El Salvador
More Stops and Starts
Envío team
Despite high expectations for advances in fulfilling the new peace accord calendar in July, the FMLN's second round of demobilization did not take place on July 31, as agreed to; conditions were not even in place for the first contingent of ex-combatants, demobilized on June 30, to rejoin civilian life. The only thing the government had done was extend legal documents recognizing the ex-combatants as such, but neither scholarships nor agricultural credit, much less land, were made available to them.
Many former FMLN combatants from that first contingent have even re-entered the concentration points, given the total absence of opportunities for their authentic rein corporation into civilian life. Under these conditions, demobilizing another 20% would have been a serious lack of consideration by the FMLN towards its own soldiers.
Compliance with the accords had begun to move again in mid-June, following international pressure and a renegotiation of the calendar by the government and the FMLN, mediated by the UN's verification commission, ONUSAL. The renegotiation did not alter the final deadline for accord compliance; it is still October 31.
Renegotiating each time there is serious non-compliance, however, can generate problems. This can happen, for example, if the FMLN, in its eagerness to assure fulfillment of the bulk of the accords, concedes points that its support base considers important. There is some suspicion that this may have already happened. In compliance with the accords, the government closed the headquarters of the former Treasury Police, but did not do likewise with the National Guard headquarters, thus violating another important aspect of the accords. The fact that there has been no protest makes some wonder if the latter was written off in exchange for installing the Commission on Truth, whose objective is to investigate human right violations committed by members of the armed forces.
Three things can be deduced: the accord process is being worked out among the top levels of power, leaving the people largely to one side; relations between the FMLN and the popular organizations are not as transparent as they should be; and ONUSAL tends more towards diplomatic solutions than strict compliance with the accords.
Negotiations without the people Since the beginning of the peace process, it was said that, without the Salvadoran people's courageous and militant defense of the peace accords and without their demand for compliance, the success of the accords could not be assured.
Nevertheless, the FMLN seems increasingly disposed to appropriate the right to negotiate items on behalf of the people that seem, on principle, non-negotiable. Since its foundation, the National Guard was one of the most repressive military bodies. Clandestine prisons function in its headquarters where civilians are tortured. Its headquarters are thus a symbol of repression and must be dismantled. Non-compliance with this point is causing the most dissonance in the renegotiations without the people.
The FMLN and the Popular Organizations. What happened to the people? The first large round of protests in response to the peace process dynamic came from state workers with an inter-union work stoppage on July 13-14. The government accused the popular movement of being manipulated by the FMLN.
It would be naive to believe that there is total independence between the FMLN and the different popular organizations opposing the government. It would be equally naive to suppose that an organic relation exists and that popular organizations are simply "fronts" for the FMLN to manipulate. This vision, shared by private business, is inaccurate and, in fact, contradictory. The government and private business try to reduce the FMLN's political importance by characterizing it as a minuscule group with no following, yet, at the same time, accusing it of being the great promoter of destabilization through the popular organizations.
The and takeovers that have occurred in some regions because of the critical situation in which the peasantry lives are the best test of the popular organizations' independence. They took place despite promises by the FMLN and the peasant organizations not to promote them. More recently, teachers in the teachers' union, ANDES, went against the orientations of their leadership and the FMLN by launching a strike that lasted over a month and a half.
The problem is not in possible FMLN impositions on the popular organizations, or, put another way, in their submission to the FMLN. In political terms, a party can coopt an organization, or vice versa, based on the established norms of their mutual relations. The problem arises when issues of national interest come up that override party or union interests. It is even more complicated when the "party" being discussed is the FMLN, since it is, in fact, five distinct political parties.
Thus, following the FMLN's entrance into legal political life, its distinct organizations may opt to always wait for the FMLN's political line. The FMLN could also feel it has enough political capacity to council its different organizations on what to do.
