El Salvador
Armstrong, Robert C.
The overthrow of the government of General Carlos Romero in El Salvador by reformist military officers has done little to end the intense class struggle which has made Central America's...
...Originally espousing a strategy of a nationalist united front with emphasis on involving progressive military men, the Leagues called for a general insurrection immediately after the junta took power...
...As electoral fraud and repression destroyed the people's confidence in changing their country's unjust socioeconomic system, the traditional opposition parties began to lose popular support to a new form of political organization: coalitions of mass-based organizations with an openly Marxist perspective sustained by guerrilla vanguards...
...Rumors have circulated that the long-anticipated unity of these three leftist forces (both the popular organizations and guerrillas) is imminent...
...Creating a civilian-military junta which represents the interests of Romero's moderate bourgeois opposition, the military immediately faced demonstrations and armed gun battles from the three mass organizations and their respective guerrilla armies which had led the fight against the brutal repression of both the Romero and its predecessor regimes...
...involvement in Romero's overthrow is circumstantial, it is very clear that, at least .for the short term, the State Department got what it wanted: a moderate government pledged to respect human rights, make modest social reforms, and be respectful of U.S...
...It emerged in 1975 from a split within the third guerrilla force, the People's Revolutionary Army (ERP), after the latter executed Roque Dalton, an ERP member and El Salvador's most famous poet...
...Before that, FAPU had worked toward an anti-fascist united front against the Romero government...
...Both the colonels have received advanced military training with the U.S...
...The Block immediately went to the streets in protest...
...U.S...
...It is the armed wing of the National Resistance and supports FAPU...
...In early September it called for a general insurrection against the Romero regime-a line it still maintains...
...A year ago Ungo visited the U.S...
...They promise continued struggle...
...He represents the Common Platform on the junta...
...The Block refuses all alliances with either the other popular organizations or the reformist opposition...
...armed forces...
...The Common Platform calls for the release of all political prisoners, the right to political organization and to strike, an increase in the minimum wage, and "access" by the peasants "to the use and ownership of the land...
...In the late sixties and early seventies, Mayorga was head of the U.S.-promoted and aided national community development program in El Salvador...
...The Armed Forces of National Resistance, the FARN, has attracted the greatest international attention through its kidnapping of multinational business executives...
...The overthrow of the government of General Carlos Romero in El Salvador by reformist military officers has done little to end the intense class struggle which has made Central America's smallest country number one on the U.S.'s Latin American crisis list...
...The fifth member of the junta is Guillermo Ungo, secretary-general of the National Revolutionary Movement (MNR), the small social democratic party...
...It was founded in 1970 after a split within the Salvadorean Communist Party (PCS) over the role of armed struggle and takes its name from the founder of the PCS who was a lieutenant of Nicaragua's Sandino...
...They occupied the Ministries of NovlDec 1979 Economy and Labor, holding the newly named ministers of each as hostages until the junta promised to try to meet their demands...
...This document became very significant when, among its first acts, the junta promised its implementation...
...THE MODERATE OPPOSITION The left's struggle for unity in the weeks before the coup was mirrored by a similar unity movement among the traditional opposition parties...
...has given very strong verbal support to the junta, coupled with promises of military and economic aid...
...embassy in a forty-five minute gun battle that left two American marines slightly wounded...
...It is a reformist document, but in the context of El Salvador's political economic system the possibility of its implementation is dramatic...
...economic policy in El Salvador since the 1950's...
...Although evidence of direct U.S...
...THE POPULAR ORGANIZATIONS The largest of them-the People's Revolutionary Block-was formed in 1975 and is composed of organizations of rural and urban workers, students, teachers and slum dwellers...
...Since the initial uprising in Nicaragua in 1978, State Department officials have worried about a similar explosion in El Salvador bred by decades of repression and failed development...
...In fact, a kind of race was being run as- each force sensed Romero's demise...
...NovlDec 1979 interests...
