El Salvador
Stewart, Sarah
Against a backdrop of increasing political crisis, Salvadorean President Carlos Humberto Romero announced late last year his intention to heighten surveillance throughout the country...
...Because of their participation in the peasant and farmworker unions which belong to the Bloque-the Christian Federation of Salvadorean Peasants (FECCAS) and the Union of Field Workers (UTC)-militant priests have been singled out as targets by the rightwing paramilitary groups...
...For those who can find jobs, wages amount to only one or two dollars a day...
...Such incidents, however, have not quelled the resistance of the Salvadorean people...
...According to church sources, "at least 162 families have not dared to return to the areas because some who have gone back have been killed...
...Since its founding in 1975, the Bloque has taken a leading role in organizing mass protests against government repression, as well as actively organizing for better living and working conditions for the masses...
...But underemployment and unemployment affect almost half the rural work force...
...Little known outside of El Salvador up until now, the FAPU claimed responsibility for the recent takeover of the Mexican embassy...
...As the Secretary General of the Bloque described the growing spirit of rebellion in a recent interview: "At this point to say 'I am hungry' is a crime in our country...
...it is a crime to organize in demand of a twenty-five-cent raise in salary...
...While the popular organizations are the leading force in resisting this ferocious repression, even the conservative Catholic Church has begun to strongly criticize government repression and human rights violations...
...Their campaign has had some success-several priests have been murdered in the last year and dozens more forced into exile...
...Confronting the enemy, through a strategy of combat: the prolonged people's war...
...The bombings took place in retaliation for the deaths of a priest and four others in a government raid on a church...
...Today, three major export crops-coffee, cotton, and sugar-dominate the lands formerly tilled by subsistence farmers, and 60% of the land is owned by only 2% of the population...
...During the four to six month harvest season, workers migrate from plantation to plantation, MarchlApril 1979 harvesting the export crops which provide El Salvador with over half its foreign exchange...
...Led by Salvador's ArchNACLA Report 42update * update update * update bishop Oscar Romero (who is not related to the president), this progressive wing of the church has increasingly supported the Bloque...
...Boasting a membership of between 50-100,000 (mainly in rural areas), ORDEN's presence in the villages allows constant government surveillance and a quick response to rural agitation...
...43-45...
...According to church sources, over 700 arrests occurred in the eight months following enactment of the law...
...ORDEN has attempted to terrorize the rural population into submission, invading and looting the homes of suspected opposition sympathizers and breaking up union meetings...
...Army troops entered the village, massacred over 50 people and arrested hundreds more...
...The largest and most active of the popular organizations is the People's Revolutionary Bloc (Bloque), a broad grouping of working class, peasant, teacher, student and slum dweller associations...
...The bold actions carried out by MarchlApril 1979 armed leftist groups in the first two months of this year have underscored the military government's inability to quell the opposition...
...The government's principal paramilitary force, ORDEN, has also stepped up its activities...
...Roughly three quarters of rural families currently work as wage laborers...
...Since then, at least 20 political kidnappings of prominent business executives have taken place, as well as numerous bombings and other actions...
...So far, only the first of his ambitions has been fulfilled...
...One leaflet distributed by the White Warriors Union instructs: "Be a patriot-kill a priest...
...They are exposed to the highest rate of insecticide poisoning in Central America...
...The Law of Defense and Guarantee of Public Order, passed in November of 1977, gives the government free rein to arrest and imprison for up to seven years any person suspected of illegal activities, which include membership in unions or participation in demonstrations.* Though primarily aimed at the Bloque, the law has been widely used to clamp down on all anti-government activists...
...Thirty percent of Salvadorean workers are organized...
...These actions are only the most recent in the upsurge of guerrilla activity that began in late 1977 in the wake of Romero's fraudulent election...
...What alternative is left for the people...
...At its second Congress last year, the Bloque established a Revolutionary Trade Union Council to build its base in the trade unions...
...The three guerrilla groups claiming responsibility for most of these actions-the Popular Liberation Forces (FPL), the Armed Forces of National Resistance (FARN), and the People's Revolutionary Army (ERP)-are high on the military's list of subversive organizations...
...Nominally a civic organization, ORDEN is in fact the government's most effective and insidious instrument of control in the countryside...
...Increased militancy and participation in organized struggle has been the response of agricultural workers and peasants to these deplorable conditions...
...The bloodiest incident to date occurred in March of last year when ORDEN members clashed with union members in San Pedro Perulapan just outside the capital...
...The two unions, UTC and FECCAS, though illegal, have an estimated membership of over 7,000 and a much broader base of support...
...Particularly in the cottongrowing areas, crop dusters indiscriminately spray the fields with insecticides, contaminating the lands and local drinking water...
...The unions' success in carrying out land invasions and demanding better wages and working conditions has made them the focus of government and right-wing repression in the countryside...
...REBELLION IN THE COUNTRYSIDE Conditions in the countryside lie at the heart of the intensifying class conflict in El Salvador...
...MILITARY REPRESSION To counter the growing strength of these popularly-based forces, the Romero government has beefed up its repressive apparatus...
...Against a backdrop of increasing political crisis, Salvadorean President Carlos Humberto Romero announced late last year his intention to heighten surveillance throughout the country and to dismantle all "subversive" organizations...
...The capitalist transformation of agriculture has led to a situation of crisis proportions for the 60% of Salvadoreans who live in rural areas...
...The frequency and intensity of government attacks on the Left have increased, but there is no sign that the popular resistance movement has been weakened...
...With the spread of export crop production in the post-war period, tens of thousands of peasants were displaced from their lands...
...During Romero's January trip to Mexico-intended as much to clean up his tarnished international image as to negotiate for Mexican oil-armed leftists occupied the Mexican embassy in the capital city of San Salvador, demanding the release of more than 72 political prisoners being held in military jails, and an account of the hundreds of "disap41 For more information on CALA, which has been engaged in research and educational outreach programs on the multinational mining corporations, or the center, write to 731 State St., Madison, WI 53703.update * update . update * update peared...
...Although the Bloque's largest base lies among peasants and rural workers, the organization sees the working class in the forefront of a worker-peasant alliance and the key to its longrange strategy of building a "mass revolutionary front...
...On February 1, guerrillas bombed the headquarters of the National Guard and police in San Salvador and the city of San Miguel, killing 18 policemen and soldiers...
...See also "El Salvador: Uprising," NACLA Report on the Americas, May-June 1978, pgs...
...But even more threatening to the Romero government is the growing strength and unity of mass organizations which have developed in the last several years under leftist leadership...
...In fact, the most brutal repression the country has known in over 40 years of military rule has only increased the strength and breadth of the opposition...
...Another leading organization on the left is the Unified Popular Action Front (FAPU), which began in 1974 in a similar effort to unify popular sectors...
Vol. 13 • March 1979 • No. 2