The work stoppage by the state workers is a good example of just how complex these relations are. In principle, the initiative came from the workers, although with different degrees of influence about objectives and tactics from the FMLN's five organizations. Although the majority of workers respected the stoppage, some sectors fell into the trap of negotiating certain demands separately, particularly purely economic ones, in response to management's offer to talk as long as work continued. With the workers' overall objectives and political determination thus undermined, the stoppage was not an unqualified success.
It is significant that the key issues of the stoppage were economic ones, although economic demands clearly carry with them an implicit political dimension. Most explicitly political was the workers' demand, within the framework of the accords, that the National Association of Private Enterprise (ANEP) stop boycotting the concertación forum. The rest of their political-economic demands were strictly union issues, despite the government's constant accusation that the unions are carrying out activities aimed at destabilizing, rather than limiting themselves to the economic arena as the government prefers.
Obviously, the point is not to incorporate the demand for strict compliance with the accords into every protest by the unions or any other social movement. But this leaves a big question unanswered: if the FMLN does not do it and these organizations should not, who will demand that the army really reduce its size, that the repressive corps disappear once and for all, that the authors of the massacres be punished and that the new National Civilian Police force be installed?
Independent of what the unions do or demand, the government will accuse them of politicizing everything and of stepping outside the economic arena. Thus, there is no point in avoiding eminently political demands such as, for example, authentic demilitarization or compliance with other points in the accords, and pressuring the government with a work stoppage. Moreover, the accords are conceived of as strategically important for true democratization and demilitarization of society, and thus compliance with them should rightfully be the main demand of the popular majority. If the popular organizations see things differently, it will show that they have a very limited vision of the accord process. The most extreme and painful interpretation would be that the people do not believe that the accords can be authentically and honestly implemented and do not consider them as their own victory.
ONUSAL's diplomacy ONUSAL has repeated a thousand times that final compliance with the accords has a fixed deadline: October 31. Both sides must thus be pressured to facilitate compliance and contribute to the search for solutions in moments of stalemate. Certainly, the UN observers have made significant contributions toward a steady march of the accords in terms of public security, military and social issues. Nonetheless, these observers are generally restricted to a spectator role, to merely reporting the progress of the accords to the UN Secretary General.
ONUSAL's work is good and positive, but could be improved, particularly given the possibility that this experience in verifying internal accords could be repeated in the resolution of the conflict in Guatemala.
Confidentiality and discretion are understandable from a strictly diplomatic viewpoint, but not when the future of the popular majority is directly affected. Submission to political-diplomatic criteria can cloud the process, because it can be manipulated by sectors opposed to real compliance with the accords. It is not enough to witness the repression of a given union protest or a land eviction, or to demonstrate that—quantitatively—human rights violations have significantly diminished. ONUSAL is not the key institution responsible for the success of the accords, but it is essential that it contribute to their successful termination. The many concerns about ONUSAL's work that have arisen within the popular organizations must be understood in this context.
Other symptoms of ONUSAL's internal problems are the criticisms of it by a former official of its human rights section, Reinhard Jung-Hecker, whose contract with the institution was not renewed, as well as the resignation of Philippe Trexler, head of the human rights division, more than a year ago. The following are extracts from the extremely explicit three-page letter to UN Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali by Reinhard June-Hecker, translated from a reprint that appeared in Diario Latino, July 9, 1992.
From the beginning, the chief of mission imposed his own rules of the game, which did not allow for entering into contradictions with government institutions, and meant a low profile for investigations into the most relevant cases. The leadership imposed a self-limitation and even self-censorship on the human rights work in a country that so needs a demonstration of strength that could end the culture of impunity. Political and diplomatic criteria limited the autonomy of the human rights contingent within this mission, made up of police, military and political aspects. In an internal seminar, the mission leadership clearly reduced the importance of the human rights contingent by defining the mission as primarily political.
Furthermore, the chief of mission put his decisions over those of the director and thus created a double chain of command in which he always imposed himself, thus provoking contradictions and internal problems. The fact of not consulting with or informing the director about a decision to close the Usulután Regional Office speaks for itself. This happened only a few days after the most relevant and serious events since ONUSAL's stay in this country occurred in the same place.
