El Salvador
The End of Fear
Envío team
In the course of activities by the FMLN High Command after their remarkable open return to the country, one event was the laying of flowers at the tomb of Farabundo Martí, after whom their organization is named. El Salvador's revolutionary leader was executed by the military in 1932—popular knowledge has it that the date was January 22—and his death was followed by the wholesale massacre of tens of thousands of peasants and the direct installation of military rule. When the five comandantes arrived at the tomb, however, they discovered that the date of death on the plaque read February 1, 1932—60 years to the day before the start of the ceasefire and the implementation of accords which bring to El Salvador the end of fear.
Much has been and will continue to be written about the historic turnaround in El Salvador that culminated with the signing of peace accords in Chapultepec, Mexico, on January 6, 1992. The pages of envío, too, will cover El Salvador on a regular basis in the future. Here, along with impressions by the editor of our Spanish edition of the first few days of peace, we offer for the record a summary of the key agreements in the nearly year-long negotiations; an interpretation of that process by FMLN negotiator Comandante Oscar Miranda; the speech by Comandante Joaquín Villalobos at the inauguration of COPAZ; and thoughts on the new challenges facing the Salvadoran Left by Democratic Convergence leader Rubén Zamora.
Summary of the Peace AccordsThe following are the principal agreements in the peace accords signed between the Salvadoran government and the FMLN in Chapultepec. They must be fulfilled between February 1 and October 31, 1992. The full body of accords signed over the year, which imply the reform of many laws, beginning with the Constitution, and the drafting and promulgation of some 90 new laws, constitute a volume of more than 200 pages.
ARMED FORCES
* A radical change in military doctrine: the army will be subordinated to civilian power. It will not be permitted to carry out security or intelligence missions and its only task is to defend the nation's sovereignty and national territory.
* 50% reduction in the army (from 62,000 to 31,000 troops), and dissolution of five of the six elite infantry battalions that served to spearhead the government's key military operations during the war.
* Purging of the armed forces: a commission of three civilians will evaluate, over a five-month period, all the members of the armed forces (including the army and security forces), accepting as fit only those who have not committed human rights violations.
* Dissolution of the Security Corps, including the National Guard, the Treasury Police, Customs Police and National Police. To be followed by the creation of a single corps for the entire country, the National Civilian Police (500 officers and 10,000 troops). This new force will be composed in equal numbers of ex-police officers who passed the evaluation process, former FMLN combatants and civilians with no military history.
* Dissolution of the departmental and civil defense patrols, paramilitary bodies that operated in the country's rural zones.
* Suspension of forced recruitment into the armed forces.
HUMAN RIGHTS
* Creation of a new national authority: Attorney for the Defense of Human Rights.
* Assurance, with international verification (UN), of full respect for human, civilian and political rights: the right to life, security, freedom and organization, as well as the eradication of death squads, torture, political detentions, disappearances, prisoners who are held incommunicado, etc.
* Creation of the Truth Commission that will study, during a period of six months, the crimes and massacres of greatest repercussion committed between January 1980 and December 1991, to assure that justice is done and eliminate the impunity practiced for years by the government.
SOCIOECONOMIC ARENA
* Legalization of all lands in the zones under FMLN control during the war to FMLN combatants, their families and the rural population in those zones.
* Distribution among landless Salvadorans of those lands in farms larger than 245 hectares (the limit established by the Constitution).
OVERSIGHT AND VERIFICATION OF ACCORDS
* Creation of the National Commission for the Consolidation of Peace (COPAZ) as a mechanism of supervision, oversight and implementation of the accords. COPAZ is made up of two members of the government, two members of the FMLN, and one representative of each of the six parties represented in the National Assembly.
* International verification of all accords by the more than 1,000 UN representatives in El Salvador as part of the ONUSAL force.
Joaquín Villalobos: “We Salvadorans are Exceptional”On February 1, the day the ceasefire began in El Salvador, COPAZ, the representative body that will govern until the elections, was formally installed. Comandante Joaquín Villalobos spoke at that event on behalf of the FMLN. His words, applauded on 20 occasions, were the FMLN's first official and public presentation to the Salvadoran people.
The conflict that prevailed in our country until yesterday has no historical precedent in Latin America. We surprised the world with our ability to make war with our own resistance—a Salvadoran resistance. Thousands of compatriots emigrated and became heroes through their labor, maintaining the country's economy with family remittances.
We are again surprising the world by ending a war that seemed interminable. Without a doubt, all Salvadorans should be proud of the way we ended that conflict and of the changes that will come about in our country.
The past has been bloody, painful, difficult, and it is not, nor will it be, easy to forget. But if the agreements that have been made are truly fulfilled, the past will soon be history, and it will be the task of future generations to judge it. The changes will make it possible to build a future and overcome the past.
A war between Salvadorans was condemned to either be lost by all of us or won by all of us. With the accords, we have all won. This is why, in spite of the fact the transition will not be easy, it's wrong to think that we're adjourning the armed war to convene a political war, or that the accords are the continuation of the war in another form.
