Salvadorean revolutionaries pushing for free elections

Press, 6 March 1984, Page 21

Salvadorean revolutionaries pushing for free elections

By

DES CASEY

This year has already been given a host of Orwellian predictions by street-comer criers, columnists and armchair philosophers. After all, it is the expected year for catastrophe. Orwell’s condemned system of brutality and pain, of course, did not wait for 1984. Many countries have long been in the throes, none more than tiny El Salvador, ravaged for many years by internal war and now facing the possibility of outside intervention.

One Salvadorean, Leonardo Alvarado, visited New Zealand a few weeks ago and spoke of the suffering, tension and death among his people. He summed up their dread for the year ahead with the words: “We see signs of war all around us.”

Ten thousand died last year at the hands of the Salvadorean Government and Right-wing forces. Fighting between military and guerrillas has been constant. But more than internal war threatens. El Salvador seems poised to be the next testing ground for United States’ maintenance of economic and strategic control in Central America. Following his success in Grenada President Reagan has reaffirmed his determination to prop up the tottering Salvadorean Government. Overt intervention is more and more likely. Nicaragua may also fall victim. This is the opinion of Leonardo Alvarado, a representative of the Revolutionary Front (FMLN/FDR) of El Salvador, a coalition’ of five organisations and parties, Left and moderate, that oppose military rule and are pushing for free elections.

Among the signs of war he specified is the mass build-up of troops in Honduras and Guatemala, countries that border El Salvador and are controlled by Right-wing dictatorships. In Honduras a network of roads, airfields and hospitals are being built under United States supervision. The United States has increased naval and air force manoeuvres in Central America and its relationship with El Salvador’s oligarchy has changed from tension and embarrassment to close co-operation. Demands for land reform and human rights in El Salvador, high on Washington’s list of priorities up to 12 months ago, have been abandoned.

In October last year the Central American Defence Council, made up of the armies of Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, was reactivated at a meeting in the occupied territory of the Panama

Canal Zone. The host was the Chief of the Southern Command of the Pentagon. At the end of the meeting the Minister of Defence of El Salvador asked that Guatemalan and Honduran troops invade El Salvador and help that country’s military. But the most ominous sign of war, Leonardo Alvarado believes, is repeated United States blocking of attempts at dialogue. In June last year, the revolutionary movement made specific proposals to the Salvadorean Government and the United States, with Congress as witness. "Somehow we are a threat to the United States national security. We wanted to discuss their fears and our concern at United States intervention,” he said. As regards the Salvadorean Government, the revolutionary movement wanted direct talks and a national debate in which everyone could participate — church, university, trade unions, private enterprise.

“The debate would centre on three areas: the roots of the conflict, the present situation and alternatives for the future. Following the debate we could then plan negotiations for the establishment of a provisional government of popular participation, its prime function being preparation for free elections and democracy.” But President Reagan’s response has been repeated deferral of the proposals, and dialogue is now frozen. The response of the Salvadorean Government was swift — the assassination of two trade union leaders, plus the unexplained death of a prominent Christian Democrat official in the Department of Foreign Affairs who worked strenuously for successful negotiations. Death squads and the army became more active. “This is why,” says Leonardo Alvarado, “we believe that President Reagan, Jean Kirkpatrick, George Shultz and others are ultimately responsible for those deaths. They supply the bullets. Military aid from the United States has been increasing, $B7 million being planned for 1984.”

Who are the death squads? Leonardo Alvarado replies: “The answer comes not from me, not from the guerrillas, not even from the Salvadorean people. But from the leader himself, Roberto D’Abuisson, president of the Constituent Assembly, interviewed last year by the Kissinger Commission. He stated: The death squads are composed and directed by active

officers of the El Salvador armed forces’.”