The lack of protest and public denunciation by ONUSAL against events such as those that occurred during the prison uprising in Usulután and the illegal and scandalous intervention of Colonel Carranza with 250 soldiers, violating all the accords, allows him to remain in his post up to now, another demonstration of the habitual impunity in this country.
I also want to mention the discovery by our police of a band of assailants formed by army members in Chalatenango and the intervention by the chief of mission to stop the follow-up investigation of this case, arguing that it could put the mission in danger. It appears that the suppression of a profound and meaningful investigation by the San Miguel Regional Office into a triple assassination, committed approximately three months ago by the son of an army officer in full public view, and the later murder of the police detective in charge of this case, obeys this same logic of avoiding clashes with the state institutions.
This attitude, which values good relations with the government over the defense of a verification consistent with human rights that could win the confidence of the Salvadoran people, leads even to the elimination of observers who might annoy and enter into conflicts of interests with the government institutions. Thus, sanctions such as those imposed against me—prohibition for four months of any contact state institutions and authorities such as the police and judicial bodies—could be interpreted as the successful result of pressures by Colonel Ciro López Roque, head of the National Police; General Vargas; Supreme Court President Mauricio Gutierrez Castro, and also the strange denunciations of me by Cristiana Sol to the European Community Embassy regarding my observation of the autopsy of Belgian nurse Veronique Hostie in September 19.
(Jung-Hecker continues with a full page of examples of the limitations he personally experienced trying to carry out consequential verification.)
Non-compliance: A new crisis?July 31 marks the first breakdown of the calendar readjustment negotiated in mid-June. What at the beginning could have been viewed as normal delays in implementing the accords took shape by then as a new crisis in the overall process.
The armed forces took as the starling point for their argument the first FMLN demobilization. According to them, the FMLN only demobilized its oldest combatants and none of its special forces. They also claimed that the FMLN did not hand over all the arms corresponding to the first 20% of its forces and those it did give up were the oldest it had.
The demobilization accord assumes that the combatants' arms will be handed over to ONUSAL, according to an inventory made by the FMLN and ONUSAL. ONUSAL is to store the arms in a special container until the end of the peace process, when they will be destroyed by the FMLN itself. They are never to be in government or army hands.
The FMLN did not accept the armed forces' charges, arguing that, while it had new weapons in the 1989 offensive, nearly three years have passed since then and weapons deteriorate. The second issue was an element of pressure for the FMLN: it would not hand over all its arms as long the government failed to adjust its rhythm of compliance with the accords.
These were the open issues under discussion, but there is a hidden reality. The fundamental resistance is not to compliance with the accords per se, but to the transformations that will take place once the accords are fulfilled. It is no secret that those who have historically opposed social transformations greeted the signing of the peace accords with distrust.
Old resistance to a new societyThrough August, the FMLN inventory of lands in zones of conflict that are to pass to the hands of its ex-combatants did not leave the commission charged with overseeing this issue. Nor was there any a real advance in transferring properties that exceed 605 acres, a constitutional limit reiterated in the accords. According to the FMLN’s inventory, 755,000 acres, totaling 18.5% of the national territory, are in the zones of conflict.
Without getting into more profound changes in the country's agrarian structure, mere compliance with the Constitution and the peace accords creates a danger for traditional landlords that they will attempt to block at all costs. This is the sector that opposed agrarian transformation ("life insurance," as then President Colonel Molina put it) and ferociously attacked the agrarian reform initiated by the Christian Democrats and armed forces as part of a larger counterinsurgency plan in 1976. It is the same group that, with ARENA's ascent to the presidency in 1989, began to dismantle the cooperatives that were the fruit of that agrarian reform programs.
This group of property owners, along with ANEP, has done everything possible to slow the accords relating to agrarian and socioeconomic themes. It is to that end that ANEP has refused to participate in the ongoing concertación forum, despite pressure from workers to do so.
