El Salvador
El Salvador: Up Against the Calendar
Envío team
On October 26, less than a week before the October 31 deadline, the United Nations proposed a recalendarization of the peace process in El Salvador, with December 15 as the new deadline for the final demobilization of the FMLN's military forces. Although many other agreements were also given new deadlines, the changing of the military deadline was the most significant. The eve of this recalendarization was especially critical and reflected the underlying problem in El Salvador: militarization of a society dominated for decades by a strong and obstinately aggressive oligarchic class.
Based on the dynamic created by the cycle of delays and new deadlines and the ongoing resistance of the traditional oligarchy and military forces to the peace accords, October promised to be not only a fundamental point in the development of the peace process, but also an occasion in which the forces opposing the accords would desperately attempt to only minimally comply with the accords while trying to fulfill intact their own vision of maintaining the existing power structure.
The UN evaluation of the peace process released in September pointed favorably to the possibility of compliance by October 31.
Nonetheless, certain difficulties could be clearly identified having to do with the transfer of lands to FMLN combatants, the armed forces and the civilian population. Added to this was the confidential report already drawn up by the Ad Hoc Commission charged with evaluating the military officers and subsequently making decisions on the purification of the armed forces.
In the original concept of the accords, October 31 had been hailed as the great date marking the definitive end of armed confrontation. It was the date by which peace was to be irreversibly established, with the understanding that by then, the FMLN's guerrilla forces would be completely demobilized, the armed forces would have submitted to a serious purging of its officers and battalions, and a series of political-juridical reforms would have been initiated to guarantee the supremacy of civil society over the military forces, respect for human rights and the free exercise of political pluralism.
Although it was foreseeable that a new deadline might have to be set, that possibility was also feared. Other new deadlines set in place over the course of the year, although indispensable for the process as a whole, not only set precedents for both sides, but also cut the scheduled time for executing the accords, leaving more and more specific points to be carried out in a much shorter period of time.
The FMLN argued that two serious impediments to carrying out the demobilization of its forces existed. First it had sought to link the demobilization of its forces on real advances in government compliance (deployment of the first contingents of the civilian police, purification of the armed forces, legal registration of the FMLN, etc.) to guarantee a adequate political atmosphere for incorporating those forces. Second, it wanted to condition its demobilization on beginning the transfer of lands to its combatants, thus guaranteeing their reinsertion into civilian life. By the beginning of October, with 40% of the FMLN demobilized, not one former combatant had received title to land.
Under these circumstances, the FMLN pushed back the third and fourth stages of demobilization, originally scheduled for the first days of October, thus leading to the crisis.
The crisis meant that once again UN representative Marrack Goulding's presence was needed in El Salvador. Goulding was in the country between September 28 and October 2, looking for a "favorable resolution to the land transfer and financing problems. Experts from the UN Food and Agricultural Organization, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund assisted him on these points. Considering the land question as a "complicated problem from a technical point of view," Goulding left the country with a promise to present a proposed solution of the problem to both parties.
Goulding's visit coincided with Under Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs Bernard Aronson's stay in the country. After visiting different areas throughout the country and meeting with both the government and the FMLN, Aronson called for the FMLN's total demobilization in accord with the dates originally stipulated in the accords. More discreetly, he discussed with the government and the armed forces high command the scope of the Ad Hoc Commission findings. This commission had signaled almost all the high command's officers as human rights violators.
With all this, the first week of October ended with the objective need to reprogram the fundamental accords and the possibility of achieving it. This included the demobilization of the remaining 60% of the FMLN's forces, the question of the counterinsurgency battalions and the transfer of lands.
The right on the attack Under these conditions, the most aggressive campaign by the right wing against the peace process and the peace accords to date began. It had two key elements: first, defense of the armed forces, particularly the rapid deployment Atlacatl battalion; and, second, the demand that October 31 be etched in stone for the total and unconditional demobilization of the FMLN forces.
ARENA soon joined this campaign. In its anniversary assembly, Armando Calderón Sol—ARENA's potential 1994 presidential candidate—demanded the FMLN's demobilization, stating that if it did not demobilize, its members would be considered criminals acting illegally and would thus be prosecuted. Vice President Francisco Merino repeated these attacks. Later, President Cristiani himself announced that the government had complied in full with its commitments and would accept neither new accord deadlines nor pressure of any type, "even if it comes from the UN."
Other voices supported this campaign as well. The "Pro Peace and Jobs Crusade," the "Salvadoran Feminine Front," and the "Free El Salvador Committee"—all phantom organizations of the far right—took identical positions regarding October 17, the date set for the final demobilization of the Atlacatl battalion. They demanded not only that President Cristiani hold the line against any new deadlines, but also that he not permit the demobilization of Atlacatl.
This campaign to defend the Atlacatl battalion got underway at a key moment. The armed forces were waiting for the Ad Hoc Commission's conclusions, and anthropologists and national and international forensic specialists were beginning the painstaking process of reconstructing the events of December 11, 1981, when some 1,000 civilians were massacred in El Mozote, Morazán. From the very first, the Atlacatl battalion had been held responsible for this massacre, covered up as a counterinsurgency operation.
