The electoral route was pursued by the political opposition when the
Christian Democrats, social democrats, and a legal branch of the
outlawed Communist party, created a coalition, the National Opposition
Union UNO and ran in both the 1972 and 1977 presidential elections. But
blatant election fraud in both elections and the repression that
followed, driving leaders of the coalition into exile, ended all
possibility of peaceful change. However, the electoral process of
organizing, campaigning, and running in those elections experientially
advanced the radicalization of broad sectors of the population.
Thousands of peasants, workers, and increasing numbers of the middle
class, especially the youth, turned to revolutionary alternatives as
they saw their expectations for peaceful change terminated by the state.
By impeding all peaceful means of democratization and by outrageous
persecution of the opposition, the government and state military of El
Salvador adduced the armed revolution of the 1980s.
A military coup in 1979 brought an end to Romero’s repressive regime and
the U.S. government policy makers took advantage of the turmoil to
advance their own interventionist agenda of converting El Salvador into
a counterinsurgency-militarized state to defeat the pending revolution.
Their procedure was to install a centralist-reformist model of
government in El Salvador. The U.S. goal was never aimed towards
implementation of any real change, either politically or socially, but
to maintaining the oligarchic system. Napoleón Duarte became the
president-of-choice of the U.S. government. But in order to gain power,
Duarte had to enter into collusion with the established coalition of the
Salvadoran military and the United States government, and by so doing,
he lost the support of the Christian Democrat’s traditional base, the
popular democratic movement. Simultaneously, as a centralist-reformist,
he engendered hatred and distrust in the far right. For the duration of
the next decade Duarte’s government in El Salvador was nothing more than
a simulacrum of democracy, a front for the U.S. counterinsurgency
project of ‘low intensity conflict’.
The Farabúndo Martí Front for National Liberation FMLN was founded in
October of 1980 as a coalition of five factions: FPL/ERP/FARN/PRTC/PCS.
A month later, in November, the entire command of the Democratic
Revolutionary Front FDR, the revolutionary political wing, was arrested
and assassinated in San Salvador. The, by now, extensive revolutionary
mass movement was decollated and untold numbers of the membership were
forced into exile. An estimated 50,000 people were assassinated by the
army, the security forces, and the death squads in 1980 and 1981,
including Archbishop Monseñor Oscar Romero. Many peasants, workers,
students, and professionals who had incorporated into the struggle and
who did not go into exile, joined the people’s army. The insurgency
units grew into an impressive force. The FMLN created zones of control
in the mountains in the northern and eastern provinces of the country.
Here they gained the support of a well-organized and very motivated
campasino population, as these were the areas where the people’s
ancestors had had to toil in a state of feudal bondage on coffee, cotton,
and sugar plantations. These peasants were also relatives or direct
descendents of the victims of the 1932 genocide. The FMLN became their
army and their only hope for a future of peace with justice. While the
FMLN was a fighting force, much of the daily work of the combatants
involved helping the rural populations organize themselves into
functioning communities and facilitating the development of popular
schools, basic medical clinics, and communal agricultural practices.
The FMLN combated a deluge of campaigns by the Salvadoran military.
These were massive ‘scorched earth’ campaigns that contrived to decimate
the capacity for sustenance. Crops, domesticated animals, and water
sources were destroyed in the zones of conflict, in an attempt to “drain
the water” (the population) and “catch the fish” (the guerrilla) as
advocated in standard counterinsurgency manuals.
Thousands upon thousands of refugees poured into neighbouring countries
in Central America. Many found their way to Mexico, the United States,
and Canada. But the revolutionary armed forces continued to operate and
began to “liberate” the zones of control by attacking and effectively
disassembling many of the government’s immobile locations.
In 1984 the democratic-revolutionary forces began to receive some
international recognition as they secured more and more control in the
countryside and, even though they were still not an effective political
presence in the cities, the governments of Mexico and France officially
recognized the FDR-FMLN alliance as a politically representative body.
At the same time, the United Nations and the Movement of Non-Aligned
Countries denounced the gross violations of human rights being
perpetrated by the government forces and urged both the FDR-FMLN and the
government of El Salvador to consider a negotiated political solution
for the conflict.
