Via The NY Transfer News Service * All the News that Doesn't Fit from the Maoist Internationalist Movement (MIM) MIM Notes, Issue 71: December, 1992 FMLN negotiates surrender by MC251 In late October, negotiators rushed back to El Salvador to save the U.N.-sponsored peace agreement agreement between the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN) and the Salvadoran government, pushing back the final date for compliance with the accords from the previous October 31 to December 15. Due to the Salvadoran military's refusal to comply with the agreements and reform itself, the FMLN refused to totally disarm by the end of October. The "peace" agreement went into effect in February, ending El Salvador's 12-year civil war. In an attempt to portray the accords as a victory for the FMLN and the people of El Salvador, supporters of the FMLN have repeated U.N. mediator Alvaro de Soto's twisted refrain: "this is the closest that any process has ever come to a negotiated revolution."(1) October was very tense in El Salvador. The agreements had called for purging notorious human rights abusers in the Salvadoran military, cutting the military in half, dismantling the U.S.-trained elite battalions responsible for the largest massacres in the war, forming a new civilian police force containing both ex-military and ex-FMLN combatants, as well as some Constitutional reforms, human rights agreements, and legalizing the FMLN as a political party to run in elections.(2) This is the same fascist military which has ruthlessly dominated the country -- in the interests of the 14-family oligarchy which owns almost all the land in El Salvador -- since drowning a peasant uprising in blood in 1932, and the same military which is responsible for the vast majority of the 75,000 deaths in the last 12 years. Reforms don't come easy. Rumors of a military coup to replace President Alfredo Cristiani, who has been instrumental in the negotiations, with the more obedient Vice President Francisco Medino began to surface in October,(3) along with a sharp rise in death threats and attempted assassinations of FMLN and popular organization leaders from right wing death squads.(4) Advertisements have appeared daily in El Salvador's newspapers threatening the lives of FMLN fighters. At least four death-squad-style assassination attempts against FMLN members have been reported since mid-October, as well as numerous threats against union leaders.(4) MIM shudders to think of the killing spree that the military and death squads may launch against the people once the FMLN is fully disarmed. In return for very limited reforms of the government and military, and in the face of heightened death squad activity, the FMLN has agreed to completely dismantle its own military structure, give up its weapons, and join the bourgeois political process as an electoral party. Far from a "negotiated revolution," this is a simple negotiated surrender by FMLN leaders. While FMLN General Command member Shafik Handal says, "We're full of optimism that things will turn out well,"(5) FMLN members don't all agree. "I do not have any land, and the army is still full of people who want to kill me," said Miguel Angel, a 26-year-old guerrilla scheduled to turn in his machine gun on October 30.(6) It appears that Angel's uncertainty is not isolated either. On the contrary, "Angel, who was wounded fighting in San Salvador during the FMLN's spectacular 1989 offensive there, is typical of the many guerrilla combatants who do not trust the fragile peace agreements. They believe their leaders may not have gotten enough in return for the only thing they have to offer under the U.N.-backed accord -- disarmament."(6) "In this hamlet [Guarjila], an FMLN stronghold throughout the war, the rebels turned in their guns with little sense of triumph or emotion." Commander Douglas Santamaria, who spent more than 20 years fighting, said "The people understand what we are doing, but of course they are scared."(6) While FMLN leaders seem, at least since the mid-1980s, to have viewed their military power mainly as a bargaining chip to be negotiated away for some reforms at the first opportunity, the rank-and-file FMLN comrades were fighting to win military victory and overthrow capitalist rule in El Salvador. No significant strides have been made around what most agree is the main cause of the war -- the struggle over land. As one pro-FMLN source states, "Land ownership in formerly conflictive zones has become the most disputed and volatile issue of the cease-fire period."(7) No significant land reform agreements were included in the accords. Of course, any "land reform" agreement that leaves the land under control of the oligarchy to be used to grow cash crops primarily for export will not solve El Salvador's problems. Rather than championing the peasants' struggle for land, the leaders of the FMLN and the Democratic Campesino Alliance (ADC), have promised the government to cease land takeovers in the countryside, in an attempt to induce the National Association of Private Enterprise (ANEP) to join them in the peace process! Peasants in El Salvador's countryside see more clearly than their so-called leaders who their enemies are; they don't need this dead-end road of talking peace with exploitative landlord capitalists. "Despite government threats, denunciations by landowners, and commitments made by the FMLN and the ADC, the takeovers have continued to occur. In an interview with Rosario Acosta published in the July 14 issue of Envio, she said 'the land takeovers are not being promoted by the ADC, but have rather escaped its control.' The campesino rank-and-file of the popular movement has shown a high level of mobilization and a great ability to take actions in support of its demands, and to do so somewhat independently of the movement's leadership."(8) The objectives of U.S. imperialism have still been achieved in El Salvador, due to blatant accommodation to imperialism by the FMLN. "Senior rebel officials say they now want the United States Embassy, and especially American military advisors, to remain in El Salvador. 'Our attitude has changed,' admits Ana Guadalupe Martinez, a rebel official. 'We think the U.S. military group can help in the transition to peace."(9) The FMLN is also joining in the call for "humanitarian aid" from imperialist lending institutions such as the IMF, World Bank and the U.N. Many now predict that the FMLN, in coalition with other Social Democratic electoral parties, will be victorious in the 1994 elections. But MIM has learned from history that winning bourgeois elections, while the military is still the strongest institution in country, is not going to fundamentally change El Salvador. This is what the five groups comprising the FMLN said during the 1970s and early 1980s. MIM wonders, what is different now, other than FMLN accommodation to imperialism spurred by the collapse of the state-capitalist the USSR? Even if the FMLN gains power through elections, they are sure to face military coup attempts backed by the CIA, such as those that occurred to elected leftist governments in Chile in 1973 and in Haiti in 1991. While the FMLN leaders celebrate the peace accords and look forward to their seats in the government, the people of El Salvador only have before them more misery caused by capitalism. While MIM celebrates the 12-year heroic struggle of the Salvadoran people, we are saddened that the current phase of struggle is ending in capitulation rather than victory. Notes: 1. Alert! January 1992, p. 1. 2. El Rescate Human Rights Report January 1-13, 1992. 3. UPI 11/6/92. 4. Committee In Solidarity with the People of El Salvador 10/23/92. 5. El Rescate Human Rights Report October 26-November 2, 1992. 6. Washington Post 11/1/92. 7. Voices on the Border Update Spring 1992, p. 5. 8. N.Y. Transfer News Service 10/92. 9. New York Times Magazine 2/9/92, p. 27. Subscribe to MIM Notes: Individual: Institutional: 1 year domestic $12 1 year domestic $48 2 years domestic $20 2 years domestic $90 1 year overseas $36 1 year overseas $60 Make checks payable to "ABS" or send cash. 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