Those who think—after 11 years of war, 70,000 dead, a million displaced people and a divided country—that they didn't win for lack of time or that they almost won have not understood the lesson and should give up the temptation to play with fire, stoking confrontation with words and deeds. Now is the time for peace and reconciliation.
The accords will guide the country to political and economic modernization, and establish concertación as the cornerstone not only for settling conflicts but also for instituting new policies in a changing world and such a complex socioeconomic reality. Whoever still clings to dogmas and believes that he or she possesses the absolute truth and the perfect model is wrong. Concertación is the only truth and the correct solution. The opposite road is confrontation, and we've already learned what that brings.
Political modernization means a profound revolution that ends all vestiges of imposition of unilateralism by state institutions; it implies neutrality and true independence of powers. This is the basis for change that will lead to settling conflicts though civic means and concertation. Within this context, politics should cease being the art of deceit and demagogy; it becomes a true endeavor to serve society, and not the other way around.
Economic modernization means putting an end to the near-feudal backwardness of the countryside. Without far-reaching changes in land tenancy, there will be no development or stability in other economic sectors. The plan for reconstruction should not rebuild a past that led to war but build a future that guarantees peace.
After all these years of struggle, no one can doubt that the FMLN has defended and continues to defend the interests of the poor. The big question many are asking is, "What do we think of those who have wealth?" We believe in the right to lawful enrichment based on one's labor; we believe in individual freedom; but if there is no social awareness, wealth, instead of propelling development, generates conflict.
The concept of social justice cannot be uprooted from the economy. We don't believe in the monopoly over wealth and political power under which we've been living. The problem isn't that there are rich people but that they are so few and that the majority of Salvadorans are extremely poor. As our unforgotten Guillermo Manuel Ungo said, we should foster a democracy with less hunger, and, from there, we can achieve democracy without hunger.
With the end of the war, we're partaking in the first revolution that doesn't divide but unites a nation, and that's born implanted and approved by all. We've built the foundations of a national project in which we all can believe. Within this project, we cease to be enemies and begin to be political adversaries, so that our differences will lead not to antagonism but to new ideas and national development.
We don't deny that there are forces that oppose the accords, that oppose peace and reconciliation. In the name of everyone's dead, everyone's sacrifices, in this war that ends today, the FMLN joins with the nation and the world and calls on all these sectors to reflect as Salvadorans and join us in the changes that will also benefit them and their children. Future generations will be thankful.
The transition will require a lot of tolerance and patience for us to become versed in democratic culture and do away with the culture of arrogance and confrontation. We must learn to fight words with words and not bullets, or by clamping down on ideas.
This war was difficult and our Frente showed discipline, creativity, commitment, sensitivity and future vision, and we're proud of our role in this country's transformations. But we're also aware that we made mistakes, that we were not infallible, and that now is the moment to tell the world, with humility, that we recognize this.
It doesn't matter to us whether others' mistakes were greater or lesser than ours, or if they will ever recognize theirs; but we're convinced that without truth and justice there cannot be reconciliation and peace.
Fear is dying in our beloved country, and we're going to begin to live with joy and tell the truth. The Frente will put all its abilities, all its energy and all its commitment into helping form new institutions, into the reconstruction of the country and its conformation as a new kind of political force, with a popular base and broad social and national representation.
We're going to defend the accords together with all those who believe in peace. We're going to join with all to build the dignified future that was dreamed of by all our founding fathers and heroes and martyrs.
This is the noblest cause of our history. For that, it has been worth fighting, and it has been worth making peace. As our national hymn implores, preserving this peace will be our greatest glory.
We Salvadorans are exceptional and have survived history's hardest test. Roque Dalton, our outstanding national figure, describes Salvadorans very well in his "Love Poem" as "a do-everything, eat-everything, sell-everything people"; and it is with this spirit that we will launch into the work of building our future, so that we will no longer be "the saddest sad people in the world" and will begin to live the joy of peace.
We ask all of our compatriots who are no longer with us that they plead before God that we may make possible this miracle of democracy, justice and peace.
Let's get to work, Salvadoran brothers and sisters!
Oscar Miranda: “They Will Try to Divide Us, We Will Work to Unite Salvadoran Society”On February 1, envío also spoke with Comandante Oscar Miranda, a member of the Political Commission of the PRTC—one of the five organizations of the FMLN—and of the FMLN Joint High Command. Miranda was part of the negotiating team for the FMLN during the talks in New York.
envío: Could you sum up for us the logic of this long negotiating process?
Miranda: The fruits of our November 1989 offensive were the first two accords, signed in Geneva in April 1990 and Caracas in May 1990, which got the process off the ground and the UN fully involved. We all accepted the structure of the accords, but it was not enough to assure that the negotiations would really start moving. This structure established the possibility of a ceasefire phase in which each side would hold its position and arms for a period of two or three years, during which time negotiations between the government and the FMLN would continue. We called this the "armed peace." This led each side to figure out how to get to the negotiating table having made as few prior concessions as possible.
