An Interview With Ruben Zamora
Shaffer, Marc
THE PROGRESSIVE INTERVIEW Ruben Zamora El Salvador: The opposition has to get together BY MARC SHAFFER El Salvador is at a crossroads. The extreme Right now controls both the legislative and...
...The only real source of employment now is the state, the government...
...Now we have to put all those people into the party, organize them, do political education with them, and so on...
...They took nine members of our party in a province and put them in jail...
...Therefore we can expect a less confrontational policy...
...But the proposal was rejected by the Christian Democrats and by ARENA...
...It seems so long as you are weak you are allowed to exist but as soon as you begin to become strong you will be stopped...
...Secondly, that means reduction of the public sector in a country in which the private sector is so depressed that it does not create employment...
...Around the same time, Merino called for a state of siege to be imposed on the country...
...A political settlement could mean, one, the end of the war...
...Zamora: Yes...
...Q: Then, do you intend to remain...
...That is our approach...
...The main force in ARENA is this sort of force...
...They have to make the transition from government to the opposition...
...But if we try to take a more comprehensive look at the electoral phenomenon and try to see the elections not just as a voting day but as a process by which people express a decision, then I will tell you, the Salvadoran elections were not clean, were not fair, were not free...
...Do you think the Bush Administration and the U.S...
...Our system rested on one single assumption—that we were going to have public transportation...
...On that account I would say the Salvadoran elections were basically free and clean, especially compared with our tradition of a lot of fraud the day of elections...
...The ARENA government is going to be a government of the private sector, of the oligarchy, and we are not in favor of that...
...But after 1985, instead of playing the role of stabilizing and legitimizing the project, elections started destabilizing the project...
...Jose Napoleon Duarte, leader of the party, rejected Zamora's proposal...
...This is our point of departure...
...The second point is that the stoppage of transport by the FMLN made it very difficult for many people to go to vote...
...In the first place, the elections were held under the state of war...
...Zamora: As members of the Democratic Convergence we have four tasks to perform in El Salvador in the next two years...
...As a process by which people express a decision, the Salvadoran elections were not clean, were not fair, were not free.' Zamora: Elections play an important legitimizing role insofar as the party that supports the low-intensity-conflict strategy is winning the elections...
...The progressive people, the people with the Left inclinations in the very broad sense, were subject to two contradictory instructions: Vote (which was what the Convergence was telling them) and, Don't vote (which was what the FMLN was telling them...
...One is what I would call the formal perspective—the voting day, how voting is conducted, whether there is fraud or not...
...Repression, as well, is a function of the weakness of the opposition...
...There is not a single party...
...Zamora: Neither of the two...
...Q: What is your stance toward the Christiani government...
...Zamora fled into exile...
...Ruben Zamora: You can judge the fairness or cleanness of an election from two different perspectives...
...The fundamental problem is our country and how we feed our people...
...Today, the democratic revolutionary movement is a more mature movement...
...We are really worried about that...
...Q: If you are going to continue to work within the political system that exists in El Salvador and the FMLN is going to reject that system, are you going to be able to maintain an effective alliance, the FMLN and the FDR...
...Do you now believe that Salvadoran social and political change is going to come through existing institutions and not through a military insurgency...
...Because our experience for the last eight or nearly ten years, by now, is that in the political alliance between the FDR and the FMLN there have been many times when contradictions appear between the political parties and the armed groups...
...Q: What do you see as the proper path not only to peace but towards resolving El Salvador's many social ills...
...And in El Salvador the tradition is that repression starts the day after the elections...
...Zamora: Repression is not only the will of the repressor...
...Government to put that into the legislation and tell the Salvadoran military and tell the Christiani people that if they don't pursue a political solution, if they don't comply with human rights, they are not going to get any money...
...The Christian Democrats are in disarray, they have an internal problem of leadership...
...And we got, as you say, only 4 per cent...
...Q: What about in terms of limiting human-rights abuses by conditioning U.S...
...Q: In other words, you support the new ARENA government's right to rule...
...They formed a new political party known as the Democratic Convergence, a coalition of Zamora's Popular Social Christian Movement, Ungo's National Revolutionary Movement, and the Social Democratic Party, headed by Rene Roldan...
...Q: As a member of the Democratic Revolutionary Front (FDR) you had boycotted previous elections because you said they served as mere fronts for the counterinsurgency effort...
...If we fight back we can at least maintain certain limits on the repression...
...There was nobody from the Convergence there to say, "No, you don't do that...
...Government's choice, Christian Democrat Fidel Chavez Mena, came in second with 37 per cent of the vote...