Surely then the Revolutionary Front’s proposals are naive and a waste of time? “We have an obligation to make these proposals,” answers Leonardo Alvarado. “And to be serious about them and follow through. They are concrete; they involve compromise on our part. For example, the possibility of Christian Democrats coming to power is a big compromise for us. We have opened the way for dialogue. Now it is the turn of the other side to respond.” He believes though that the United States’ position is hypocritical. Recently President Reagan, using presidential right, vetoed a bill passed in both the Democrat-controlled Lower House and the Republican-controlled Senate, making military aid to El Salvador conditional on certification of human rights. “By doing this President Reagan is saying two things. First, that human rights violations have reached such a level that it is impossible to certify any improvement. Second, that the Salvadorean Government can spend as many bullets as they want killing their own people, and they don’t need to worry because as many bullets as are needed will be supplied.”

This progressive hardening of United States policy, which most concerns Leonardo Alvarado, has grown as repeated United States initiatives to consolidate the El Salvador Government have failed. Encouraged by the defeat of Somoza in Nicaragua in 1978, resistance to the Salvadorean dictatorship grew. A few young military officers decided to modify some of the more repressive aspects of their society in order to soften resistance. With United States encouragement they overthrew General Carlos Romero in October, 1979.

A civilian-military junta was created, but within three months the civilians resigned when they realised that the military leaders were not only opposed to reform but were promoting a campaign of terrorism. A second junta also failed to control the military.

After the murder of four American nuns in December, 1980, the United States Government insisted on a civilian president, Jose Duarte. But the military remained in control. Most of the civilians who quit the governments are now part of FLMN/FDR. As they joined the movement for change, the United States, under President Reagan, rigidly opposed it. Leonardo Alvarado insists that elections so far have excluded many of the people. “They are a farce. So too is agrarian reform, which has left out 65 per cent of the peasantry. The real question of land tenancy is not being dealt with.

“Economically,” he says, “the country is in deep crisis. We are exploited rather than undeveloped. For example, we produce intricate micro-technological equipment for

export, yet the people can't feed themselves.”

Four per cent of the population, the renowned “14 families,” own two thirds of the farmland, which produces coffee, cotton and beef — all for export. Meanwhile, seven out of 10 Salvadorean children go hungry.

“The root of the conflict in El Salvador,” Leonardo Alvarado says, “is not to be found somewhere between Havana and Moscow. Rather it is likely to be found in the stomachs of the people and it is called hunger.” Hunger in El Salvador starts in the distribution of land and in the fact that five per cent of the population receive one third of the national income, and 60 per cent have less than one fifth. “Added to this the whole peasantry is excluded from all benefits of social welfare; is excluded by constitution from organising trade unions. Then people wonder why there is a revolution in El Salvador!”

But there are signs of hope. Leonardo Alvarado speaks of the determination and energy of the Salvadorean people, especially in that fifth off the country controlled by the guerrillas, for rebuilding their country. It is, he says, Vietnam over again. Throughout the seventies Nicaragua was called “America’s first Vietnam” because of the United States’ use of Viet-nam-like policies and tactics to prop up the Somoza regime for 40 years. Now El Salvador is being called another Vietnam.

Like the Vietnamese, the people of El Salvador are set on freedom and independence. Already they are building that kind of society. For example, two years ago a process began in which the local population took responsibility for electing by direct vote their own representatives. All the villages formed into people’s assemblies in which there was a maximum of authority in the community and policy-making bodies. People were elected for different roles — coordinator, people in charge of social affairs, culture, education, production, health, self-defence. These, says Leonardo Alvarado, are “the local people’s power, like an embryo of a future democratic society.”

These are strictly the domain of the people. Even the commanders of the guerrillas have no reserved seat in the people’s power. Their job is to promote the possibility. Then it becomes the responsibility of the community.

While in New Zealand, Leonardo Alvarado met representatives of the Government and was pleased with the sympathetic hearing he received. He hopes that world opinion will begin to isolate the United States and the Salvadorean Government in the policies they are pursuing. If they do not heed that opinion, he believes, “the United States is going to get its fingers burnt as it did in Vietnam, and, in the process, will mess up Central America.”