Nevertheless, many advances were made in the July 1990 San José negotiations with respect to human rights, and we reached an excellent accord. The FMLN's second general offensive (November-December 1990) was needed to force more advances. It should be underscored that, although it had less political and international impact than the 1989 offensive, it was more successful in military terms. The April 1991 Mexico accords harvested the fruits of this second offensive, and much of what was later made concrete in New York first appeared in Mexico.
What took place in New York was a change in the format of negotiations, which allowed them to be speeded up. The ceasefire period was reduced and the two parties to the agreement had to accept, before the ceasefire, all the political accords to be implemented simultaneously to the dismantling of the war. In the first round of talks in New York, in September 1991, the quantity and depth of the accords showed that the process was irreversible. In the second round in New York—December 1991—the remaining points were fine-tuned. They dealt with a whole series of topics that had already been discussed and even agreed on, though not publicly.
envío: What do you find most satisfying about the accords?
Miranda: Many things. The creation of the Commission for the Consolidation of Peace (COPAZ) is paramount. The entire negotiation process, and the very ceremony in which the accords were signed, is an expression of the dual power that has existed during these years of war in El Salvador. The reality of that dual power is clearly expressed in COPAZ's composition. In what remains of Cristiani's term, he will have to govern along with COPAZ, which stands over and above his party and his government.
In addition, although we achieved neither full demilitarization—the dissolution of both armies—nor the fusion of the two, we significantly cut back the animal's size and strength. We did this through the reduction and purging of the army, along with the dissolution of all security forces and the army's elite battalions (with the exception of the paratroopers), the elimination of the paramilitary squads and the creation of a new civilian National Police Force—a wonderful idea of Guillermo Ungo's. All of these are tremendous accomplishments. In overall terms, we have changed our country through the accord and designed a programmatic platform to continue changing it, with the advantage that it is a program enjoying both national and international consensus.
envío: The least satisfactory aspect of the accords?
Miranda: In socioeconomic terms, the greatest advance is that the door remains open to a thoroughgoing agrarian reform, but many holes and ambiguities remain. They will be defined in daily struggle, which has already begun. It is a struggle with the advantage, the novelty, that the repression we've become accustomed to won't exist. We're also not satisfied with the excessive number of troops remaining in the army, even after the reduction. There's talk of 31,000, with 60% combat forces and 40% administrative personnel. That's too much if their only stated mission is to defend the sovereignty of this country of 21,000 square kilometers. And lastly, we feel that the academic requirements for participation in the new police force are excessive.
envío: What do the FMLN combatants say? Are they happy with the accords, or frustrated?
Miranda: Happy. They do not feel defeated; on the contrary, there's a deep sense that all this sacrifice, and bloodshed, has been worth it. In recent years, there was a certain fatigue among our forces as it became apparent that a strategic military upset would be impossible. But the primary concern among the muchachos today is how to maintain unity.
We have 6,800 troops under arms. And they will all end up with something they can grasp—a place and recognition. All our structures and forces will move in one of three directions. The bulk of them, combatants of peasant origin, will return to agricultural production on the lands that pertain to us. Another group will move into the structures of the civilian National Police and the third into the organization of the political party that we're going to become.
The accords state that all the land in the zones of conflict will pass to our combatants or their families. In each of these 15 zones, which represent nearly one-fourth of the national territory, and, in some cases, with very fertile soils, our idea is to create socioeconomic development poles. We're going to organize using forms of production that promote organization, participation, productivity and the just distribution of wealth. We're going to convert these poles into economic and political bastions. There is already extensive discussion about how to do this, how to combine individual and collective work, how to organize people. We don't think that the cooperative form of organization should be idealized; there's a wealth of ideas out there. What we have ahead of us is the challenge, rather than any particular design. And we're not going to develop theories, but instead will soon have accumulated a number of practical experiences with their own implicit design—a design that will move us towards development, improving living standards, and demonstrating that efficiency is compatible with solidarity.
In the non-conflict zones, we'll develop other kinds of organizations: unions, women's and student organizations. The great challenge in San Salvador is how to organize the merchants and vendors of the informal sector. We have challenges facing us from all sides, and we're taking them all on.
envío: What ideas are there about the FMLN as a political party?
Miranda: On January 18 and 19 in Mexico there was an important meeting of key FMLN cadre, including the leaders of the different war fronts and those working in San Salvador, as well as our negotiating team. We all agreed fully that this new moment demands the broadest possible alliance of social and political forces ranging from the revolutionary Left to the Christian Democrats, as well as other sectors. The broadest possible spectrum. Taking this step before any other is key to maintaining unity within the FMLN. It's the necessary premise for moving from there to popular unity and later, to national unity. It's a question of forming not just a unity of "opposition," but of "proposition," because the accords give us an authentic political platform and we have our flags flying.