...The army cannot win militarily now because the FMLN is not just a military force, it is a social phenomenon...
...If most people in the Congress say that a political solution is good, if most people in the United States say that human rights are an important thing, at least we could ask the U.S...
...This is not serious...
...The counterinsurgency project up until 1985 was on the ascent...
...Congress can play a constructive role...
...The military is not going to negotiate...
...You are not secure in El Salvador, even now...
...The Salvadoran Left is divided on its role in elections...
...Zamora: Well, yes...
...Zamora: I don't believe that either side can win militarily...
...We go learning, step by step, learning and trying to adjust our strategies and tactics according to the changing realities that we have in El Salvador...
...That doesn't mean we are going to support a proposal asking the newly elected government to declare itself a provisional government...
...The ARENA party, founded by death-squad leader Roberto D'Aubuisson, was the surprisingly easy victor in elections held on March 19...
...I already left the country for eight years...
...One way is to try to fight the United States and denounce imperialism...
...Secondly, it has to mean a basic agreement on the rules of the political game—meaning assurances for all the political actors, and I mean from the Right to the Left, the revolutionary Left included, that they can participate and act politically in the country...
...It was very hard for me...
...In 1987, Ruben Zamora and Guillermo Ungo, two leaders of El Salvador's Democratic Revolutionary Front (FDR), decided to return from exile and participate in the electoral system...
...Congress and the attitude of the U.S...
...The low number of votes for the Convergence was due, one, to the fact that our poll-watching system collapsed...
...As a result, only half of the eligible electorate cast ballots, and Ungo, the Convergence presidential candidate, received only 4 per cent of the vote...
...Zamora: Well, the problem is that it is not only forces inside the military who want to go for all-out war...
...Now we have to discuss this with the FMLN to see that the next time this doesn't happen...
...aid to El Salvador on its human-rights record...
...Then came the reaction of the FMLN, "Okay, you reject my proposal, I reject the elections...
...And I think the risk is growing in El Salvador...
...If you fight, at least they will measure more carefully what they are doing...
...There he formed the Popular Social Christian Movement and joined with Ungo and other exiled Salvadorans to constitute the FDR, which entered into a formal alliance with El Salvador's guerilla movement, the FMLN...
...Therefore, the only way out I see is a political settlement...
...Q: Many people in El Salvador wonder whether ARENA is going to be able to control those forces in the military that want to lead an all-out war against the FMLN...
...Here in the United States, neither the Government nor the political parties are paying enough attention to this change...
...On June 1, ARENA's Alfredo Christiani assumed his post as president of El Salvador...
...But we have been able to solve those contradictions...
...Zamora: Elections in El Salvador during the 1980s are part of a counterinsurgency project...
...Zamora is the secretary general of the Popular Social Christian Movement and a member of the political commission of the Democratic Convergence...
...Zamora: During these ten years we have learned a lot...
...Zamora: Let's look at it realistically...
...We are going to be the opposition to that government...
...They stopped...
...You combat them...
...The extreme Right now controls both the legislative and executive branches...
...And that hurt the Convergence...
...Q: Let me ask you a couple of questions about the March 19 elections...
...And we started to scream all around, calling for press conferences every day, sending an open letter to the high command of the army, making denunciations abroad, in Europe, the United States, and everywhere...
...On the other hand, if we have peace but we continue with human-rights violations and continue to be so polarized economically, we are going to have another war in five or ten years...
...For them this is maybe the most difficult thing, the question of elections...
...If the FMLN would not have had that policy in the last week of the elections, the Convergence would probably have done much better and we would have achieved our goal of 15 per cent...
...Q: With ARENA's victory, what political changes do you foresee for El Salvador...
...Q: What are you going to do in El Salvador...
...These nine years of very hard struggle have made us become more realistic, to think not only in terms of El Salvador but also in terms of all of Central America...
...He served as general coordinator Marc Shaffer is a free-lance writer in Washington, D.C...
...One is to organize all the people who came to us during the campaign...
...That's what I hope...
...Christiani is not the man in control of ARENA...
...In Latin America, in the last ten years, a new Left has developed and it is very sad that here in the United States people don't realize that...
...Zamora: This is a fact...
...Many wonder if Christiani, who has said he does not want to adopt such an approach, is going to be able to stop it...
...Zamora: This is something that is a very open question, you know...
...My life...
...Elections are an instrument of politics: They can be good or bad depending on conditions...
...Instead of political flexibility, what we are going to have is repression...
...Whereas the FDR contains social organizations and trade unions as well as political parties, the Convergence is made up only of political parties and was formed solely to compete as an electoral force...
