El Salvador

The FMLN from Within: Ideological Diversity, Political Unity

Envío team

In this interview conducted in El Salvador on April 24, Gerson Martínez, member of the Political Commission of the FMLN, discusses the future structure and nature of his organization in postwar El Salvador.
envío: Several of the five organizations in the FMLN have already held party assemblies. What is the FMLN going to be—a coalition of five parties, a party-front, or a single party with tendencies?
The FMLN will be a party-front. But this isn't new. It's what the FMLN has always been: one large front, made up of five parties. It's perhaps the only time in Latin America that five organizations, many of them with different origins, have managed to stay unified around quite democratic operating principles. This has enabled us to manage our differences. We're five different realities, five ways of thinking.
envío: Has there been more convergence over the years?
There's been greater affinity and identity, and we've found a common root of identity, particularly politically. The FMLN's adhesive force is essentially political. Ideologically we're dissimilar. The fact that some of us may declare ourselves Social Democratic, or Christian, or Communist, or simply Marxist is nothing new. Furthermore, we believe that the FMLN is in some sense a portrait of Salvadoran society. We can't claim that all of society thinks alike. No, that's totalitarianism. We believe that the differences are necessary.
envío: Can we speak of tendencies, or would that be incorrect?
Let's look at both the ideological and the political aspects. In the ideological sphere we may have more differences, and in the political plane fewer differences and greater identity. Our unity has always been political: unity of program and unity of strategy and tactics, of political line. The definition of the Frente is essentially political.
Now let's look at the ideological part. The FMLN is a semi-plurality. In fact, within one organization there may be ideological nuances. Up to now the left has always tried to unite and define itself through fundamentally ideological principles. We believe that a party and a political front such as ours should define itself on an essentially political basis—by its program and strategy. That's what unites us, together with a common leadership of a political character.
Given that, are there tendencies? Does the FMLN have ideological tendencies? Of course it does. I'd be worried if it didn't. An organization in which everyone thinks alike is suspected of having no internal democracy.
To finish: those who have wanted the FMLN to break apart, and predicted that it would, should have no illusions. The Left has made a strategic adjustment. If the country is going through a transition, why wouldn't the left go through one too? If we weren't changing, I'd be more worried, because we would fossilize. Anyone who doesn't change becomes reactionary, rigid. I repeat, thank God the Left is changing just as the country is.
envío: How will the organization legally register itself? Will each of the five organizations register or just the FMLN? How will political work be done?
We're going to legalize one party here: the FMLN. And each of the five parties will put itself at the full service of that identity and reference point. What's more, our strategy and political line will be that of the FMLN. We aren't going to have separate plans. At the same time, the existence of five parties means the existence of five partisan interests. There's a whole, which is the FMLN, an interest in common. But within this common interest, there are particular interests; and there are tensions between party interests and the interest of the Frente. Fortunately, we've managed to resolve them: the interest of the Frente always prevails when there's tension between the two. Besides, we'll stay united for an objective reason as well: the FMLN, with its five components, is the counterpart; it's not a particular organization. In this whole period, in the transition, the FMLN is the reference point and counterpart. In other words, it's not just a question of subjective will, but there's an objective basis for why the FMLN should stay united. We can't discard the possibility of recompositions, additions, who knows what; but the FMLN will stay united. So the fascists in the country shouldn't have any illusions.
envío: This "unity in diversity" has played a very important role in the whole process...
In a certain sense, it helped us to be less immature, less ignorant, less backward. It allowed us to
get to where we are now, to demonstrate our political versatility and capacity to shift, to accommodate to new situations; that's one of the most interesting things.
And I want to be generic and broad, to be fair. We've all learned a lot, and I particularly, from Guillermo Ungo, Rubén Zamora and Hector Oqueli.
There's also been unity in diversity on another level. Not organic unity, because the FMLN has broken with that idea. There's always been a free play of ideas.
envío: How shall we define the FMLN then—as a Social Democratic party? Or shall the FMLN perhaps have to be considered simply as a revolutionary democratic party?