Among the FMLN there's consensus that we've entered into an historic moment in which we should abandon vanguard attitudes and positions and search for consensus, not based on dominating other groups, but on seeking solutions together. We're not interested in being the only protagonists or even the most renowned protagonists, but rather are contributing to the creation of a broad movement capable of solving our country's problems. It's relatively easy to overcome this temptation because, without looking for it, the FMLN has already indisputably become a protagonist of history. That's there, but we don't want to abuse it, we want to build a very broad movement.
envío:And unity within the FMLN? Is it strengthened or weakened by this new situation?
Miranda: The negotiations were not a triumph for anyone of the five organizations that make up the FMLN, but rather a triumph for the FMLN as a whole. We're entering a period in which the reality of the FMLN is going to count for more than the five groups together and much, much more than anyone of the five groups alone. At this moment, there aren't conceptual differences among us. There were differences in the early years of the war, but, since 1985, we've made important strides towards unification. We are still, however, dealing with five different organizational structures. There are different levels of development, numbers of militants and ability to draw forces; some groups have communications media while others do not, and even financial situations widely differ. The challenge today is knowing how to administer these differences rather than attempting to wipe them out with the stroke of a pen. There's consensus that to attempt that would be idealism. We have 90 days in which to begin the process of converting our five parties into one single party. This will unite us even more. We're going to have to search for the ways in which to transform the competition among us into emulation. The truth is that over the years we've learned how to fight among ourselves, and how to understand each other. This has its advantages. Today we're not a monolithic group, but five different realities and styles—a great richness that has made us grow and mature.
envío: And what's the greatest risk to the FMLN's unity in this new situation?
Miranda: There are risks in this world of new political, national and international relations that we've opened ourselves up to. There are rightist parties, as well as every other kind, governments from all countries, and many different kinds of organizations. Within this new world, many will be looking to divide us. They're already trying.
Nonetheless, I think that the greatest risk to us lies in the country's new reality itself. Some are saying that the war is over, and thus the class struggle has ended. The class struggle is over? What a struggle we're beginning now! And as part of this new struggle, some will emphasize confrontation, others concertación. Confrontation in order to push the accords forward, concertation to consolidate them. These logical differences could well slip the FMLN into difficult situations in terms of unity. And that's where I see the greatest risk, internally. Yet we're optimists: the great majority of the Salvadoran people see us as the FMLN. And we, as the FMLN, are going to struggle to unite the majority of the Salvadoran people to keep moving forward, to survive, to live, to develop our country.
Rubén Zamora: “In 1994, We’ll Know Who Won the Negotiations”A week after the signing of the peace accords in New York during the last hours of 1991, envío had the opportunity to speak with Rubén Zamora, leader of the Popular Social Christian Movement and the Democratic Convergence. Zamora is also Vice President of El Salvador's Legislative Assembly and one of the country's highest profile politicians on the left.
envío: With the signing of the peace accords, El Salvador is entering a new stage. How would you describe it?
Zamora: Paraphrasing Regis Debray's famous phrase, "the revolution in the revolution," I would say that in this stage we have "a transition in the transition." The complicating factor is that there's an overlap between an historic, structural transition and a more immediate transition from war to peace.
The structural transition is the framework. In El Salvador, the political arena has been dominated by militarism for 60 years. The military has been the axis of our political culture. In different attempts to change this reality, the last 60 years saw four brief periods of democratization prior to the one we are living through now: 1944-48; 1959-61; 1971-72; and 1979-81. As one can see, they came virtually in 10-year cycles. Their brevity is due to the great polarization and social inequality upon which the whole structure of domination suffered by the majority of Salvadorans is based.
We can find common characteristics in these four democratic moments. The first is that broad popular mobilization was achieved, overcoming differences and nearing consensus. In the 1944-48 period this was seen in the sit-down strike; in 1959-61, the struggle against Lemus; in 1971-72, the emergence of the UNO; followed in 1979-81 by the creation of the Popular Forum. Even more striking is that in each of these periods, the most open sectors of the armed forces carried out military coups that ultimately failed. This is very typical of Salvadoran politics. In our country military coups have served as "mercenary mechanisms of democratization." Civil society, incapable of getting out from under the military boot, turns to a certain sector of the armed forces itself to do the work for it.
Finally, in three of these four democratization periods, changes in US policy towards Latin America served to destabilize the military's political power. In 1944-48, it was the restructuring of alliances during World War II, in 1959-61 the Alliance for Progress and in 1979-81, President Carter's human rights policies.
Today, after another 10-year cycle, we find ourselves in a fifth moment of democratization, but this one was preceded by the maximum expression of crisis—civil war. Beginning in 1990, when this new period actually began, there was another upsurge in popular mobilization, again marked by the will of all involved to overcome differences and reach consensus. And again, US policy towards El Salvador changed, although the root of the change this time lies in two determinant events that took place in our own country in 1989: the November offensive, which showed the US that a military victory was impossible; and the murder of the Jesuits, which showed the US that the armed forces are truly incorrigible. The primary difference this time is that a military coup is unnecessary and, if it happens, would in fact be an anti-democratic one. Eleven years of war have created an alternative way to demilitarize the country: negotiation. If one analyzes what has been negotiated and agreed to, 80% of it amounts to an agenda for demilitarizing our society.
envío: This is the historic transition, the broad framework. How would you characterize the other, more visible, one?