...The United States has too much of its prestige, of its money at risk to allow the country to go into the hands of the FMLN...
...Our attitude toward elections is not that we worship them as a god, neither is it that we condemn them as a demon...
...In the beginning of the 1980s we had a more ideological preconception about everything—about the United States, about the situation in El Salvador, about what we were going to do after the day of the revolution...
...ARENA will be the government in El Salvador and I cannot be so naive as to tell them, "Could you declare yourself a provisional government...
...The Democratic Convergence, however, is not allied with the FMLN...
...They will need to present their credentials to the U.S...
...Well, this is a way but it doesn't seem to be very effective...
...The U.S...
...Government would be to accept a political solution in El Salvador as a viable and concrete option...
...I don't like it, but it is a fact and I have to work with facts...
...There were no poll-watchers for the Democratic Convergence and therefore it was very easy to put the votes for the Convergence as null votes and nobody was going to say anything...
...Those rules must deal with a basic agreement between management and labor, at least for one year, to get the economy of El Salvador moving again...
...Government and Congress as civilized and nice people...
...What happened there...
...Zamora: At the economic level, they are going to be a government of the private sector...
...No doubt about that for us...
...Let's try to talk it over, your concerns and our concerns, and see if it is not possible to find a compromise...
...policy...
...Management has to make sacrifices in terms of salaries for instance, but labor has to make some sacrifices, too, by putting a ceiling on our demands for a certain period...
...The problem is that the forces in favor of this sort of massacre are inside ARENA...
...Both the Christian Democrats and the Convergence suffered...
...In a small town people fear that if they go the whole day with the jacket of the Democratic Convergence, they could be subject to repression the next day...
...Right now, a positive role for the U.S...
...We cannot support the ARENA government...
...Our fundamental problem is not the Soviet Union, is not Cuba...
...Thirdly, we have to try to build a very broad coalition, or consensus, of all the opposition forces...
...That is what we internally decided would be good for us, was possible for us in this election...
...Although they did not campaign in favor of any specific political party, they did campaign against the Democratic Convergence with leaflets, propaganda, threatening people, and so on...
...Because if there is war, the military is going to be in charge of everything...
...Will you support his government or do you support the FMLN proposal to have new elections and declare the incoming government only temporary...
...That is a very painful transition, always...
...But I am afraid that after no more than six months...
...Administration...
...ARENA and the Christian Democrats rejected this proposal, and the FMLN vowed to disrupt the elections...
...Zamora: If the FMLN is defeated tomorrow there is not going to be a political settlement at all in El Salvador...
...I mean, that doesn't make for a fair election...
...In 1988, [when ARENA won legislative elections] instead of the Christian Democrats, the whole system was destablized...
...Would you characterize them as fair and free...
...We have to come to terms with that reality...
...What we believe is that there is a necessity in our countries for a multi-party system...
...When the FMLN declared a stoppage of transport, it ruined, completely ruined, our poll-watching system...
...I saw that as a step forward...
...Our experience is that immediately after the election the government began to hit us...
...Zamora: Now, in El Salvador, peace and political democracy and socio-economic change are three things that cannot be separated...
...They spend millions of colones, we spend a few thousand...
...Q: What do you view as the proper role of the United States in El Salvador...
...Zamora: Of course, I would prefer, personally, that the U.S...
...Q: Do you expect, with ARENA's victory, an increase in political repression and death-squad activity...
...Some have the idea of a Left that will go for a single-party system...
...Secondly, our task will be to assume the leadership of the political opposition to the government...
...Ruben Zamora was once a leading member of the Christian Democratic Party...
...Q: How do you see such a war ending...
...Now a whole sort of reordering of the coun-terinsurgency project has to take place to accommodate the ARENA party...
...I think we have to understand the perspective of the FMLN...
...As well, the difference between some parties and the others in terms of the amount of money for the campaign was too big...
...Zamora: Oh yes, yes...
...If you are weak they are going to repress you...
...It seems to me that we have now an Administration that is more pragmatic...
...How do you explain your poor showing...
...Q: What role, then, do you see for the FMLN as a military organization in the process leading to a negotiated settlement...
...Forget it, man...
...Q: During the middle 1980s, were you more convinced that revolutionary change was going to come only violently, as it has in Nicaragua and Cuba...
...Last January 29, their allies in the Farabundo Marti Front for National Liberation (FMLN) offered to participate in elections if they were postponed until September...
...In El Salvador that means the Christian Democratic Party...
...For instance, for each television ad by the Convergence there were twenty ads by ARENA and twenty ads by the Christian Democrats...
...Only time will tell if I am right...
...Q: Are you afraid for your own life...
