the revolutionaries, banded together to press the government for easier credit terms and greater technical assistance...
...Jos6 Alfonso L6pez Ramfrez of La Providencia co-operative in Santa Ana province was not so lucky...
...Many of the 1,200 co-operatives in El Salvador today--representing nearly 80,000 people-were originally sponsored by the U.S...
...They treated me like an animal," said Daniel Cuellar, one of those imprisoned...
...Washington's 25-year strategy for blocking revolution-in which co-ops have played a major role-has led it to repeatedly found co-operative organizations, only to later collaborate in their destruction when they escape government control...
...FECORAO president Miguel Alemdn places the blame on President Duarte who, with U.S...
...Tortured extensively, Cuellar and the other imprisoned coop members deny any association with the guerrillas, asserting that the military harasses co-op activists because of their opposition to President Jos6 Napole6n Duarte's economic policies and their support for a negotiated end to the war...
...The program continued on page 11 continued from page 8 was dropped immediately upon his release, as were literacy and hygiene classes...
...With backing from Church and Western European sources, it has since maintained greater independence than the several progovernment federations...
...reform strategy would be hopelessly outdated, for in this case, Medea's children are not about to die...
...More than half of those abducted are affiliated with the Federation of Agricultural Co-operatives of El Salvador (FEDECOOPADES), a major independent co-operative organization and, through its membership in the Confederation of Co-operative Associations of El Salvador (COACES), a founding member and active participant in the National Union of Salvadorean Workers (UNTS), an opposition labor/peasant coalition...
...Latrines beside each adobe or clapboard home are the result of the coop's efforts to reduce the high rate of child mortality brought on by intestinal parasites...
...Limited as it was, the land reform initiated in 1980 gave birth to co-ops-and co-op federations-populated largely by members of the Christian Democratic Party, to provide soon-to-be-president Duarte with a mass base of support...
...After 1970 AID encouraged the Salvadorean government to do the same, and co-ops sprung up all over the country...
...Sowing Fear . .. Although co-operative participation in the UNTS provides one motive for the current wave of abductions, the nature of interrogations inflicted on abducted co-op members indicates that security forces believe the cooperatives, particularly FEDECOOPADES, are controlled by the guerrillas and provide material support for the FMLN...
...government has turned on its creation with a vengeance...
...For example, one man detained from Agua Zarca co-operative in Sonsonate was interrogated extensively about the co-op's "clandestine medicine chest," implying that the community pharmacy--through which co-op members received basic medications free of charge-was connected to the guerrillas...
...since the early 1960s...
...corporations and the local oligarchy...
...Since he was abducted on February 21, he has not been located and is presumed to have been disappeared...
...A general store, started with a FEDECOOPADES loan, provides low-priced consumer goods and features a community television set where co-op members keep up with Mexican and Argentine soap operas...
...Build and Destroy The strategy of blocking revolution by giving peasants a stake in the system-and brutally murdering any who refused it-did have relative success in the 1960s and 1970s...
...While collaborating in the Army's war on established co-ops, U.S...
...Because of their hesitance to ask the government to solve the serious problems cooperatives face, pro-government federations have continually lost member co-ops-and the entire FECORAO federation last February--to the opposition...
...FECORAO and the UNTS organized a march February 15 in the garrison city of San Miguel to demand peace, and that the co-ops' debt to the government bank be forgiven...
...Once seen as a convenient way to deflect challenges to the status quo, co-ops are now perceived as a threat...
...She pointed to her five children playing in the thick dust of El Salvador's dry season...
...S. .Harvesting Savvy Nonetheless, in several cases in the conflictive east, dozens of co-op members have travelled to Army bases to demand the release of their abducted co-workers, defying the fear the security forces intend to sow...
...Abductions, Torture Since last September, more than 50 members of rural co-ops (17 of them in March, 11 more in April) have been abducted by soldiers or police-at times disguised as guerrillas or civilians-and accused of collaborating with the FMLN insurgency...
...This was particularly true in Chalatenango, where some of the oldest and bestestablished co-ops were located...
...They said if I didn't tell them everything, they would kill me because nobody knew where I was...
...policy and the Duarte government, was for several years president of FEDECOOPADES...
...These co-ops were kept under close military supervision, and backed by AID and the American Institute for Free Labor Development (AIFLD), the Latin American arm of the AFL-CIO...