Zamora: In the transition from war to peace, the emphasis will shift from military means towards political, social, civic and legal ones. From a military perspective, the Salvadoran civil war had neither victors nor vanquished, and that's why negotiation was necessary. But the negotiations did not touch on the country's structural problems, its socioeconomic framework. The price of peace in El Salvador has been political, not socioeconomic. The transition from war to peace has as its premise political transformations and adjustments in a wide range of aspects. There are new socioeconomic dimensions, but they are not the most emphasized.
envío: What are the perspectives? Demilitarization is still only on paper at this point. Will democratization be achieved this time around?
Zamora: We entered this period in 1990, with the beginning of the negotiating process in Geneva. The culminating phase was the signing of the peace accords, negotiated over such a long period. But the period doesn't end here. The accords formalized the new correlation of forces from the time the war began, but they neither institutionalized nor consolidated it. Obviously, fulfillment of all the agreements is of prime importance. To achieve that, all the oversight and verification mechanisms created by the accords will be essential, but just as critical will be the role of popular mobilization. And the March 1994 general elections will be key to consolidate more definitively the new correlation of forces emerging from this war. The most critical period is between February 1 and October 31,1992, the months in which the majority of the accords are to be implemented. But, after that, the elections will still be pending.
envío: Why put such emphasis on the electoral results? There are those who feel it's more valid and realistic for the left forces to go forward little by little, contributing to the transformation of society "from below," rather than emphasizing a quick transition to power.
Zamora: In our judgment, the negotiating struggle of these last years should not be separated either from the popular struggle that must go forth in 1992 and 1993 to make sure that the accords are complied with, or from the electoral one that will culminate in 1994. Any attempt to separate the struggle over negotiations from either of these other two, and thus postpone the possibility of a leftist government for the year 2000 or later, would be an error. The 1994 elections aren't just any elections. Seeing them as an isolated event is dangerous. They are part of the process of negotiations, and for the Left, the challenge is to win them. That's where we will definitively see who won these negotiations; it's in this arena that the question of who laughs last, the Right or the Left, will be decided. Because the greatest triumph of the current neoliberal Right is no longer to liquidate the political force of the Left, but rather to assure that it is firmly placed in a subordinate position. They want to convert it into a "bonsai Left," a minuscule grouping benignly placed in the garden of "democracy," which, in turn, is wholly oriented towards their business interests. This is why we should participate intelligently in the 1994 elections.
envío: Do you have some kind of plan designed already?
Zamora: We see the future as extremely complex. In the first place, the Left must be united. The FMLN, whether it uses that name or not, and the Democratic Convergence should make an electoral coalition only towards the end of the process. Next, I think that in 1994 we should not pose the question in terms of left vs. right; that polarizes the country. The electoral campaign must be posed in terms of opposition vs. government. And from this perspective, the fundamental problem for the Left to resolve is that of the Christian Democrats. We believe that for the Left, the governability of the country depends on governing in alliance with the Christian Democrats. Because, even winning the elections, in a period so close to the war, a government made up exclusively of the Left would be easily destabilized by the bourgeoisie and the United States. Our sense is that from 1994 to 1999 the two central tasks of a progressive government in El Salvador are broad democracy and socioeconomic reconstruction of the country. The accords give us the democratic framework for this, but we must broaden it in daily practice, because ARENA's vision of democracy is very limited. For them democracy is no more than a concession to be made to a "subordinated" Left. If ARENA, if the far Right, wins the elections, the framework of the accords will be seriously reduced.
For the other task, economic and social reconstruction, a broad-based social pact is needed. So, it's an objective reality that we have to make alliances; we have to win the elections, but we also have to win the governability of the country. And this depends on an alliance between the Christian Democrats and the Left. Naturally, we're talking about an alliance in which the hegemony belongs not to the Christian Democrats but to the Left.
envío: Knowing the Salvadoran Christian Democrats, renouncing Christian Democratic hegemony in favor of left hegemony would be like squaring a circle...
Zamora: To resolve this, we're proposing a formula we call the "second round pact." The Salvadoran electoral system allows for this, because if no candidate or coalition wins an absolute majority of votes, a second round takes place between the top two vote getters. The first round will have ARENA (or the far Right with another name, if they make the changes that some want), the Christian Democrats and the leftist coalition all squaring off. We're working with the thesis, and I think it's realistic, that none of these three forces will get an absolute majority. The pact between the Christian Democrats and the Left would be made before this first round and would state, essentially, that whichever of the two wins the least number of votes would in the second round throw all its support, and votes, behind the other one. There are Christian Democratic leaders who have already expressed their approval of this kind of agreement.
envío: Can you calculate the force of the Left in quantitative, electoral terms?