...ARENA continues to be under the control of Roberto D'Aubuisson...
...cut off completely all military aid to El Salvador, but that doesn't seem to be a realistic goal given the composition of the U.S...
...In mid-April the vice president-elect, Francisco Merino, who is a D'Aubuisson man, called for the creation of vigilante groups to help the army combat terrorists...
...Do you think the low-intensity strategy is going to be replaced by all-out war...
...Q: Your party, the Democratic Convergence, had hoped to win between 10 and 15 per cent of the vote in the March 19 elections but received only 4 per cent...
...That will polarize the country very rapidly...
...Why did you choose to participate in this election...
...of the Convergence during the election, managing Ungo's campaign...
...is going to step in...
...You mentioned earlier that Christiani would be reluctant to let human-rights abuses get out of hand until after U.S...
...It means, first, devaluation of our currency and therefore an incredible rise in prices...
...Q: If you are able to pull together a strong, unified, opposition movement, do you expect ARENA and the military to allow that movement to succeed...
...No, no...
...Later that year, Ruben's brother Mario, then attorney general of El Salvador, was murdered by a death squad...
...That means, quite clearly, the sort of nasty experience we had during the 1960s and 1970s with paramilitary organizations...
...The presence of the armed forces was overwhelming during the whole campaign...
...If that happens before they are in power, can you imagine what's going to happen once they hold it...
...They still think that for the Latin American Left the fundamental thing is the Soviet Union or Cuba...
...Congress, it seems, is going to play a more important role in foreign policy than it played during the Reagan years...
...aid had been passed...
...The United States is going to stay in El Salvador no matter what we do...
...The United States is going to continue to be a big power no matter what we do...
...And we are going to fight them on economic matters...
...The FMLN made an important effort to try to come to terms with the electoral system when they proposed in January, before the elections, to accept the electoral system if the elections were postponed...
...Now is not the moment to say, "Look, you are from the Left or you are not from the Left...
...But in 1980, he called on the Christian Democrats to end their alliance with the army, which was killing thousands of Salvadorans...
...Or are you each going to continue to operate in contradictory ways, ways that seem to undermine the efforts of the other...
...This polarization is going to conspire against political flexibility...
...Q: The Reagan Administration had a very clear policy toward Central America...
...Insofar as it is more pragmatic and less ideological, it will be more open to political solutions...
...Zamora: As I see the situation, the Bush Administration does not have the means to impose a policy in the way that Reagan did...
...If we don't have peace, there is no chance that we will have democracy in El Salvador...
...There is another way—to say, "Look, the United States has certain concerns about its own national security but we have our own concern about our own security in El Salvador...
...We had organized our poll-watching system so that people in one town would serve as poll-watchers in another town...
...I am not prepared to go outside again...
...Have you seen any indication of what we can expect in terms of U.S...
...Those contradictions for us are an expression that there is an alliance...
...Probably the ARENA government will be quiet in the first four, five, six months because they know that here in the United States, Congress will be in the process of passing a foreign-aid bill...
...What is your plan...
...The FLMN is so rooted in Salvadoran society that to unroot it means killing hundreds of thousands of people and this is not possible, politically speaking...
...Can this kind of pressure be used positively...
...And our fourth task is to continue pushing for dialogue and political solutions to the war...
...In late April, I spoke with Zamora for a little over an hour while he was on a visit to Washington...
...That's why opportunities to establish a more realistic and rational relationship between Latin America and the United States may be lost...
...Thirdly, a political settlement could mean setting up basic rules for the reconstruction of the country...
...Q: How are elections now serving to destabilize the counter-insurgency...
...That's why, it seems to me, the FMLN plays a progressive role in the development of Salvadoran society...
...Because if the army becomes so weak, or so threatened to be defeated by the FMLN, it seems to me that the U.S...
...On the other hand, a military victory by the FMLN does not seem to be a realistic outcome...
...Now is the moment to say, "Look, we have to defend civil liberties in the country, we have to defend reform, we have to defend our right to exist as political parties" and all the opposition, social and political, has to get together...
...We are going to fight them, quite clearly, on the question of human rights...
...They could help by sending a clear message to the military in El Salvador that it has to think over its strategy, that it has to start to think in terms of political solutions...
...The economic measures they will try to implement are going to polarize very rapidly the social situation in the country...
...Then there was the factor of political confusion...
...We don't believe in that any more...
...Zamora: Our goal, our target was to get around 10 to 15 per cent, that is true...
...So far the Bush Administration has been a bit more ambiguous...
...We are going to fight them on the question of preserving political liberties...
...The U.S...
Vol. 53 • July 1989 • No. 7
