Build and Destroy
Norton, Chris
VERY FEW AMERICANS, INSIDE OR OUTside the labor movement, know much about the American Institute for Free Labor Development (AIFLD). Individual unions in the United States, inundated with...
...But he insists on portraying the conflict with the UPD as a result of "matters of personality and seeking of power...
...Devaluing the coldn would primarily impact the poor, whose real income had already dropped by 54% since 1979...
...Acting in the name of the AFL-CIO, AIFLD has consistently supported free, democratic movements in opposition to the establishment of unions dominated by communists, in El Salvador or anywhere else," read a White House press release...
...But in fact it was encouraged by the government as a counterweight to its more militant rivals...
...The letter drew a quick response...
...They had little enthusiasm for the campaign, and few funds...
...Mendoza claims his convention drew 467 delegates...
...In British Guiana, Brazil and the Dominican Republic, to name just three examples, AIFLD has been implicated in attempts to destabilize left-leaning or populist regimes seen as a threat to Cold War AmeriREPORT ON THE AMERICAS Chris Norton is the El Salvador correspondent for The Christian Science Monitor and also writes for In These Times...
...SN JUNE 3, AIFLD FINALLY APPOINTED BERnie Packer's replacement, a silver-haired CubanAmerican named Clemente Hernmndez, who had been AIFLD's country director in Guatemala...
...AID-the Embassy's main economic lever-threatened to withhold funds if the government failed to adopt austerity measures and a gradual devaluation...
...AFL-CIO News, August 18, 1984, citing letter to Congress from AFL-CIO Legislative Representative Ray Denison...
...3 Charges of AIFLD-CIA collaboration, many of them levied by former CIA agents, have further tarnished the institute's image in Latin America and beyond.' Indeed, AIFLD's claim that it is more committed to the welfare of Latin American unionists than to U.S...
...It was [AIFLD] money...
...Reforms were stymied...
...8 With substantial AIFLD funding, the UCS sent 400 "promoters" into the countryside to explain the new law and attract new members.' FROM THE OUTSET, HOWEVER, THE LAND reform faced both technical and political obstacles...
...Five years later, the deaths of Mike Hammer, Mark Pearlman and Rodolfo Viera still reverberate as the AFLCIO struggles to square its support for Duarte with the Salvadorean government's failure to prosecute the rightist businessmen and Army officers responsible for the kill- ing...
...The UCS, like all other peasant unions, was technically illegal...
...Significantly, however, the UPD stopped short of openly endorsing the party, as AIFLD had wished...
...Yet if Packer's principle had applied at the founding congress of the CTD, the UPD dissidents from ACOPAI and ANIS would have been able to outvote unions loyal to AIFLD...
...Packer claimed that the UPD was not representative because each of its member unions had an equal vote, regardless of their size...
...Author's interview with UPD leader, San Salvador, October 1985...
...AIFLD funds also helped landless peasants buy land and organize cooperatives...
...He warned M6ndez that, "This could start problems for the UPD...
...Isidro L6pez Sibriin, one of two National Guard officers who ordered the 1981 murders of Hammer, Pearlman and Viera at the Sheraton Hotel...
...He was subsequently flown to the United States at State Department expense to publicize human rights improvements...
...Embassy labor attache...
...But just under the surface, major problems were brewing, and Duarte's domestic image was deteriorating...
...It promised to usher in a period of long overdue reforms, and to halt the repression that was ravaging the cities and countryside...
...The UPD reiterated its demands for a dialogue with the FDR-FMLN, which had already made clear its willingness to talk...
...The UPD would remain what it has become, a political front group for democratic labor and campesino organizations...
...Packer called a meeting for December 12, 1984...
...Brendon Flaherty N: vEMBERIDECEMBER 198529:: 29 NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 1985ReSHADOW te AYca SHADOW PLAY members of the UPD were happy with the arrangement...
...While austerity and wage freezes were the rule for the majority, the country's largest growers and industrialists were given preferential exchange rates and credits to stimulate production...
...By this time, the young activist wing of the Christian Democrats had left the government in protest at the party's pact with the military, by now dominated by rightist Army officers, and Jos6 Napole6n Duarte had returned from exile to head yet another Junta...
...By 1982, the Right no longer needed to resort to terror as its only weapon for sabotaging the reforms...
...The decision to supersede the UPD, according to one UCS leader, was an attempt to "destroy the base of the [Social] Pact and to pursue a military solution to the war...
...Former ISTA assistant director Leonel G6mez, now in exile in Washington, was also alleged to be in on the plot...
...Most importantly, AIFLD has managed to dismember the major force in Duarte's social base that might have pushed him leftward...
...FDRFMLN claimed to represent a convergence of the center and the Left, in opposition to a government they saw as controlled by right-wing civilian and military interests...
...The answer was clear, he continued: "We are aligned with the party, but more importantly we are aligned with the process of democratization...
...the deal was off...
...The percentage of landless peasants climbed from 20% in 1960 to 30% in 1970...
...2 This ducks the crux of the issue: will AIFLD go on trying to dictate the policies of the "independent" labor unions it has created in El Salvador, when the consequences of that independence are not to AIFLD's liking...
...The UPD continued to press Duarte for compliance with the Social Pact...
...AFL-CIO President Lane Kirkland was outraged, and U.S...
...Embassy had also lobbied him on Carazo's behalf...
...From 1970-1974 it rose even more sharply, to 41%.5 Although unions were illegal in the countryside, the Catholic Church began efforts to organize a cooperative movement among peasant producers...
...P ACKER'S PRESSURE ON THE UPD RElented only briefly, around the time of the dramatic La Palma peace talks on October 15, 1984, which UPD pressure had been instrumental in bringing about...
...By early 1983, with no progress on the case, its frustration boiled over...
...Carazo's power base was in the construction workers union (SUTC), the largest grouping in the FESINCONSTRANS federation...
...Embassy and diligently pressed the Salvadorean government to act...
...AIFLD's official rationale for displacing the UPD was purely institutional...
...Packer tried to persuade M6ndez to call off the event, or at the very least to have the UPD remove the offending portions of their statement...