Zamora: The results of past elections are not an adequate sign. El Salvador will be a different country in 1994. Quantifying the Left in electoral terms is an unknown about which there are all sorts of speculations. The FMLN's present policy of openness has forced the Convergence, the entire Left and other political forces in general into thoroughgoing internal adjustments. New renters are coming in and that will change the atmosphere of the house. For example, many who fought electorally with us in the Convergence now have their own houses to go home to. In our party, the MPSC, we're in what we call "the parting of the waters." In any case, we believe that a second-round pact is valid in El Salvador and will not be what some, both within and outside the country, are proposing: the so-called Chilean thesis. The premise of the Chilean thesis was to bring together the entire democratic opposition and leftists against the military government under the hegemony of the Christian Democrats. But comparing the Chilean situation to El Salvador is political craziness. In Chile, the Left was politically and militarily defeated, and in the 17 years of the Pinochet dictatorship, Chile's Christian Democrats were able to transform themselves into the hegemonic party of the opposition. In El Salvador, the Left has not been defeated either militarily or politically, and, as the opposition, the Christian Democrats do not have political, much less social, hegemony. One can date a clear decline in their hegemony and votes from 1985 on. For these reasons, we believe that the Left has the right, the ability and the possibility of taking the Christian Democrats on in a struggle for hegemony as part of an electoral pact and later, co-government. This all has to be carefully studied and decided upon; it is a key issue. The question of elections—alliances, a left coalition—are challenges that we must face with clear-headedness at this very complex time.
envío: In addition to the strictly political-electoral challenges, what are the principal issues for the Left at this historical turning point?
Zamora: From a broad point of view, I can see four basic problems. The first is that, perhaps very soon, people will begin to feel a clear and strong contradiction between their expectations for peace and reality. For years and years, all the country's ills have been blamed on the war. Yet most of those ills are rooted in an unjust social structure, one full of inequalities. And this new peace will not be able to resolve all those ills; in fact, it may well exacerbate some of them. For example, the question of security. The thousands of demobilized soldiers from both sides and the pressure that will be exerted on the behavior of the new police could bring more insecurity in the short term.
The first challenge facing us, then, is this: how do we assure that this contradiction between expectations and reality does not degenerate into frustration and a devaluing of peace, without a clear understanding of what the end of military domination in the country means? Such frustration could lead to a longing for the "order" historically imposed by the military. The Left must now realistically confront this challenge, because the country's democratic and progressive forces will be made to pay the price for this frustration. The Right will not pay it; they'll say: we told you so. In their propaganda, they'll make us appear responsible for the erosion of peace.
The second challenge we face in this new stage is the political conversion of the Left. The Left's most organized and numerically largest force, the FMLN, with its military experience dating back 20 years, is now moving into political terrain. This shift implies a transformation not just of the FMLN, but of the Left as a whole. But in this new political context, in these very special circumstances, the FMLN also has another major challenge ahead, that of maintaining its cohesion, because it is not just one party, it is five distinct parties. In this challenge to convert ourselves, we must also include the complex political-electoral issues we already mentioned—reaching agreement on the nature of a coalition among the Left and of an alliance with other forces.
Such a conversion encompasses problems of structure and leadership, but also of communication. I think that the FMLN's great challenge is to become, indisputably, the best organized political party in the country, one that can bring 100,000 supporters to the plaza on a day's notice. But it must also be a national party, one that can attract the vote of a young person or a housewife, someone who would never go out to any plaza and who for years has swallowed the government's propaganda and has an irrational fear of the Left, associating it with violence and terrorism.
The third challenge for the Left is to come up with our own socioeconomic plan. So far, we don't have one. We have ideas, but very incipient ones. It's not just a question of coming up with an alternative economic plan, but also a new social vision. The two issues are very closely linked. In organizing our strategy for the coming two years, are we going to remain tied to the unions as the key axis of social organization, when official statistics report that 51% of Salvadorans have no steady employment and thus do not belong to a union? We must find responses to many new questions such as this one in the socioeconomic arena. We don't accept the neoliberal model, but we are not yet able to offer a left alternative. We're in limbo: we don't have a heaven of our own, and we don't want to fall into their hell.
The fourth great challenge I see for this stage is combating the destabilizing right wing, which has accepted neither the accords nor the new situation. The Sandinista experience in Nicaragua, like ours beginning now, is very special. We're both facing new political situations that are a result of our own decisions—the FSLN called for elections, the FMLN signed accords—but in these new situations we are in the opposition, and we accepted some limits. How can we take on a recalcitrant ight wing without at the same time becoming a destabilizing element in this new era we ourselves helped to create? Because what there is today in El Salvador was achieved at tremendous human cost to the Left all these years, but we do not have a leftist government. We continue to be in the opposition.