Personally speaking, I consider myself a democrat, profoundly a democrat. And I think that the FMLN is a democratic force, like my own organization. Why do I say that? Let's examine the country's political map. The FMLN, more than a military phenomenon, or a guerrilla arm, is a social, historic and political phenomenon. And because it was necessary, it was also a military phenomenon. For that reason it achieved the astonishing feat of confronting the army that received the most US support. Okay then, if this is a social phenomenon, a party or front profoundly rooted in the masses, in the popular majorities, and if it has sustained those popular interests in its own particular way, and has an army genuinely made up of popular forces, then there's no organization more demonstrably democratic—in the sense that its power comes from the people. Territorial, neighborhood, political and other power structures were created; in other words, alternative popular power was created. I haven't seen any phenomenon in this country more democratic than the FMLN—if by democratic we mean one with more popular roots and greater identification with the people.
I think that the FMLN, in its theoretical endeavors, has to emphasize this. And we're not suffering Eastern fever. The Berlin Wall fell, as did the Soviet Union, and the FMLN remained powerful. Here, in this period, another wall fell—the wall of the great lie that we depended on the Soviet Union.
I believe that the FMLN is a democratic party. The difference is that up to a few months ago it was an armed democratic party. The difference is not that the FMLN is now incorporating itself into the civic struggle; it's that no we're doing it unarmed. What we've carried out is an act of patriotism: we went up against one of the most grotesque dictatorships in Latin America.
From the conceptual and theoretical viewpoint, we needed an economic democracy, a social democracy and a political democracy in El Salvador. To create political democracy we needed to reverse the militarism. In my opinion, we're not going to be able to demilitarize El Salvador, but we can get past militarism. And what does that mean? It means making a political revolution. What does it mean to reverse economic injustice in El Salvador? It means somehow overturning the country's economic structures. That is a revolution. We're making democracy in a revolutionary way. I'm a democrat, but I'm also a revolutionary; that's the adjective that distinguishes me. I'm a revolutionary because I'm a democrat. It's something indivisible in El Salvador. These structures had to be overturned to make democracy, and that's a revolution. That's where the identity between democracy and revolution resides in this country.
For this reason I believe that the organizations of the FMLN must reaffirm their democratic concepts, they must define themselves in their essence as democratic organizations, with democratic ideology and politics, and with a functioning internal democracy.
envío: What's the price of transforming the FMLN from a military structure to the civil-political struggle?
It has a cost, but it's not as high as it may seem. The FMLN is going to demobilize its army gradually. And it's ready for that. But that alone isn't enough: the country also has to be ready; certain things here have to have changed, militarism has to have disappeared. By then we'll be ready for the guerrilla army to disappear. The reasons are essentially political: the national situation is what will determine when the guerrilla army disappears.
Besides, the FMLN wasn't a guerrilla organization. It has been and is a political-military organization, in that order. And it has compiled a generation of political cadres and military cadres, perhaps more political ones than military. But in addition, the military cadres were also political, because we did not join, as army officers do, to make a military career. We didn't join for a salary. We joined for an idea. We didn't join because we were brave, but because it was necessary. The first motivation had a political character, and our combatants are very clear about that. No one joined because of a military vocation, much less a vocation for war. God help us! We would have preferred to never take up weapons, but it had to be done. So from the point of view of overall thinking and from the ideological-political viewpoint, the FMLN is prepared. We won't have problems.
What we did on February 1 was to emerge from the shadows into public life. This has been the first phase. Now we're going to enter the second phase, we're going to spread out. The right shouldn't kid itself: what they've seen up to now isn't all there is to the FMLN; they've barely seen the tip of the iceberg. What we're doing now is building ourselves a skeleton, because effectively—we have to recognize it—we didn't have a structure that was appropriate for public, open and legal functioning. But now we've linked up. We think that within three to four months the FMLN will be fully deployed. We already have committees in more than 200 municipalities of the country's 14 departmental capitals—and in 150 of them with a certain level of consolidation.
As a party, we have two major objectives. First, the full culmination of the peace accords, the transition. The second is to change the government in 1994. We're going to try to accomplish that in its entirety. The FMLN isn't interested in winning the presidency; what it's interested in is getting the right out, because that's the way to assure that the changes will be strengthened. What must govern is a democratic coalition. The FMLN's bets go even further: the FMLN has a third objective, which is that in 1994 the FMLN will become one of the country's main legal political forces. These are our main goals. We're not frantic about it, but neither are we going to permit the military to make this process turn out badly.

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