NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #31/NN_1992_31.iso/spool/misc/activism/progress/9562

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Subject: FMLN Negotiates Surrender
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Via The NY Transfer News Service * All the News that Doesn't Fit

from the Maoist Internationalist Movement (MIM)

MIM Notes, Issue 71: December, 1992


                    FMLN negotiates surrender

                             by MC251

In late October, negotiators rushed back to El Salvador to save
the U.N.-sponsored peace agreement agreement between the Farabundo
Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN) and the Salvadoran
government, pushing back the final date for compliance with the
accords from the previous October 31 to December 15. Due to the
Salvadoran military's refusal to comply with the agreements and
reform itself, the FMLN refused to totally disarm by the end of
October.

The "peace" agreement went into effect in February, ending El
Salvador's 12-year civil war. In an attempt to portray the accords
as a victory for the FMLN and the people of El Salvador,
supporters of the FMLN have repeated U.N. mediator Alvaro de
Soto's twisted refrain: "this is the closest that any process has
ever come to a negotiated revolution."(1)

October was very tense in El Salvador. The agreements had called
for purging notorious human rights abusers in the Salvadoran
military, cutting the military in half, dismantling the
U.S.-trained elite battalions responsible for the largest
massacres in the war, forming a new civilian police force
containing both ex-military and ex-FMLN combatants, as well as
some Constitutional reforms, human rights agreements, and
legalizing the FMLN as a political party to run in elections.(2)

This is the same fascist military which has ruthlessly dominated
the country -- in the interests of the 14-family oligarchy which owns
almost all the land in El Salvador -- since drowning a peasant
uprising in blood in 1932, and the same military which is
responsible for the vast majority of the 75,000 deaths in the last
12 years. Reforms don't come easy.

Rumors of a military coup to replace President Alfredo Cristiani,
who has been instrumental in the negotiations, with the more
obedient Vice President Francisco Medino began to surface in
October,(3) along with a sharp rise in death threats and attempted
assassinations of FMLN and popular organization leaders from right
wing death squads.(4)

Advertisements have appeared daily in El Salvador's newspapers
threatening the lives of FMLN fighters. At least four
death-squad-style assassination attempts against FMLN members have
been reported since mid-October, as well as numerous threats
against union leaders.(4) MIM shudders to think of the killing
spree that the military and death squads may launch against the
people once the FMLN is fully disarmed.

In return for very limited reforms of the government and military,
and in the face of heightened death squad activity, the FMLN has
agreed to completely dismantle its own military structure, give up
its weapons, and join the bourgeois political process as an
electoral party. Far from a "negotiated revolution," this is a
simple negotiated surrender by FMLN leaders.

While FMLN General Command member Shafik Handal says, "We're full
of optimism that things will turn out well,"(5) FMLN members don't
all agree.

"I do not have any land, and the army is still full of people who
want to kill me," said Miguel Angel, a 26-year-old guerrilla
scheduled to turn in his machine gun on October 30.(6)

It appears that Angel's uncertainty is not isolated either. On the
contrary, "Angel, who was wounded fighting in San Salvador during
the FMLN's spectacular 1989 offensive there, is typical of the
many guerrilla combatants who do not trust the fragile peace
agreements. They believe their leaders may not have gotten enough
in return for the only thing they have to offer under the
U.N.-backed accord -- disarmament."(6)

"In this hamlet [Guarjila], an FMLN stronghold throughout the war,
the rebels turned in their guns with little sense of triumph or
emotion." Commander Douglas Santamaria, who spent more than 20
years fighting, said "The people understand what we are doing, but
of course they are scared."(6)

While FMLN leaders seem, at least since the mid-1980s, to have
viewed their military power mainly as a bargaining chip to be
negotiated away for some reforms at the first opportunity, the
rank-and-file FMLN comrades were fighting to win military victory
and overthrow capitalist rule in El Salvador.

No significant strides have been made around what most agree is
the main cause of the war -- the struggle over land. As one
pro-FMLN source states, "Land ownership in formerly conflictive
zones has become the most disputed and volatile issue of the
cease-fire period."(7)

No significant land reform agreements were included in the
accords. Of course, any "land reform" agreement that leaves the
land under control of the oligarchy to be used to grow cash crops
primarily for export will not solve El Salvador's problems.

Rather than championing the peasants' struggle for land, the
leaders of the FMLN and the Democratic Campesino Alliance (ADC),
have promised the government to cease land takeovers in the
countryside, in an attempt to induce the National Association of
Private Enterprise (ANEP) to join them in the peace process!

Peasants in El Salvador's countryside see more clearly than their
so-called leaders who their enemies are; they don't need this
dead-end road of talking peace with exploitative landlord
capitalists.

"Despite government threats, denunciations by landowners, and
commitments made by the FMLN and the ADC, the takeovers have
continued to occur. In an interview with Rosario Acosta published
in the July 14 issue of Envio, she said 'the land takeovers are
not being promoted by the ADC, but have rather escaped its
control.' The campesino rank-and-file of the popular movement has
shown a high level of mobilization and a great ability to take
actions in support of its demands, and to do so somewhat
independently of the movement's leadership."(8)

The objectives of U.S. imperialism have still been achieved in El
Salvador, due to blatant accommodation to imperialism by the FMLN.
"Senior rebel officials say they now want the United States
Embassy, and especially American military advisors, to remain in
El Salvador. 'Our attitude has changed,' admits Ana Guadalupe
Martinez, a rebel official. 'We think the U.S. military group can
help in the transition to peace."(9) The FMLN is also joining in
the call for "humanitarian aid" from imperialist lending
institutions such as the IMF, World Bank and the U.N.

Many now predict that the FMLN, in coalition with other Social
Democratic electoral parties, will be victorious in the 1994
elections. But MIM has learned from history that winning bourgeois
elections, while the military is still the strongest institution
in country, is not going to fundamentally change El Salvador. This
is what the five groups comprising the FMLN said during the 1970s
and early 1980s. MIM wonders, what is different now, other than
FMLN accommodation to imperialism spurred by the collapse of the
state-capitalist the USSR?

Even if the FMLN gains power through elections, they are sure to
face military coup attempts backed by the CIA, such as those that
occurred to elected leftist governments in Chile in 1973 and in
Haiti in 1991. While the FMLN leaders celebrate the peace accords
and look forward to their seats in the government, the people of
El Salvador only have before them more misery caused by
capitalism. While MIM celebrates the 12-year heroic struggle of
the Salvadoran people, we are saddened that the current phase of
struggle is ending in capitulation rather than victory.


Notes:

1. Alert! January 1992, p. 1.
2. El Rescate Human Rights Report January 1-13, 1992.
3. UPI 11/6/92.
4. Committee In Solidarity with the People of El Salvador 10/23/92.
5. El Rescate Human Rights Report October 26-November 2, 1992.
6. Washington Post 11/1/92.
7. Voices on the Border Update Spring 1992, p. 5.
8. N.Y. Transfer News Service 10/92.
9. New York Times Magazine 2/9/92, p. 27.


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