All these enormous challenges have to be faced in a very thoroughgoing way in only two years—from now until the 1994 elections, which will be definitive. Time is short, and we must act decisively and with urgency. On January 16, we turned the last page of the book written with so much blood over 60 long years. Today we begin to write a new book. We want to write it with a very careful hand; we want these pages to tell a new story. This is the historic challenge before us.
The First 100 Hours in the New El SalvadorMaría López Vigil, editor-in-chief of envío, was in El Salvador during the first days of its new era. The following are some of her impressions of the changes and of the challenge for the future.
The most they could do to me now is mow me down in the street with a machine gun, but the days have ended in which they could pick me up in an unidentified car, take me out to a clandestine prison somewhere, torture me, then disappear me.
—A woman from a coffee-growing family whose home was bombed and her two daughters raped and tortured, then disappeared by the National Guard.
The day fear broke down
Immediately upon arriving in El Salvador, I knew things were different. In many respects, the inauguration of COPAZ symbolized the beginnings of this political and socio-cultural change.
Most people thought it would simply be a formal event, but the FMLN's presence assured—intentionally or unintentionally—that it wasn't. The media said the FMLN was given half of the several thousand government invitations, but it evidently enjoyed the sympathy of many more. Out in the street that morning, as smartly dressed guests waited in line to present their invitations, greetings were, by habit and lingering fear, still surreptitious: just the quick wink or barely perceptible smile learned over years in which more open recognition of an identified "subversive" could mark you for death in a ditch, years in which the same fate could befall anyone heard using words like "organized."
Once inside the great hall, these fears and habits fell away one after another. In front of military officers and ARENA politicians, many people embraced each other wordlessly and long, expressing physically what was at once too joyous and too painful to be voiced: "It's really happening, and we lived to see it." A few then took cheap little cameras out of their pockets and asked someone standing nearby to take their picture, arm draped around the shoulder of one person after another. A relative on the other side? An old school chum not seen during the long separation of clandestinity? A comrade-in-arms thought dead?
A few young unionists from FENASTRAS tentatively took FMLN bandanas out of their pockets and tied them around their necks, thought better of it and stuffed them away, then finally put them on again. Someone had come up with the challenging idea of circulating bags of commemorative pins for the guests: one with the shield of El Salvador and the other red with the FMLN insignia. FMLN field commanders were among the first to sport their organization's symbol on the suits they had rented for this black-tie event, but soon more and more people dared to identify themselves publicly by the tiny patch of red.
FENASTRAS is the union federation whose 10 key leaders were killed by a bomb placed in their San Salvador headquarters in 1989, convincing many people that the new negotiations between the FMLN and the government were useless.
The final barrier came crashing down when the formalities got underway. As FMLN comandante Joaquín Villalobos, the first speaker, was introduced, everyone sympathetic to the FMLN stood to applaud him. (See his speech in this issue.) I had the impression that over two-thirds of that packed hall was standing. That was the most important moment of the event.
The tensest one was when ARENA's speaker, Calderón Solis, eulogized Roberto D'Aubuisson, founder of ARENA's predecessor ANSESAL (National Agency for Salvadoran Security), which institutionalized paramilitarism in El Salvador. To mention his name was to bring El Salvador's nefarious past into the hall. ARENA's presence at the event was small since, at least on paper, the FMLN won more in the accords and legitimizing that would not look good. But when the ARENA delegates heard their dying hero's name, they stood and began chanting "Roberto, Roberto!" Several FMLN members buried their heads in their hands, just waiting for the fragile situation to explode into violence. The rest of the FMLN delegation booed and whistled, easily drowning out ARENA's chant with their own: "Joaquín, Joaquín!" Then suddenly Comandante Rebecca, who comes out of a Christian tradition and lost two brothers in the war, shouted "Monseñor Romero lives!" Since no one doubts that D'Aubuisson was behind Bishop Romero's assassination, ARENA was silenced.
On his deathbed in a hospital, D'Aubuisson is kept alive only by machines, because ARENA leaders don't want him used to symbolize the death of the old repressive oligarchy. But they've failed to avoid another, equally powerful interpretation from taking hold. Many, many people believe that his incredibly painful end by cancer of the larynx is symbolic justice meted out by Bishop Romero to a man whose words brought death to so many others: every time he appeared on television with the photo of someone he accused of subversion, that person was soon found (or not found) dead.
There was no hint of vanguardism in any of the FMLN speeches in those first days; none said, "We won." The message was rather that they were part of a larger whole. They also avoided anti-imperialist rhetoric to refer to the United States. In an interview, Shafik Handal did, however, lament the responsibility the US bears for the prolongation of the war. He recalled 1981, one of the many times the FMLN made an effort to negotiate. The attempt was sabotaged by Secretary of State Alexander Haig, who argued that "finishing off the FMLN was like throwing a drunk out of a bar." Said Comandante Handal, "The FMLN is not a drunk and El Salvador is not a bar."