In 1981 neither the US State Department nor the Salvadoran government accepted the accusation, refusing even to admit that the massacre had taken place. Cristiani would have scored a huge political success had the Atlacatl battalion demobilized on October 17, because it would have left the FMLN as the non-complying party and made more difficult any attempt to schedule new deadlines. However, he embraced the position of the extreme right and the armed forces, emphatically rejecting any possibility of new deadlines.
Midway through this campaign on the part of the oligarchy, the UN presented both sides with a proposal on the land question that would speed up the first transfers of land to FMLN combatants.
At the same time, it called for more time to study the inventory of land claims presented by the FMLN and proposed handing out property titles in January 1993. In the UN proposal, land beneficiaries include 7,500 FMLN combatants, 15,000 demobilized soldiers and 25,000 civilians living in zones that were under guerrilla control.
FMLN on the alert Since August, the armed forces has been engaging in military demonstration exercises backed up with tremendous propaganda campaigns. The third week of October, coinciding with the ultra right campaign against the peace accords, the army carried out land deployments—with some air deployments as well—near the zones where FMLN forces were concentrated. Thus, that week became the most critical of the entire peace process. An added provocation was the October 11 attempt against Pablo Parada Andino (Comandante Goyo), head of the FMLN's reconstruction programs in San Vicente.
In this context, the FMLN announced that its forces were in a "state of defensive alert" as a preventive measure in the face of the rightwing attempts to employ violent measures and reinitiate hostilities. ONUSAL remained silent on this subject until virtually the last minute, thus leaving in the air the specter of a coup by the military officers who were to be purged.
In the medium term, the land transfers contemplated in the accords implies a serious medium-term transformation of the country's agricultural sector. This is not only due to the transfers in and of themselves, but mainly to a change in the correlation of forces at the socioeconomic level. Despite this, the FMLN recalendarization put more stress to the effective purification of the armed forces.
Now that the UN has agreed to this very critical reprogramming of the peace accords, ONUSAL will have to take the measures necessary to avoid similar threats and pressure come December. Great difficulties loom over Cristiani, who, despite everything he said, was finally forced to negotiate, accept new deadlines and force the ultra right to swallow them. It is to be expected that the extreme right will respond with attempts at violent and reckless destabilization. It can also be assumed that the setting of new deadlines favors the right wing in certain areas.
In any case, the threats were very serious. The clandestine "Maximiliano Hernández Martínez" commandos—the same ones that murdered the FDR leadership in 1980—have announced that after October 31 they will begin reprisals against the FMLN leadership, ONUSAL and national and international journalists who favor the accords. According to FMLN leader Joaquín Villalobos, El Salvador will live through "45 days of maximum tension," from October 31 to December 14, the most stressful period of these long and tense years.
Founding Charter of Principles and Objectives of the FMLN Party (September 1, 1992)
The Farabundo Martí Front for National Liberation, born out of the struggles of the Salvadoran people, is a party with deep historic roots promoting social justice, democracy and national development. Of a revolutionary nature, pluralistic in its social and ideological origins and its organizational forms, the FMLN is nourished by and continues the democratic, independent and liberating tradition of the best sons and daughters of the Salvadoran nation. The FMLN is honored to recognize and take up the historical legacy of Francisco Morazán, Anastasio Aquino, José Matías Delgado, Manuel José Arce, the Aguilar brothers, Pedro Pablo Castillo, Feliciano Ama, Francisco Gavidia, Farabundo Martí, the martyred Archbishop Oscar Arnulfo Romero, and all the generations of patriots our nation has known.
For 12 years, the FMLN saw the need to carry out a popular war to reclaim the role of civil society, overcome militarism and open a new era for the Salvadoran nation, based on absolute respect for rights and freedoms of the individual through a balanced social and economic order and the full reestablishment of national sovereignty and independence. The peace accords as a whole, which emerged from the war and the negotiation process, open the way to the historic possibility of carrying out national changes that will permit the consolidation of a democratic, just and humane system. The FMLN reaffirms its historic commitment to struggle for the interests of the popular majorities and in the national interest of development, through transformations of the country's political, economic and social system, Central American integration and friendly cooperation based on mutual respect with all members of the international community.
Principles
1. Revolutionary humanism.
2. Reclaiming the fundamental value of the family.
3. Vocation to serve in the interests of the majority.
4. A democratic-revolutionary ideology in the service of change.
5. Primacy of civil society.
6. Patriotic content of struggle.
7. Commitment to national unity and concertación.
8. Children's and youth rights.
9. Promotion and defense of women's rights.
10. Rescue and development of the environment.
11. Rescue and strengthening of the nation's historic and cultural values.
12. Central American solidarity.
13. A pluralistic democratic party for El Salvador.
Objectives
1. Achieving peace and revolutionary democracy.
2. Strengthening civil society.
3. Achieving political democracy.
4. Assuring human rights.
5. Promoting economic development.
6. Reconstruction of the country.
7. Sovereignty and national independence.
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