"We cannot continue with this government" THE NATIONAL Association of Salvadorean Teachers (ANDES-June 21) organizes a considerable part of the teachers in El Salvador. An active participant in the May 1 Committee in 1985, and today in the UNTS, ANDES has taken part in all the current mobilizations. Saul Sanchez, the general secretary of ANDES-June 21, was interviewed and the contras and between the FMLN, the US and his own government. Duarte is negotiating while the FMLN is declaring that it will not lay down its arms. He is directing his public speeches to the guerrillas, and the FDR is replying to him through the pages of the daily press in the capital in paid advertisements. In addition, the FMLN has decided to devote some of its best militants to work in the government-controlled zones.
Of course, the situation in the towns is not yet like it was during 1979-80, when the degree of organization of the urban masses was very advanced. Then there were large organizations in the neighbourhoods and among the shanty-town wellers. And mass demonstrations rallied hundreds of thousands of people in the streets. But it is undeniable that we are witnessing a tremendous recovery of strength on the part of the mass movement, and the bankruptcy of the pseudo-democratic alternative of Duarte. The situation is therefore not blocked in spite of the growth of the armed forces and the threat of direct North American intervention.
The weakness of the regime and the demoralization of the army continue, and these phenomena, taken together with the growth of the mass movement and the reinforcement of the guerrillas, may lead to an open crisis for the regime and the armed forces. In that case, a US invasion might temporarily be able to limit the advance of the revolutionaries, but could not break it.
The FMLN bases itself on this analysis, recalling that the United States lost the war in Vietnam with a task force of 500,000 men and a one-million strong South Vietnamese army.
The price in human lives that the US would have to pay for regaining a grip on the situation in El Salvador might in the end create a new mass anti-war movement inside their own borders. The FMLN today is correctly fighting with a long-term perspective.
by Arnold Berthu in San Salvador
Question.What are your conditions of struggle at the moment and your principal demands?
Answer. The fight against arbitrary imprisonments and against assassinations remains a daily struggle. We have just obtained the release of ten teachers who had been arrested after a demonstration by our union in the offices of the national minister of education. The government is trying to stage more and more such incidents.
Thus, on the nights of April 18 and 19, some individuals broke into our premises, which are in an area where the military is everywhere. The armed forces could not have failed to notice the break-in. The minister of education is accusing the leadership of our union of being members of the FMLN. That amounts to deliberately setting the stage for our imprisonment or our assassination.
Our principal demands are: the withdrawal of the austerity measures taken in February by the Duarte government; a monthly rise of 300 colons [5.4 colons equal one US dollar]; improvements in medical and hospital services; improvements in educational resources and facilities.
The minister has just broken off negotiations by demanding as a precondition that we reveal to him the identities of all the members of ANDES' executive council. This is therefore a basic question, a question of principle, because we refuse to submit to this condition that he should know all of us. A good part of the members of our leadership, for security reasons, do not live at their official addresses. If we were to declare our real names to the landlords of the appartments we occupy, we could be rapidly physically eliminated.
Moreover, a scandal has just erupted. In the past year, the International Development Association (IDA) paid the Duarte government a grant of 86.5 million US dollars to buy school materials. Only an infinitesimal part of this sum has reached the schools in August, 1986. in the form of some copy books and pencils. This year, the Republic of China gave aid that was to provide 80 million US dollars worth of educational materials, and again, very little reached the schools. We demand that the government say where this total of 166 million dollars has gone.
In May, we organized meetings of teachers in 14 departments in the country. These very militant meetings brought together a large proportion of Salvadorean teachers. Around 2,000 schools are totally or partially closed in the country. A large percentage of youth of school age do not go because of the lack of schools or because of insufficient numbers of teachers. A teacher with a family of six people needs 3,000 colons a month to be able to live. The average salary is 950 colons. Teachers' buying power, like that of other layers of workers, has diminished drastically. There is no index system for cost-of-living increases and so at the moment wage earners are going through a process of pauperization.
The constitution and the labour code specify that the government must increase wages proportionately to increases in the cost of living, but the government has done nothing in this regard. They say to us that because of the austerity, everything will be better in two years time. But why will anything get better when the people still do not own the land, the means of production, the coffee or the cotton that they produce? Only the landed oligarchy and the big capitalists profit from the austerity.