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In the meantime, the FMLN was forming its forces into small-scale mobile
units and dispersing them to all parts of the country. Guerrilla bases
where established in twelve of the fourteen provinces of El Salvador.
The insurgency forced wealthy landowners to pay higher wages to
farmhands and a war tax to the revolutionary army. By 1987, nationwide
traffic stoppages, sabotage campaigns against the economy, and thousands
of small lightning ambushes on government forces, became the order of
the day, creating chaos for the military and for the government.
With 65% of eligible voters refusing to vote, to a large extent because
the FMLN called for a boycott of the fraudulent election, Christiani, of
the ARENA party, gained the presidency in 1989. He immediately negated
the limited reforms of the previous government. Banks were privatized.
Austerity measures, blatantly advantageous to the wealthy 2% of the
population, were made law and the Supreme Court ruled that lands
previously annexed as part of agrarian reform were to be returned to the
wealthy landowners, a law that devastated the lives of thousands of
peasant families. As well, ‘antiterrorist’ legislation was passed which
effectively decreed El Salvador a police state. But ARENA’s actions and
intransigence towards any proposals for a political settlement of the
war became the impetuous for the inception of the Permanent Committee
for the National Debate, a massive organization comprised of
seventy-four organizations, including Churches, small businesses, and
trade unions. The organization represented well over a million people.
The Permanent Committee for the National Debate, as well as local,
regional, and international pressure, forced the Christiani government
to consider a policy of peace, and United Nations-sponsored meetings
between the rebels and the ARENA government of El Salvador took place in
Mexico City and San José, Costa Rica.
The rebels came to these meetings with explicit proposals for the
democratization of Salvadoran society and complete observance of human
rights as precursors to FMLN demobilization. ARENA was demanding rebel
disarmament prior to talks. The result was an impasse and the talks
broke off. It became clear to the rebels that both the Salvadoran
military and ARENA were intent on persisting with their goal of using
the war as justification to interdict political opposition while
intensifying military activities.
A trade union building in San Salvador was bombed by the military at
lunchtime, killing and wounding a large number of activists and the FMLN
proceeded to organize an urban offensive. Their attack commenced in
November 1989. Impressive growth in the plenitude of rebel forces and in
their fighting ability was well demonstrated during the November
offensive. Their forces were able to penetrate to the core of all the
principal cities. The military responded with indiscriminate bombing of
the poor in the barrios, especially in the suburbs of San Salvador.
Untold numbers of civilians, men, women, and children, were killed and
wounded. Of course there was no bombing when the FMLN combatants moved
into Escalon, the area of San Salvadorwhere the wealthy live. One of the
worst acts of brutality on the part of the Salvadoran military was the
assassination, in cold blood, of six Jesuits and two women at the
Central American University UCA. This act was so heinous in the eyes of
the people of El Salvador and the international community that it
constituted a turning point in the war. Both the United States
government and a majority of Salvadoran businessmen, who had heretofore
expressed support of a military solution, became cognizant of the
reality that neither side in the conflict could win a military victory.
It was time to end the war through political agreements.
During the 12 years of civil war, over a million Salvadorans were driven
into exile while more then 80,000 people were killed and over 8000
disappeared, mostly at the hands of government security forces and the
notorious death squads. This took place in the smallest country in the
Western Hemisphere, a country only half the size of Vancouver Island.
During this period, the U.S. government sent nearly two million dollars
per day to the rightwing Salvadoran government and military. “We taught
security measures to Salvadoran police chiefs and counterinsurgency
methods to Salvadoran military officers at our schools in the Panama
Zone. We sent them weapons and airplanes in a vain expectation that
social stability would grow out of enforced order.” As stated by Murat
W. Williams, Ambassador of the U.S. Embassy in El Salvador 1961-1964.
The quote here is from his introduction to Charles Clements’ book,
Witness to War, published in 1984 (see page X1).
It has been estimated that without U.S. intervention and support for the
counterinsurgency forces, the civil war in El Salvador would have been
over in six months, with an FMLN victory.
Marlie BURTON-ROCHE
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