...7 It was also largely eclipsed by the more militant peasant organizations, which led land takeovers, joined coalitions of teachers, students and shantytown dwellers demanding a radical restructuring of society, and bore the brunt of government repression...
...As the 1984 presidential elections in El Salvador drew near, UPD leaders were no longer willing to give the Christian Democrats their uncondi- tional support...
...For several years, the institute had been paying almost 80% of the expenses of four of the UPD's five member organizations...
...the state-owned television channels showed the breakfast talks as evidence that Duarte was in touch with the people...
...At the same time, the new activity of the more radical unions put the question of labor freedoms squarely on the agenda and began to demonstrate the limits of government tolerance...
...AdriAn Esquino Lisco, president of the indigenous peasant association ANIS was elected treasurer, and Jos6 Orlando Ar6valo of the cooperative association ACOPAI became international relations secretary...
...By 1965, isolated peasant leagues came together to form the Christian Peasants Federation (FECCAS), which pushed for land redistribution, higher wages and better living conditions for farmworkers...
...this time, its more modest hope was to see the party win a working majority in the Assembly so that the Duarte government might finally deliver on its promises...
...4. See Philip Agee, Inside the Company...
...A first attempt at civilian-military rule fell apart after just three months, when the civilians resigned in protest at the continuing repression and the absence of farreaching reforms...
...labor leaders that a defeat for Duarte "would be fine" with the Embassy...
...Deteriorating economic conditions may well radicalize the UPD, but it will shy away from joining forces with the unions to its left...
...When the unions arrived, he surprised them by announcing that this was in fact the inaugural meeting of the CTD...
...Author's interview with Clemente Hernmndez, San Salvador, September 1985...
...The continued checks on Duarte's power from the rightist-controlled legislative assembly and judiciary were reassuring...
...foreign policy, that it would do or say anything supportive of the right-wing reactionary political forces in El Salvador, and that actions of the AIFLD would be deliberately divisive of trade union unity...
...ANIS and ACOPAI were furious...
...Over 90% of AIFLD's budget comes from the Agency for International Development (AID...
...Explaining why the CTS left the UPD, Vdisquez says, "The AFL-CIO pursues [the UPD unions...
...Rival leftist unions had been decimated by repression...
...It now hit UCS promoters and rank-and-file members, who were being killed by the dozen.' Close associates say that Viera was about to resign, or at least go public with charges of widespread corruption in high places, when he was assassinated on January 3, 1981, in the coffee shop of the Sheraton Hotel...
...For the Administration, Congress and most of the press, El Salvador was a success story...
...One union leader remembers him commenting, "I have to hear for myself the crazy things you've been saying...
...2. American Institute for Free Labor Development, A Decade of Worker Cooperation (Washington, D.C.: AIFLD, 1972...
...2 AIFLD-sponsored seminars on "democratic unionism" have spread that ethos and trained thousands of trade unionists throughout Latin America in the basic skills of organizing and negotiating...
...The largest was the UCS, which joined the UPD in 1982...
...Three months after the new government took office, UPD leaders accused it of having done nothing to fulfill the Social Pact and threatened to break their alPushing agrarian reform at a 1983 demonstration liance with the Christian Democrats if things did not change...
...The top post at FINATA, in charge of Phase III of the agrarian reform, and the vice-presidency of the Agricultural Development Bank also went to the UPD...
...Arlen Specter (RPenn...
...EXT, PACKER DEMANDED THAT THE INdigenous union ANIS and the cooperative association ACOPAI pay their dues directly to him, bypassing CTD treasurer Esquino...
...This was directly in line with the demands of more left-wing unions...
...The members of the severely weakened UPD have gone their own ways in 'an effort to ensure survival...
...policy in El Salvador...
...In return for buckling under to U.S...
...6 In 1966, Michael Hammer (who would be assassinated in San Salvador's Sheraton Hotel 15 years later) opened AIFLD's first country office in El Salvador with the blessings of a modernizing military regime...
...They also had breakfast twice with Duarte himself...
...The press conference was held in one of the large, plush salons of the Hotel Camino Real...
...F]rom now on we want no contact whatsoever with Packer...
...Throughout 1981 and 1982, the AFL-CIO spent significant time and money pursuing justice in the case...
...The UPD was mollified but not totally taken in by Doherty's professions of sincerity...
...its "Guide to Labor Unions" said he was "reported to be leftist...
...The amendment is patterned on the successful tactic used by Sen...
...But given their carefully nurtured dependency, the UPD unions do not seem to have much choice...
...Carazo packed the hall with campesinos from the UCS...
...Though the CTD continues to strike a progressive tone in its public statements, its credibility-and that of AIFLD-have been badly damaged by the fight with the UPD...
...This time the caller was Ed Baez, the U.S...
...CIA Diary (New York: Bantam Books, 1975...
...But in August 1984, the AFL-CIO had reversed its position...
...The day after the storming of the hospital, UPD leaders again met with Duarte...
...They said they had money to help me in the campaign, but only if I gave them the credentials [that would give Carazo control of the SUTC...
...In the attack, a U.S.-trained Treasury Police SWAT team managed to kill four undercover policemen, and provoked the death of a woman patient...
...As the principal-indeed almost the sole-beneficiaries of the agrarian reform, UCS members became the nucleus of peasant support for the ruling PDC...
...policy-makers searched in vain for a "democratic center," AIFLD became an essential partner in the effort to create one...
...In many respects, the UPD has indeed functioned as the independent, centrist union which AIFLD worked 23 years to build...
...But other UPD unions mobilized nearly 1,000 "promoters" for door-to-door canvassing, using jeeps and two-way radios provided by AIFLD...
...The UPD dissidents were trapped...
...Peasants were bussed in from dusty rural hamlets for rallies in San Salvador's downtown plaza...
...UPD leaders were regularly ferried up to Washington to support the Reagan Administration's mounting requests for military and economic aid...
...And the UPD explicitly called for a peaceful resolution of the military conflict by means of an open dialogue with the FMLN-FDR...