Nor was polarizing ideology part of their message. Asked in the interview about the crisis of communism, Handal responded that the communists in El Salvador had always struggled for democracy and he didn't see any reason to stop being a communist since his party's roots were national. He said, for example, that if the comandantes have to start using big fancy cars for security reasons, they might as well leave the country again. The source of some of these new changes in style was not the Berlin Wall, or Yeltsin or Ceaucescu, but the reality of the Central American people's poverty, and the example of Sandinismo.
The sentiment toward the FMLN of most people I talked to, whether sympathizers or not, was gratitude. And this was widespread: many walls were painted with "Thank you, FMLN, for bringing us peace." Anyone I overheard greeting an FMLN leader just said with great warmth, "Comandante, welcome home."
"Do-everything, eat-everything, sell-everything people" on the move
Of all the sites of war, Guazapa is the most incredible. This volcano is only 18 miles from the capital, and the villages in its foothills suffered tremendous bombing, right up to December 12. The military threw everything at them—white phosphorous, defoliants—but they resisted. The original population of 60,000 people was reduced to 6,000; the rest were killed, fled to San Salvador or went into exile. The man I went there with is from Guazapa, a small coffee grower who was one of 18 children. When I asked how many of his relatives died during the war, he said 63. Others are now spread all over the world, including Australia. He himself was in exile in Washington.
On the way there, he told me all the things that are going to be done in Guazapa. One of his ideas, which has already been discussed, is to cultivate two particular plants from which a diesel substitute can be produced. The idea is to combine subsistence crops with nontraditional ones, to protect natural resources and to immediately begin reforestation.
He was so enthusiastic about what's already happening, because the guerrillas' dream now is economic reconstruction. The FMLN controlled 25% of the national territory, and this now will go to them. And they aren't dreaming about bits of land to plant subsistence crops of rice and beans, but about spaces for comprehensive development, the creation of development poles. "The best specialists in Central America are working with us, with the FMLN," he told me proudly. A study is already underway of the damage the bombing and defoliants did to the soils. He went on and on about all the plans, including the decontamination of Lake Suchitlán so a fishing cooperative can be set up there. The clincher was when he said they're talking about putting a tram up the side of Guazapa so tourists can visit the famous Vietnam-style hideouts dug into the hills along the paths and roads. How people survived the bombing was always a mystery in El Salvador, and now it's going to be a tourist attraction!
The new battle for the Salvadorans is to demonstrate that they are economically invincible too. And they are ready for it. They have a cultural tradition as hard workers; they don't waste time pontificating. An example of this was the huge FMLN celebration in the plaza. Since the new school semester started the following day, all the surrounding streets were packed with women selling pencils, erasers and notebooks to those coming for the rally.
This character has something to do with El Salvador's population density, with the shortage of land. Just to survive, everybody has to figure out how to get blood out of a stone. Someone told me about a young man whose only inheritance from his father was a little rocky hill—pure stones, not an atom of soil. So this man began to gather all these rocks and terrace the hill with them, circle after circle all the way up to the top. Then he filled the terraces with buckets of soil. To help hold the soil he planted cashew trees and sold the nuts for income. Anywhere he had a sunny space left, he planted a patch of rice and beans, just to live on. The upshot was that he won the national agricultural prize.
People are still inclined to do things in their traditional ways, but they are very open to new ideas if they can be convinced it will work. For example, a group in La Unión has already organized to plant 120 hectares of mangrove, because they understood that mangrove helps bring more rain and guarantees shrimp production.
With this mentality, no one is waiting for someone else to do it for him or her. Their biggest problem is financing, but one young Salvadoran I talked to had even come up with a solution to that. He lives in Los Angeles, along with 700,000 other exiles there. He told me that it has always been hard to organize them, because some fled for fear of the army, but others for fear of the FMLN. Yet on January 6, the day the accords were signed in Chapultepec, Mexico, 10,000 Salvadorans, with virtually no organizing effort, gathered in a park in Los Angeles to celebrate. Many of them were already beginning to talk about how soon they could return. This man's idea is to go back and tell them it's more important to stay a while longer, and channel part of the remittances they've been sending to their families into reconstruction efforts. Since Salvadorans in exile send more than $1 billion a year into the country, he wants to say, "Look, compañero, you've been sending $100 a month to your mother; send her $90 now and give the other $10 toward rebuilding the community center in her neighborhood." He thinks the idea will take hold. His plan is start a bank in El Salvador, linked to one set up in Los Angeles, so money can be transferred down cleanly and autonomously for popular reconstruction efforts.
So this is what's new in El Salvador. It's not about a change in ideology; it's about this desire to work, to make things better, and it has a strong ecological aspect. This desire is suddenly bubbling up to the surface all over the country, with varying formulas, since people are now confident that organizing in some particular way to get something done is no longer going to smack up against a wall of repression. People are full of ideas, and no longer fear they will be killed for thinking in a different way, for organizing to rebuild in an alternative way. In the 1970s and 80s, alternative meant communist by definition, and was met with torture and death. Now the unleashed potential is tremendous.
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a monthly magazine of analysis on Central America