Q. How far has the process of strengthening the unity in action of Salvadorean workers gone?
A. In the past year ANDES has joined the Coordinating Council of Public and Municipal Employees (CCTEM), and the May 1 Committee. This year, we took an additional step by participating in the creation of the UNTS. The UNTS consists of workers' unions, unions of public service employees, and associations
13
International Viewpoint 13 October 1986
of Indians, peasants, agricultural workers and cooperatives. It includes currents stretching from the revolutionary left to the base organizations of Christian Democracy.
Q. How would you interpret the steps forward that have been made, notably the fact that some of the base organizations of Christian Democracy have joined the class-struggle union?
A. Remember that the mass organization of Christian Democracy, the UPD, signed a social pact with Duarte just before his election in 1984. Duarte has never made good the promises made in this pact, and a considerable section of the UPD has joined our struggle. Some secretaries of state for agriculture and officials of the agricultural credit system have resigned and have broken with the Christian Democratic party to join the left opposition.
On February 8, the UNTS held its first big public meeting. The government tried to prevent it by depriving us of our headquarters, but we replied by immediately organizing a massive protest demonstration.
Q. Have there o been any developments in the peasants' or ganizations?
A.o Yes, in a significant way, but in the form of cooperative associations.
Q. What has been happening in the students' movement?
A. The students are very militant. They have just held a large demonstration for the tenth anniversary of the murder of thirty students. Their main association is taking part actively in the UNTS, even if, normally, the latter would only include workers' organizations.
Q. Can we come on now to the question of the negotiations between Duarte and the FMLN?
A. Whether it is ANDES, UNTS or still some union organizations who continue to support Duarte in principle, everyone demands that real negotiations be held with the FMLN, a dialogue which the whole population must participate in. In the ten years that Duarte has now been in power, he has done nothing to find a political solution to the social and military conflict that is shaking the country.
The government is trying to prevent debate from taking place in the country, and that shows that it is afraid of the people. We ourselves want a public discussion, but every time the government puts off the meetings. They demand that the 14 guerrillas disarm. This is unacceptable. In any case, the government is entirely under the thumb of the Reagan administration.
Q. The FMLN's conditions involve a change to the constitution, a change of government and a change in the armed forces? 1986.
Question. In the past year, a first step forward has been made toward workers' unity with the creation of the May 1 Committee, which essentially brought together the vanguard unions. Today, with the UNTS, unity has been broadened to those unions and mass organizations that a short while ago constituted a base of support for President Duarte. How is it that the UPD, which supported the government, today makes up a part of the UNTS?
Answer. The UPD is divided. One part continues to support the government and another to oppose it. It is an organization that was taken in by Duarte's promises. It signed a social pact with the government before the elections. Many honest people in the UPD have realised that they were manipulated.
Q. Has there been a growth of struggles recently? A. Overall, there is an upturn of struggles. Certain organizations have backed off after seeing the terror caused by Duarte's repressive politics. But overall, the scale of actions has very clearly increased this year. The founding of the UNTS in February is one of the main causes of this. On February 21, 80,000 workers demonstrated after a call put out by UNTS. On May Day, there were 110,000 demonstrators. Q. Have you drafted a plan of action to win your demands? Last year, the May 1 Committee presented your list of demands to the National Assembly, allowing a delay so as to obtain a satisfactory response. Did this tactic pay off?
A. Yes. We cannot continue with a government simply of the Christian Democrats. They must be replaced by a government that has broad democratic participation, a government that will really search for adequate solutions to the problems which the Salvadorean masses confront.
A. We have drawn a negative balance sheet of this tactic because the Assembly ignored our list of demands. We reckoned that it was more useful to wage the economic battle in the workplaces.
Q. Is a direct struggle against the government possible given the present state of the movement?
A. A general plan of struggle is necessary, but we are at the stage of reinforeing workers' unity. We give absolute priority to this unity, including on the organizational level, that is, the creation of a single union. Afterwards, we will adopt a plan of action.
Q. Does the existence of the UNTS mean the end of various trade-union federations like the FUS or FENASTRAS?
A. No, those continue to exist. But as we are giving priority to achieving trade-union unity, these different federations are less active than previously. Concerning our federation, FENASTRAS, it is presented as the most active in the May 1 Committee and in the UNTS. But for ourselves, we do not consider it as the most important federation. We appreciate that we must contribute to strengthening workers unity with other trade-union and peasants' organizations, cooperatives and so on.
Q. What is the position of the UNTS in relation to the governmentFMLN negotiations?
A. We think that we must take a political position to force the government to hold genuine and frank negotiations with the FMLN. International Viewpoint 13 October 1986 kare unity"