...Later the same morning, M6ndez's phone rang again...
...With the help of the campesino votes, Carazo won the election easily, but his opponents challenged the result and took their case to the Labor Ministry...
...Author's interview with Aleman, San Salvador, September 1985...
...When the meeting was over, Esquino asked Packer about the funds AIFLD had promised to give the UPD for the upcoming elections if it would agree to join the new confederation...
...3. Jonathan Kwitny, Endless Enemies: The Making of an Unfriendly World (New York: Congdon and Weed, 1984...
...The UPD had tried to convince the PDC to run some labor candidates for Assembly seats, but without success...
...Just three weeks before the Legislative Assembly elections, then, both the SUTC and the UCS were divided and without official leadership...
...Packer had filled the hall with campesinos from the UCS and construction workers from FESINCONSTRANS, the two unions most tightly controlled by AIFLD...
...policy goals, even at the cost of undermining the power of trade unions and ignoring serious human rights abuses...
...UCS treasurer Adrian Esquino Lisco, a NAhuatl-speaking Indian from Sonsonate, also left, forming his own ethnic-based peasant body, the National Association of Salvadorean Indians (ANIS...
...S THE MARCH 31, 1985 ELECTIONS APproached, the member unions of the UPD were divided and preoccupied with their own survival...
...military aid assured, the UPD was expendable...
...He said the UPD had to define itself...
...Duarte could be relied upon to charm the U.S...
...Duarte continued to ignore peace overtures from the FDR-FMLN...
...It seems AIFLD is prepared to sacrifice anything-even its own people-on the altar of anti-communism...
...But for us it was simply repression, the same tactic all the past dictatorships had used, and, perhaps more important, it was politically stupid...
...labor strategists began to fear that their worst nightmare-a joining of forces by the centrist and leftist unions-might be around the corner...
...its flagship, the UCS, is in pieces...
...Policy and El Salvador (New York: Times Books, 1984), pp...
...There, they discovered that Carazo's election had been ratified in the unprecedented time of two hours...
...Their anxiety grew when David Passage, the acting U.S...
...VAsquez says that Packer told him he was "playing into the hands of the communists...
...Embassy while Carazo and Alemin were out of the country, to enlist its backing against AIFLD...
...1 9 3 - 9 4 , 1 9 7 . 10...
...in the case of the four murdered churchwomen...
...But AIFLD outwitted them...
...Nothing came of REPORT ON THE AMERICAS 30them on the matter of peace talks," said one UPD participant...
...It demanded the removal of Samuel Maldonado as director of ISTA, arguing that under the terms of the pact the post belonged to the UPD...
...Isidro Lopez Sibriin...
...Author's interviews with UPD leaders, San Salvador, September 1985...
...The moment Doherty left the room, however, Roberto Cisares-AIFLD chief for Central America-resumed the pressure on the UPD to "unite" into the CTD...
...The Washington Post, March 20, 1985...
...Left-wing unions, recovering from years of savage repression, were once again active, and poised to draw support away from the UPD if it failed to press more vigorously for economic demands and peace...
...With the exception of the UCS and its affiliated federations of agrarian reform coops*, the CTD is made up of largely phantom organizations, or split-offs from more *Three agrarian reform coops are affiliated with the UCS...
...We didn't want to be manipulated like the rest of them by the long tentacles of the AFL-CIO, the institute and the U.S...
...In the summer of 1980, a new labor coalition was formed: the Popular Democratic Unity (UPD...
...The case of El Salvador is perhaps the clearest recent example of AIFLD's power to build and destroy...
...AIFLD NOW SET ABOUT THE TASK OF reining in the UPD...
...UPD leaders say that some of their affiliated unions balked at the idea, since two years of Christian Democratic government under Napole6n Duarte (1980-1982) had brought few concrete benefits to workers and peasants...
...That April, moderate political parties, including dissident Christian Democrats, joined with militant trade unions and peasant organizations to form the Democratic Revolutionary Front (FDR), soon to be allied with the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN...
...On June 2, government security forces stormed the Social Security Hospital, which striking health workers had been peacefully occupying for 27 days...
...In this atmosphere, U.S...
...UPD leaders also complained that AIFLD was spreading rumors linking VAsquez to the "subversives," a dangerous charge in a country where labor leaders have been an endangered species...
...AIFLD had the longest standing relationship with the UCS and FESINCONSTRANS, but was also paying some 80% of the operating budgets of ACOPAI and ANIS...
...Instead, he has asked the UPD to admit the controversial Samuel Maldonado into their ranks...
...policy in El Salvador...
...See Jonathan Kwitny, "Anti-Duarte Tilt," The Nation, April 20, 1985...
...Packer was there, towering over the Salvadoreans in the room and looking uncomfortable...
...Even if they can't buy them at first, they'll continue looking for their opportunity...
...See box.] The killings, and the failure to bring to trial any of the military officers and prominent civilians responsible, despite substantial evidence, was just one indication of the oligarchy's determination to stop the reform, and of the government's unwillingness or inability to stand up to the Right...
...After repeated warnings that his presence was causing problems for the UPD, he resigned from the union...
...Duarte, however, declined to get involved in internal union affairs...
...It hired investigators, brought witnesses to the United States to give depositions, presented evidence to the U.S...
...But from the beginning, AIFLD has gone further than training future leaders...
...The "Social Pact" that was eventually signed by the UPD and the Christian Democrats promised "the participation of labor representatives in the ministries responsible for agrarian reform and labor relations" in exchange for UPD support in the election...
...November 4, 1985...
...D UARTE'S FIRST YEAR IN OFFICE WAS REceiving rave reviews in the United States...
...Back in San Salvador, however, Packer disagreed...
...By the time AIFLD was invited back into El Salvador in 1979, the country stood on the brink of civil war...
...The UPD's stance was a major coup for U.S...
...W ASHINGTON CAN STILL CLAIM A SUCcess of sorts...
...Guatemalan unionists succeeded in blocking his appointment, and he ended up in Colombia...
...policy-makers to the danger of further upheaval in a hemisphere brimming with social inequalities...