...Washington apparently agrees, having accused the UNTS (and its co-op affiliates) of being "an FMLN front organization...
...In the early 1960s, AID began to fund savings-and-loan, production and marketing co-operatives, expanding on work done by the Church during the previous decade...
...What this build-and-destroy policy has helped achieve is a phenomenal growth in peasants' political savvy...
...In the relatively peaceful western part of the country, attacks on cooperatives have been more selective, focussing on persons displaced from the zones of conflict and relocated with FEDECOOPADES assistance...
...It would seem that even a revamped U.S...
...In the past few years, however, Duarte's economic austerity policies-imposed at U.S...
...Those detained and released do often abandon the area, fearing further persecution of their families...
...and Salvadorean governments have withdrawn support and manipulated co-op leadership, the security forces under U.S...
...Agricultural co-operatives have been a favorite in U.S...
...My visit to Las Tablas co-operative in Ahuachapan made clear the advantages co-operative organization can bring peasants...
...Repression has been fiercest in areas near guerrilla activity, leading many co-op members to believe the Army's objective is to terrorize them into leaving, in line with the depopulation strategy the Army used in Guazapa (1985-1986...
...Ever since the president of her farming co-operative was abducted by soldiers last October, co-op members shun leadership positions, and literacy and health programs have been suspended for fear they would be viewed as subversive by security forces...
...By increasing production on small plots and bringing peasants into a market economy, this strategy has sought to relieve potentially explosive pressure on land without challenging the blatantly unequal system of land tenure which has made export agriculture profitable for U.S...
...policy simultaneously created new co-ops under government control...
...In 1985, the U.S.-sponsored regional agrarian reform co-op federations joined the independent FEDECOOPADES in protest marches to demand easier credit terms, prompting AIFLD to move against the reform sector leaders and to form yet another national federation...
...While the U.S...
...development plans for El Salvador's countryside Mark Fried, who coordinates NACLA's El Salvador Labor Project, visited Central America in February...
...Much of El Salvador's 30-year-old co-operative movement was destroyed during the worst years of political violence in the early 1980s...
...Despite the greater access to credit they enjoy, a majority of agrarian reform co-ops have been pushed to the verge of bankruptcy by high interest rates and insufficient government technical assistance...
...tutelage have done what they do best...
...But like a modem-day Medea-the mythical sorceress who killed her own children-the U.S...
...insistence-and his abandonment of agrarian reform, have severely limited co-ops' economic potential, and driven more and more of them into active opposition to those policies...
...Also hard-hit have been members of the Federation of Agrarian Reform Co-operatives of the East (FECORAO), which joined COACES and the UNTS in February of this year...
...UNTS MARCHIAPRIL 1987 7 7 MARCHIAPRIL 1987leader Marco Tulio Lima, an outspoken critic of both U.S...
...Suspecting that co-ops may harbor or feed guerrillas, the United States has witheld the assistance which could make them into the viable alternative they were intended to be...
...Military interrogators insisted that he was a "big terrorist" and that the FMLN had provided funds for his co-op to participate in peace marches...
...Most were held for several days, interrogated and threatened-and in some cases drugged and tortured-before being released without charges...
...No one has forgotten the massacres that took place a few short years ago--when one need not have been politically active to have been fingered as a subversive, tortured and killed by the security forces...
...For co-ops affected by the recent abductions, fear has put a damper not only on participation in UNTS marches, but on development work as well...
...Agency for International Development (AID...
...Community orange and papaya groves offer the only relief from the relentlessly brown scenery...
...And the Duarte government's failure to solve any of the coops' real problems has pushed them into ever greater opposition political activity...
...Indeed, even under the harsh conditions brought on by seven years of war and severe economic crisis, such incentives as credit for seeds, fertilizers, pesticides and land, as well as technical assistance in production and marketing, make co-ops one of the few viable alternatives for peasants today...
...Army suspicion of displaced persons has encouraged original residents to isolate them, drive them out or turn them in, fearing their presence may draw suspicion to the entire co-op, or out of simple resentment of newcomers...
...But when the movement against that system mushroomed from 1978-1980, many co-op members chose to join the guerrillas rather than remain on the narrow reformist path AID had set out...
...encouragement, has abandoned the coops to concentrate on pursuing military victory over the FMLN...
...Five are currently held in the political section of San Salvador's Mariona Prison...
Vol. 21 • March 1987 • No. 2