In political-military terms, this sector is joined by those in the armed forces who never accepted that they were unable to militarily defeat the FMLN. To boot, they are now losing control over public security and have to accept that their key enemy of recent years is publicly organizing and doing political work. This is the source of the delays in the FMLN's legal registration as a party. For years this sector refused to recognize the FMLN's strength and political force; today it resists its full political integration into society.
The delays in beginning classes in the new Academy of Public Security are also not coincidental. The most recent delays mean that the first contingent of the new National Civilian Police will not be out on the streets until at least March 1993, and full deployment will not take place before the 1994 general elections. The old security apparatus could thus well continue functioning, virtually parallel to the new force.
As a result, political assassinations disguised as common crimes will continue to take place, perpetuating the state of terror in civil society. Meanwhile, police and judicial investigation procedures are still very deficient.
Seen from this larger perspective, the delays in compliance are not due to innocent institutional or financial limitations. They constitute orchestrated resistance by those opposed to the economic, military and political transformations necessary to achieve demilitarization, democratization and an end to terror. The delays create serious political and social obstacles to 1994's general elections, the real test of the accords. They also aim to close off, as has happened in the country since 1932, the possibility of peaceful and democratic solutions to the grave problems facing the country.
Goulding: Neither crisis, nor accordsJoaquín Villalobos, of the FMLN's General Command, declared in early August that compliance with the nine-month cease-fire would depend on the government. If it does not do its part to create the context (by complying in full with the accords), he warned, the FMLN will take no more steps. For its part, the government began to repeat its old song: "We have complied, the FMLN is not complying." From the FMLN's point of view, a new crisis was shaping up in the process. The government insisted there was no such crisis, only innocent delays on its part and noncompliance on the part of the FMLN. In response, ONUSAL convoked tripartite talks with the aim of negotiating an advance in the delayed accords, both those that were given new dates and those still pegged to the initial calendar.
Marrack Goulding, UN adjunct secretary for peace operations, joined these meetings on August 13. In his first visit to the country in March, Goulding had unblocked the first serious stalemate in the peace process. In June, the backed-up accords had been given their new compliance dates, but they allowed no time for slacking off. Now Goulding encountered delays of great concern to the overall process.
The difficulties of the tripartite talks were evidenced by the fact that Goulding extended his stay two days beyond the two originally planned. Viewed negatively, this could indicate serious problems; Goulding called it a sign that "advances are being made."
Goulding's visit did not net immediate results or favorable accords, but did serve to exert pressure on both sides. He strongly emphasized bringing compliance up to date on military issues. Irreversible changes blocking a return to war can only be made if real advances are made in demilitarizing, disarming and demobilizing both sides. And with that as a foundation, compliance with the rest of the accords will be accelerated.
Secondly, he devised a control mechanism: on September 16 (one month after his visit), there should be an assessment of compliance with the revised calendar. Based on this information, "the Secretary General will present a report to the Security Council, with recommendations on what he considers to be appropriate actions." He also insisted that October 31 remain the completion deadline for both sides. Thus, the September 16 evaluation must be considered key to a successful culmination of the process.
Both parties tersely announced to the national press on August 22 that they had achieved positive results regarding the calendar. As a result, the government began the programs to reincorporate of demobilized combatants into civilian life, the FMLN resumed handing over armaments from its first demobilized contingent and a second demobilization is awaited. At the same time, an unprecedented event occurred: the FMLN's association of disabled combatants was joined by its armed forces' counterpart in a visit to the National Assembly to demand pensions and service programs.
More deeds, fewer wordsBoth sides in the conflict must pledge themselves to get up to date and authentically comply with the accords. If they do not do it out of loyalty to the country's longing for peace and democracy, at least they should do it to avoid real international pressure and condemnations against those who slow the process.
The UN, and with it the Salvadoran people, wants to note real advances in a process it hopes is irreversible. Goulding sums up this position: "I have emphasized to both parties that what we are seeking is not more discussions, or more debate, but rather concrete actions in the field."
The unanswered question remains: Will the old economic and military power structure accept advances in the country's political transformation?
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