...MEANWHILE, THE MAJOR UNIONS STILL dominated by AIFLD were racked by internal divisions, and CTD president Carazo was personally under attack...
...They staged street demonstrations in San Salvador protesting the Right's subversion of the agrarian reform--something no other group dared attempt under the State of Siege...
...He accused UPD dissidents of going to the U.S...
...2 0 Two men now claimed the union presidency, and the Interior Ministry was called in to arbitrate...
...Labor Trends in El Salvador," (San Salvador: U.S...
...The letter accused AIFLD of trying to destroy the UPD and called its handling of the CTD issue "absolutely shameful, given that creating a top-down organization by manipulation has caused the organization to lose its representative character...
...The UPD was a trampoline for the government to get into power...
...And he isn't...
...But what it desperately needed was a social base that could lay claim to being El Salvador's "legitimate" center...
...They returned empty-handed, even though Carazo says Doherty told him there was no problem, and the 600,000 colones would be paid...
...He had already expelled the SUTC from its offices and was trying legal stratagems to remove the pro-UPD leadership...
...On May 2 the UPD met with Duarte and his senior aide, Julio Rey Prendes...
...In November 1984, "progress" stopped when the Salvadorean Supreme Court dropped all charges against the most notorious of the killers, Lt...
...Its first president was the construction workers' leader Salvador Carazo...
...Despite AIFLD's opposition to any pressure on Duarte, it may be hard for it to oppose such a move...
...radical unions which AIFLD wishes to undercut...
...In the future, UPD backing would have to be negotiated in exchange for specific promises and quotas of influence in a future PDC government...
...The problem is that in the context of a policy that has defined Duarte as the acceptable left end of the political spectrum, and then pulled him to the right, such a union base is seen as a dangerously destabilizing force...
...Roy Prosterman, who had drawn NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 1985 27RpSHADOWt AmY 4ca SHADOW PLAY up a similar counterinsurgency-oriented land reform program during the Vietnam War...
...The defeat cost Carazo more than the leadership of the SUTC...
...The economic policies of the Duarte Administration and the continuation of the war were hurting the UPD's membership...
...citizens...
...They are FECORAO, FECORAPCEN and FECORACEN...
...On the most recent of his seven visits, in September 1985, he helped the Administration lobby for increased aid to Central America...
...The UPD statement provoked strong reactions from the Embassy, the Army, AIFLD, the Ministry of the Presidency and Duarte himself...
...8 Mendoza was replaced by Cristobal Alemdn, a colleague of Maldonado and Tito Castro at the agrarian reform institute (ISTA...
...Its centrist movement is fractured...
...The UPD leadership was both confident and frustrated...
...2 2 Now he realized that there was little prospect of Duarte living up to the terms of the pact...
...By 1982, it was the largest umbrella grouping of urban and rural unions, the backbone of PDC electoral support, and AIFLD's prime instrument for backing U.S...
...Ibid...
...An extreme right-wing coalition led by Roberto D'Aubuisson's ARENA won control of the Constituent Assembly in the March 1982 elections...
...The UCS was also going through a major split, which pitted AIFLD loyalists Samuel Maldonado and Cristobal Alemin against Ram6n Aristides Mendoza, a short, powerfully built campesino who worked at the Agricultural Development Bank (BFA...
...Labor observers also claim that AIFLD was worried that the UPD might be absorbed by the Christian Democrats and become the party's offical labor arm...
...REPORT ON THE AMERICAS 28In the 1982 Constituent Assembly elections, the UPD unions launched a get-out-the-vote campaign that effectively translated into votes for the Christian Democrats...
...The money, however, would never come...
...Almost at once, the Christian Democrats approached UCS secretary general Rodolfo Viera and offered him the presidency of the Salvadorean Institute of Agrarian Transformation (ISTA) if the UCS would back the PDC's controversial alliance with the armed forces...
...Until we are satisfied that progress is being made in these areas, the AFLCIO will not support military aid to the government of El Salvador...
...The UPD has been a vehicle for the Christian Democratic Party to come to power," VAsquez said, "but the government isn't fulfilling all the expectations it created in the people...
...Unfortunately, events in El Salvador have a way of upsetting the apple cart...
...At press time, the cooperative body ACOPAI had come to an arrangement with AIFLD, which had resumed its funding...
...In fact, plans had been in the works for some time before the press conference...
...Mendoza, however, has reopened the case before the Supreme Court and is also trying to form a new national peasant organization, the National Agrarian Central (CNAS...
...It removed Maldonado, but named a Christian Democrat loyalist, not a UPD member, to replace him...
...Not all dent, AIFLD's Doherty had reversed himself again...
...Initially, it appeared that the new government would honor the Social Pact in some degree...
...Mendoza retaliated his ouster by holding his own UCS congress on March 10...
...Embassy), August 1984...
...8. See "El Salvador 1984," Report on the Americas, Vol.XVIII, no.2 (March-April 1984...
...Cisares again offered the $150,000 campaign chest as bait...
...The problem for AIFLD, however, was that its carefully tutored pupil was no longer content to take orders...
...AIFLD still has $6 million unspent from its El Salvador budget for Fiscal Years 83 through 86...
...AIFLD's reaction was to play hardball, and its first target was the outspoken CTS head, Miguel Angel Visquez...
...Just two weeks after the UPD press conference, AIFLD repossessed the jeep and two-way radio it had given the CTS the previous fall to help them mobilize support for Duarte in the 1984 campaign...
...AIFLD was particularly troubled by its weakness in the cities, especially since a revival of more militant urban union activity in 1983...
...Once there, they have forgotten about the workers and the campesinos who put them there...
...When D'Aubuisson charged that AIFLD was connected to radical groups trying to destabilize El Salvador, Washington was obliged to set the record straight...
...The young, ambitious Alemin had made a name for himself by serving on the progovernment Human Rights Commission and had investigated the February 1983 Army massacre of ANIS members at Las Hojas...
...We're all in this together, win or lose," the UPD leaders remember him telling them...