...Operating with 1,000-2,000 militants, the FPL is believed to be the vanguard organization of the Block...
...policy in El Salvador for the last twenty years has been to foster a strong anticommunist military while seeking reforms that would make the country more attractive to multinational investment...
...Like the Block, it is composed of separate groups of workers, students and intellectuals...
...After more than four years of repression, torture, disappearances and the growth of powerful mass organizations of rural and urban workers committed to socialist transformation, junior officers of El Salvador's regular army in collaboration with intellectuals from the country's Central American University deposed Romero in a bloodless coup and retired 85% of the army's colonels...
...THE GUERILLAS Operating clandestinely since the early 1970's and continuing in opposition to the junta are three urban guerrilla armies, each associated with one of the popular organizations...
...trained engineer, Ramon Mayorga...
...It also shows considerable U.S...
...To them, the junta and its U.S...
...The private sector's representative on the junta, Mario Andino, is manager of the multinational Phelps-Dodge Corporation, representing the industrialists of the Salvadorean bourgeoisie, whose development has been the objective of U.S...
...supporters aborted the people's revolution...
...Its growth in the last two years from 20,000 to 80,000 members has been phenomenal...
...on a State Department fellowship...
...and military domination of their country...
...After three weeks of junta rule, over 100 leftist militants were dead, killed by security forces of the new government...
...When the Sandinistas won, a major effort was launched to prevent "another Nicaragua...
...The oldest of the popular organizations is the Front for Unified Popular Action (FAPU...
...But nothing concrete has yet materialized...
...THE NEW GOVERNMENT The new junta itself is heavily technocratic, particularly in the persons of its two military representatives and the junta's spokesperson, the U.S...
...What U.S...
...The Leagues attacked the U.S...
...The other two mass organizations, the Front for Unified Popular Action (FAPU) and the People's Leagues-28 of February (LP-28), fought the security forces in the streets as they protested U.S...
...Its political strategy is "prolonged people's war" as it works to create a farmworkerurban worker alliance with "proletarian hegemony" leading to socialism...
...Shortly thereafter, however, when the junta pledged support to the Common Platform-a statement of reformist political and economic objectives drawn up by the three traditional opposition parties, of which the Leagues was also a signatory -they offered the junta their support...
...Led by the National Democratic Unionthe legal expression of the Moscow-oriented Salvadorean Communist Party-the two other parties (the Christian Democratic Party and the social democratic National Revolutionary Movement) and several CP and social democratic unions drew up the Common Platform, a statement setting forth a program of political and social reforms...
...THE BOURGEOIS & LEFT OPPOSITIONS IN CONFLICT The intense conflict of the junta's first month reflected, in part, a split that had been developing for the last five years within the political opposition...
...REACTION The U.S...
...Within days, the largest of the mass organizations, the 80,000 member People's Revolutionary Block (BPR), characterized the new junta as "faithful servants of the ruling classes and American imperialism pretending to give a new iraage to the fascistoide military tyranny...
...But when the junta failed to make an adequate initial accounting of the 176 persons who had "disappeared" under the Romero regime, the Leagues took to the streets again...
...Supporting the LP-28, the ERP is the armed wing of the Salvadorean Revolutionary Party (PRS...
...If they achieve unity, the junta's days may be few...
...The popular organizations have articulated the frustration and rage of El Salvador's impoverished masses -among the poorest in Latin America...
...The third and smallest of the three popular organizations, the People's Leagues-28 of February (LP-28) was formed in 1977 after a post-election massacre...
...The popular organizations, however, will not go away...
...influence...
...This third group, the ERP, was also founded in 1970...
...policy makers seem to be hoping is that the fatigue and disgust with violence and death in the country will overcome Salvadorean desires for radical social change...
...It tends to be more student-dominated than the other two groups...
...The largest and most feared is the Popular Liberation Forces-Faribundo Marti (FPL...
Vol. 13 • November 1979 • No. 6