...Agrarian reform was to be the centerpiece of the new government's program, and the UCS was to provide support and legitimacy to the effort...
...Rey Prendes said that the posts the unions had received under the Social Pact obliged them to cease theii criticisms...
...Nonetheless, he persisted in challenging the vote, and the next day the ministry nullified Carazo's victory and opened an investigation...
...We need to understand that today the choice in Latin America is between democracy and communism," asserted AIFLD's first board president, shipping magnate J. Peter Grace...
...Duarte's promises of "economic reactivation" could not be realized, they said, while the war dragged on...
...Samuel Maldonado of the UCS became president of ISTA, in charge of Phase I of the agrarian reform, and ACOPAI leader Jorge Camacho became Vice-Minister of Agriculture...
...The very existence of the UPD, and its freedom to protest and organize, were offered as proof that a center did indeed exist and could survive in a country racked by civil war...
...Many of these were small unions and conservative splinter groups invited by Packer...
...The UPD leaders tried their best to resist Packer's drive for the early formation of his new Confederation of Democratic Workers (CTD...
...It backed the Reagan Administration's request for $70 million in supplemental military aid, and in a letter to Congress wrote, The Duarte government was elected with the full support of the workers and campesinos...
...Mendoza claims that only 80 to 90 people attended Maldonado's convention on February 25...
...Though AIFLD's treatment of the UPD was messy and heavy-handed, it knows that it eventually stands to pick up the pieces...
...pressure to deny D'Aubuisson the presidency, ARENA gained control of the key government agencies charged with administering the agrarian reform: the Ministry of Agriculture, ISTA and the Agricultural Development Bank...
...vice-president was the ambitious young UCS leader Cristobal AlemAn.' 7 UPD dissidents, however, did succeed in winning two other key posts...
...Hopes were high that with the Christian Democrats in control of the government, real progress would finally be made toward economic reform and peace...
...The new mass organizations had little use for the UCS, which they saw as a tool of the U.S...
...Initially formed with Christian Democratic CLAT, and then AIFLD, funding, the UPD grew fast...
...Embassy and a willing collaborator with the military government...
...Luis Argueta, "La economia de El Salvador en 1984," Boletin de Ciencias Econ6micas y Sociales (San Salvador), Vol.VIII, no.1 (January-February 1985...
...In a considerable expansion of its operations in El Salvador, AIFLD was called upon both to help shape the agrarian reform, and to assemble a coalition of urban and rural unions to serve as a "centrist" social base for the PDC-military government...
...In July the government offered a deal...
...The UPD called for human rights improvements and punishment of offenders, maintenance of the reforms, wage increases and other economic benefits...
...The news of the UPD's plans horrified AIFLD country director Bernard Packer...
...In a letter to The Washington Post, AIFLD Executive Director William Doherty insisted that the AFL-CIO regarded Duarte as democracy's "best hope...
...Proceso (San Salvador), no.155, September 3, 1984...
...Within the month, Maldonado held a hasty and unadvertised UCS convention, which succeeded in purging Mendoza not only from his office as vice-president, but from the union itself...
...Esquino retorted that it certainly was: as CTD treasurer he had to know the financial arrangements for elections that were only three months away...
...the death squads are threatening and capturing students for putting forth legitimate demands...
...Duarte then got really mad," says a participant...
...Initially composed of nine labor and civic organizations, the UPD eventually shook down to five groups...
...Look here, even the Christian Democrats have signed it...
...They asked for three preliminary congresses, to stall the issue until after the March 31 voting...
...Washington argued that the PDC-military Junta was the only alternative to the extremes of Left and Right...
...the UPD regards him as too easily manipulated by AIFLD...
...Packer responded with a promise that AIFLD would provide a campaign chest of 100,000 colones in January, 200,000 in February and 300,000 in March, a total of about $150,000...
...largesse is likely to force it back toward the wellfunded center...
...Both M6ndez and Mendoza were present at the meeting, and like their colleagues they were incredulous...
...By 1968, Hammer had succeeded in pulling together this network of AIFLD-sponsored leaders and farming coops into the Salvadorean Communal Union (UCS...
...But the UPD left the meetings frustrated...
...When they declined, Packer refused to sign the papers necessary to release their monthly allocation of AID funds...
...First and foremost, it had gotten Bernie Packer removed as AIFLD country director, several months before his REPORT ON THE AMERICAS 34two-year term was up.' And the faction hostile to AIFLD in the large construction workers union, the SUTC, eventually succeeded in wresting control from Salvador Carazo...
...Instead, it seemed to have taken literally AIFLD's talk of free trade unions, and felt strong enough to make its own decisions...
...Doherty told them that, "The UPD has the blood of my veins in it, and I would never let it be destroyed...
...With a 1985 budget of $19.2 million, AIFLD is by far the largest and most active of the four, with operations in 22 Latin American countries.' The institute was founded in 1962, after the Cuban Revolution awakened U.S...
...FTER DUARTE'S INAUGURATION ON JUNE 1, 1984, UPD leaders met almost weekly with Julio Rey Prendes, the president's chief aide...
...Under Phase I of the reform, all farms of over 500 hectares were to be expropriated (with compensation) and turned over to the peasants who worked on them...
...Over the next few months, Packer attempted to force the UPD unions to join an entirely new grouping, the Confederation of Democratic Workers (CTD), which AIFLD hoped would prove easier to control...
...Several reliable sources later confirmed that Camacho had turned over UCS files to the Army Intelligence unit (ANSESAL), where Maj...
...Visquez did'not mince words in his opening statement...
...For the Christian Democratic Party (PDC), this meant facing the contest with its most important organized base of support in disarray...
...Remember La Palma?ReSHADOWrt t AYrca SHADOW PLAY The lesser of two evils The SUTC was now without formal leadership pending a fresh vote...
...This government tolerance did not last...
...It elected him head...
...the economic burden of the war continued to fall disproportionately on urban labor and campesinos...
...The U.S...
...But in matters of economic policy, the Duarte govemrnment was moving rapidly rightward, under U.S...
...In 1984, the UPD had negotiated a Social Pact with the PDC...
...The UPD had become a clublike grouping of five unions, unable to absorb the new affiliates that AIFLD hoped to attract...
...AIFLD was still withholding funds from the indigenous organization ANIS, which was seeking private funding sources...
...Within months he shifted position again, after L6pez SibriAn was discharged from the Army by Duarte, and the Christian Democrats won a surprise victory in the March 1985 Legislative Assembly elections...
...and the newly created CTD is little more than an empty shell...
...AIFLD's contradictory stance may yet unravel, as it is forced to decide whether to support the Harkin Amendment, which would put pressure on the Salvadorean government by withholding $10 million in military aid until the case is resolved...
...military aid to El Salvador...
...According to those present at the meeting, Doherty denied the accusations and insisted that AIFLD had made great sacrifices for El Salvador-a reference to the AIFLD personnel murdered in 1981...
...And right-wing dominance in the Assembly ensured that Phase It of the reform would remain a dead letter...
...For a brief eighteen-month period, beginning in February 1983, the AFL-CIO too had opposed military aid, angered by the failure of the Salvadorean courts to indict Lt...
...despite some human rights improvements in the capital, the population still lived in fear...
...Duarte said the U.S...
...An Embassy report on the labor movement in early August had reported that, The long-range plan, according to (AIFLD) Director Bernard Packer, is to help create a large confederation of urban labor organizations for El Salvador, with links to ORIT.* This confederation would mean the phasing out of the UPD as a labor/campesino umbrella organization...
...The UPD representatives shifted the discussion to another topic: their complaint that the government had failed to comply with the Social Pact...
...339354...
...By the end of the decade, the UCS was weakened by a series of internal splits and financial scandals...
...In 1973, the government of Colonel Arturo Molina asked AIFLD to leave the country...
...But AIFLD's Doherty is nothing if not resourceful...
...Embassy...
...Kwitny, Endless Enemies, pp...
...Ambassador, let slip to a group of visiting U.S...
...He said all the striking unions were with the guerrillas and that he had proof...
...Viera agreed...
...Packer was assigned to Guatemala, but his reputation had preceded him...
...These are the same tactics past governments have used against workers," said Miguel Angel Vasquez...
...5. Robert Armstrong and Janet Shenk, El Salvador: The Face of Revolution (Boston: South End Press, 1982), p.3...
...The UCS continued its work in El Salvador, staying in close contact with AIFLD and sending its members to AIFLD training seminars in neighboring Guatemala...
...NOVEMBERIDECEMBER 1985 31 of the five member unions of the UPD that was financially independent of AIFLD...
...Faced with resistance from the landed oligarchy and repression by the Army, FECCAS moved steadily to the left...
...Duarte deserves a fair chance to achieve his objective since he is committed to meeting the conditions of democracy, dialogue for peace and prosecution of the murders of the AFL-CIO representatives.' 3 A T 6 O'CLOCK ON THE MORNING OF THE press conference, Bernie Packer telephoned Jos6 Maria "Chemita" M6ndez, the UPD's lawyer and adviser...
...AIFLD had also procured the support of the head of the construction federation FESINCONSTRANS who was waging a battle against the UPD supporters controlling the SUTC, the biggest union in the federation...
...The UPD's disillusionment only grew with time...
...UPD representatives were named to important posts in the agricultural sector, though fewer than many had hoped...
...Nonetheless, the UPD endorsed the elections as a triumph for democracy, amid opposition charges that free and fair elections were impossible in the prevailing climate of terror...
...The combination of deteriorating living standards and the fragile political opening offered by the elections brought leftist union activity back into the open for the first time in four years...
...And a history of dependence on U.S...
...Duarte, having campaigned as the candidate of peace and progress, would have to learn to compromise...
...In its stead, AIFLD stepped in to design Phase III of the reform, contracting with Dr...
...The UPD's relations with the Christian Democrats continued to be tense...
...He said that a representative of Bill Doherty had given him a copy of a secret military intelligence report which accused two prominent UPD leaders-counsel Chemita M6ndez and UCS leader Ram6n Mendoza-of trying to ally the UPD with the guerrillas...
...Now we're seeing the illegal capture of union leaders...
...By late August, the UPD decided to make its discontent public...
...But Washington did not entirely trust Duarte, and felt an affinity for his traditional enemies in the private sector...
...Embassy distrusted Vdsquez...
...From 1982 until Duarte's election as president in 1984, the agrarian reform was touted as proof that fundamental change was underway, even as the Phase I cooperatives were being strangled by lack of credit, and Phase III was becoming mired in a sea of red tape and delays...
...In reining in the UPD, which it saw as moving in dangerous directions, AIFLD operated according to its own institutional logic...
...At issue is less NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 1985 35SHADOW PLAY AIFLD's Hernandez admits errors Maldonado's sincerity than his lack of political sophistication...
...Miami Herald, February 9, 1985...
...Looking back on the episode, M6ndez agrees: "He was right...
...Nevertheless, the Hammer-Pearlman-Viera case is still an obstacle to labor support for Reagan Administration policy...
...Build and Destroy 1. Business Week...
...it also meant the loss of his control of the larger FESINCONSTRANS federation, and thereby of the CTD as well...
...In a number of Latin American countries, AIFLD has played an aggressive role in furthering U.S...
...By the early 1970s, the organized peasant movement was growing rapidly and pressure for land reform was building...
...With AIFLD paying 75-80% of each union's budget, the threat could not be taken lightly...
...Shot dead at the same table were AIFLD employees Michael Hammer and Mark Pearlman...
...At the same time, however, the Interior Ministry resolved the UCS leadership dispute in Maldonado's favor, a serious blow to the UPD which had elected his rival, Ram6n Mendoza, president at its first formal congress in July...
...First to speak was Miguel Angel Visquez, head of the public employees union, the Salvadorean Workers Central (CTS)-the only one *ORIT, the Organizaci6n Regional Interamericana de Trabajo, is the Latin American regional grouping of labor unions linked to the AFL-CIO...
...Duarte's election to the presidency was perhaps the biggest victory for U.S...
...Nevertheless, the UPD had won several important victories in the fight to preserve its independence...
...To the landed elite, all this smacked of communist subversion, despite AIFLD's explicit anti-communism...
...But it did not last...
...By mid-summer 1984, the AFL-CIO was lobbying for a new aid pack- age of some $70 million...
...AIFLD promoted community development projects, such as roads, bridges and schools, and ran training seminars for "apt" peasants-mainly tenant farmers and sharecroppers...
...The October 1985 AFL-CIO convention reaffirmed support for military aid to El Salvador...
...When he met UPD leaders in the elegant Presidente Hotel, they angrily repeated the charges made in their letter...
...The response to UCS activism was death squad terror...
...Soon after their return from Miami, Carazo and Alemin were sent to visit Duarte...
...I've been as flexible as I could, but I've found myself up against a wall," says AIFLD's HernAndez...
...Then came FESINCONSTRANS, an important urban labor federation whose major strength lay in the construction trades...
...Congress and much of the media, opening the door to the increased aid that the Administration was counting on to halt the momentum of the FMLN guerrillas...
...Within a week, Doherty had arrived in El Salvador in person to try and quell the budding UPD rebellion...
...Under pressure from progressive union leaders, the new official resolution read: The AFL-CIO reiterates its insistence that aid to the government of El Salvador be made contingent upon its progress in implementing the land reform program, protecting trade union rights, establishing a just judicial system, and bringing the right-wing "death squads" under control...
...in return, it felt it had the right to expect their allegiance...
...economic conditions for the majority of Salvadoreans continued to worsen...
...Only the CTS, an affiliate of the Christian Democratic regional labor association, CLAT, was financially independent of AIFLD...
...To make matters worse, one of the signatories to the letter was Ram6n Aristides Mendoza, the delegate to the Political Commission from the UCS-supposedly AIFLD's strongest ally...
...Baez also told him that the UPD communique was a mistake and urged him to change the paragraph on military aid...
...He went on, The AFL-CIO deeply resents the implication that the AIFLD slavishly adheres to U.S...
...Packer was particularly upset with the paragraph that referred to military aid," recalls Mendez...
...Interestingly, the Christian Democrats also rewarded ACOPAI by appointing its leader the head of FINATA (which administers the basically halted Phase III of the agrarian reform...
...Modelling itself on the AFLCIO's postwar drive to combat communist influence in Western European labor unions, AIFLD set out to build a centrist, pro-U.S...
...FESINCONSTRANS sharply criticized it, arguing that the labor movement should remain independent of any political party...
...military and economic aid to El Salvador...
...Union leaders drafted a communique condemning Duarte for his failure to move towards dialogue, and obliquely criticizing U.S...
...The fight had begun after the UPD's controversial August 1984 press conference, when AIFLD had forced the UCS to disavow the UPD statement...
...With Duarte elected and U.S...
...It certainly shocked the UPD...
...The UPD leaders feared that AIFLD's aim was to prevent them from renewing their support for the Christian Democrats in the 1985 Assembly and municipal elections...
...The New York Times, February 17, 1985...
...After Mendoza signed the January 21 letter to Doherty, AIFLD persuaded the UCS to suspend him from his post...
...THOUGH AIFLD HAS GENERALLY FOCUSED on urban unions, it concentrated its early efforts in El Salvador on the countryside, which by the early 1960s was a time bomb...
...AIFLD Executive Director William Doh- erty announced AFL-CIO support for a suspension of military aid "until there is justice in this case, as well, of course, as in the cases of other U.S...
...policy concerns...
...The UPD leaders were reluctant to accept these ex-SHADOW PLAY planations at face value, and believed that the move against them was motivated by larger U.S...
...26ca...
...pressure, in an effort to placate the business sector at labor's expense...
...Packer in fact allowed each union one vote under changed rules...
...In January 1980, the Christian Democratic Party (PDC) entered the government and formed a new Junta with the colonels...
...policy interests is hard to take at face value...
...By early 1984, though, with Duarte's election as presiN JULY 1983, THE UPD'S POLITICAL COMmission met at the AIFLD center in San Pedro Sula, Honduras, and drew up a list of demands as the basis for negotiating UPD support for Napole6n Duarte, the Christian Democratic candidate in the upcoming presidential elections...
...IN THE AFTERMATH OF THE SANDINISTA victory in Nicaragua, the young officers' coup of October 1979 was intended to pre-empt revolution in El Salvador...
...He stressed that peace was the main priority: "While the war continues, the promises of economic reactivation remain illusory...
...But more strikingly, it obeyed the logic of recent U.S...
...even Doherty had called personally from Washington...
...He has stopped trying to force the UPD unions into joining the new CTD...
...When the final results were in, UPD leaders had little doubt that Duarte owed his victory to their members' efforts...
...policy...
...Later that year, at its convention in Florida, the AFL-CIO broadened its opposition to military aid...
...Duarte refused to show them the report on the grounds of military secrecy...
...Esquino says that Packer told him, "Now isn't the time for this...
...But if Duarte's intention was to harm M6ndez, who had long been a thorn in the side of both AIFLD and the Christian Democrats, then the ploy worked...
...According to Maldonado, there were 1414 participants...
...The Washington Post, March 27, 1985...
...Marroqufn claims that, "It was approved so quickly because the institute bribed someone in the Ministry...
...Many of them will come back knocking: they have few other places to turn...
...Once the talks were over, he returned to the offensive with a threat that AIFLD would cut off the AID funds it channeled to the UPD if its leaders refused to join his new confederation...
...They planned to release the document at an August 30 press conference...
...The United States was pulling Duarte to the right in an effort to mollify the private sector and the military, and nothing could be more inconvenient than to have the UPD pushing for fulfillment of the Social Pact...
...9. Raymond Bonner, Weakness and Deceit: U.S...
...Eventually, the UPD agreed to sign, and sent Salvador Carazo and Cristobal Alemin off to a February ORIT conference in Miami to complete the formalities with Doherty and pick up the money...
...On March 6, 1980 the long-awaited agrarian reform law was enacted...
...AIFLD went straight to the top to win government recognition for its men...
...Duarte's hardline response to the strikers shocked many who expected a more enlightened approach...
...Announced on April 28, 1980, Phase III allowed peasants to apply for titles to the small parcels they were either renting or sharecropping...
...Roberto D'Aubuisson was then serving...
...Duarte and Rey Prendes told the UPD that it would have to close ranks with the government...
...Duarte was in an aggressive mood...
...AIFLD felt that Duarte's promise to establish a special commission to investigate the Sheraton murders, and his pre-election pledge to pursue reforms, met the conditions of "progress" in the AFL-CIO resolution...
...Yet now the UPD was attacking the very basis of U.S...
...Most of their money had been cut off by AIFLD...
...Duarte said the strikers were controlled by the communists, that he wouldn't give them anything, and that repression was a legitimate tactic...
...They brought with them a letter, planned for public release, condemning the assault...
...They were paid ten colones per person," says Jests P6rez Marroquin, who led the challenge to Carazo...
...He lambasted Duarte's failure to open peace talks or create new employment...
...Though he had supported the principles of the Social Pact, he had always feared that accepting government posts would compromise the unions' independence...
...The assembly obligingly elected AIFLD's hand-picked candidates to the two top jobs in the new confederation...
...THE SHERATON MURDER CASE N O OTHER CASE ILLUSTRATES THE CONTRA- dictions of AIFLD ideology as sharply as the January 1981 murders of two AIFLD staffers and their Salvadorean colleague in San Salvador's Sheraton Hotel...
...IT WAS IN 1980 THAT THE BATTLE FOR THE center in El Salvador began in earnest...
...AIFLD believed the reforms could win campesino allegiance, undercut the appeal of the Left and, as one official said, "breed capitalists like rabbits...
...Worse, the rural terror was no longer restricted to the more militant unions, many of whose members had either been killed or driven to join the fledgling guerrilla movement...
...But he told UPD leaders that their declaration was an insult to AIFLD, and warned that the institute would not pay for any more communiques unless he personally authorized them...
...They again endorsed the Christian Democrats, but as one UPD leader put it, as "the lesser of two evils...
...The problem is that Duarte thinks he is that process-that he is democracy...
...AIFLD favorite "Tito" Castro was accused of mismanaging funds, but AIFLD backed him, forcing out his chief rival, Jorge Camacho, who formed his own cooperative organization, ACOPAI...
...I will insist that it comes," Doherty assured Carazo...
...policy-military aid to defeat the FMLN...
...Our pronouncement made Duarte angry," recalls one of those present at the meeting...
...As far as Packer was concerned, he had been double-crossed...
...Rodolfo Viera, now ostensibly in charge of the reform from his new post at ISTA, was growing increasingly disillusioned...
...That's when the problems started...
...We cannot allow communist propaganda to divide us between liberals and conservatives, or between business and labor...
...Mendoza says that "We understood that it was a demagogic act, but at least it was some expression of support...
...Seeing the direction things were going, the public sector federation CTS pulled out of the UPD...
...Despite its Christian Democratic CLAT connection, the CTS was thoroughly disillusioned with Duarte, CTS head Miguel Angel VAsquez says: The government has lost the faith of the people...
...In its attempt to discipline the UPD, AIFLD has jeopardized 23 years of work...
...Viera saw tremendous technical problems with Phase III...
...He acknowledges the need for a fresh approach from AIFLD: "I'm not saying we haven't made mistakes in the past," he admits...
...It's no big thing," he told a reporter...
...The remaining UPD members were a federation of public sector employees-the Salvadorean Workers Central (CTS)-and two smaller campesino bodies which had split from the UCS in 1977, the cooperative grouping ACOPAI and the indigenous peasant association ANIS...
...Now, at the SUTC's national convention on January 25, Carazo faced a challenge to his leadership from a faction of the building workers loyal to the UPD and hostile to the new CTD...
...labor movement in Latin America that would push for reforms while providing a bulwark against more militant union activity...
...6. Ibid., pp.81- 8 2 . 7. In 1977 the UCS suffered a major split in the wake of largescale financial irregularities...
...For the government, the meetings were a publicity opportunity...
...Unions leaders claim that between $500,000 and $800,000 was funnelled to them, most of it spent on the May 1984 run-off between Duarte and D'Aubuisson...
...And as U.S...
...The letter condemned the "insufferable and contemptible insolence of Sefior Packer," and said the UPD was REPORT ON THE AMERICAS 32"seriously considering a public withdrawal from the CTD...
...Individual unions in the United States, inundated with domestic problems of their own, have traditionally ceded control of labor's "foreign desk" to the AFL-CIO's International Affairs Department and its four regional institutes, which cover Latin America, Asia, Africa and Western Europe...
...Peasant families were being evicted from their subsistence plots by large farmers eager to expand cotton and sugar cane production...
...According to UPD leaders who met with Duarte afterward, he complained that, "They came to blackmail me...
...labor again announced its opposition to military aid...
...The UPD, however, has balked at the idea...
...in fact, it was a liability...
...At the same time, however, the AFL-CIO continued to support U.S...
...policy in El Salvador's civil war...
...It also demanded direct participation in government, specifically in high level posts relevant to the interests of labor...
...Right-wing reaction was so intense that the crucial Phase II of the land reform, which would have affected medium-sized holdings owned by the powerful coffeegrowing elite, was indefinitely postponed...
...Even AIFLD now admits privately that it made major errors in its handling of the UPD, and Hernindez has adopted a more conciliatory tone than his predecessor...
...Were we with the party or against it...
...After the conference, Packer tried to play down his own feelings...
...They called a special meeting of the UPD's Political Commission, which sent off a blistering letter to AIFLD Director Doherty on January 21...
...The topic each time was peace talks...
...Meanwhile, the AIFLD/AFL-CIO flip-flops on the Sheraton murder case gives some measure of the Cold War fervor of their foreign policy staff and leadership...
...CTS leader Miguel Angel Visquez left the meeting very disturbed...
Vol. 19 • November 1985 • No. 6
