Evidently, a transition programme would demand considerable investments and measures of adaptation with important consequences on the social level. In principle, such a policy would not contradict a non-social market economy, as has been shown in such sectors as agriculture, steel and construction. But it does contraA year afte offensive by Sergio Rodriguez. T HE negotiations between the
FMLN and the government have attracted a lot of attention - what balance sheet do you draw from them?
Before drawing a balance sheet, I think it is necessary to consider the meaning of the negotiations in the framework of our strategy. The FMLN believes that the armed struggle is a necessity when all other options are exhausted - if there was any other alternative which could meet the needs of the Salvadoran people, we would have chosen that road.
In this context, the negotiations have, for the FMLN, a strategic character. Our struggle for a new society envisages a model of social organization where the
GERMANY / EL SALVADOR dict the annexation policy that is concretely being followed.
Can one draw conclusions from this analysis? The balance-sheet is gloomy. It is quite clear that the tendencies unleashed in the ex-GDR will have negative effects in the West, above all on the workers' movement and other emancipatory movements. I will spare the reader the usual "lines of march for possible resistance." Providing that would need a much better idea of the reactions and discussions going on amongst those directly affected. * r the FMLN problems of the population are the central preoccupation of the regime. This project can only be realized with human and material resources — we all know that war destroys them.
If a negotiated solution is possible, a solution which, without smothering revolutionary expectations, reduces the cost of war and the destruction, it is necessary to understand it from a strategic point of view, for it preserves the means to rebuild the country and the new society.
On the other hand, it should be stressed that negotiations do not necessarily bring about a reconciliation — it is above all a question of the relationship of forces. As Lomas those, and those pol can dieto 15 nomic power, and those who contribute to
ON NOVEMBER 11, 1989, the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FLN) of El Salvador launched a general offensive which succeeded in entering and occupying significant parts of the capital, San Salvador (see /V 174, November 27, 1989). The far right government of Adolfo Cristiani responded by bombarding the poor neighbourhoods and massacring dozens of civilians, among them 6 Jesuit priests - but it was forced to enter into negotiations with the revolutionaries, under the aegis of the United Nations (see IV 188 and 194). One year after, on November 20, 1990, the FMLN launched wide scale military operations in several regions of the country (Chalatenango, Morazan, Usulatan, Guazapa, and others) and, near to the capital, paralyzed the airport of llopango — the current upsurge has already claimed 400 victims in the ranks of the armed forces. The renewed fighting comes at a time when the FMLN has just announced its Intention of bringing together the revolutionary forces in a single army, at a time when the negollations with the government have reached stalemate - the latter above all not wishing to discuss the demilitarization of the country. The United States Senate has decided to freeze half of the aid earmarked for El Salvador ($85 million was officially accorded to Cristiani). Mario Lopez, who Is Interviewed below, is a member of the Diplomatic and Political Commission of the FMLN. The interview was carried out
ON NOVEMBER 11, 1989, the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FLN) of El Salvador launched a general offensive which succeeded in entering and occupying significant parts of the capital, San Salvador (see /V 174, November 27, 1989). The far right government of Adolfo Cristiani responded by bombarding the poor neighbourhoods and massacring dozens of civilians, among them 6 Jesuit priests - but it was forced to enter into negotiations with the revolutionaries, under the aegis of the United Nations (see IV 188 and One year after, on November 20, 1990, the FMLN launched wide scale military operations in several regions of the country (Chalatenango, Morazan, Usulatan, Guazapa, and others) and, near to the capital, paralyzed the airport of llopango — the current upsurge has already claimed 400 victims in the ranks of the armed forces. The renewed fighting comes at a time when the FMLN has just announced its Intention of bringing together the revolutionary forces in a single army, at a time when the negollations with the government have reached stalemate - the latter above all not wishing to discuss the demilitarization of the country. The United States Senate has decided to freeze half of the aid earmarked for El Salvador ($85 million was Mario Lopez, who Is Interviewed below, is a member of the Diplomatic and Political Commission of the FMLN. The interview was carried out
EL SALVADOR its maintenance, have the hope of being able to win a victory while conceding nothing, they will seek only to crush the FMLN. Negotiation is not only a problem of political will - even if this latter is important - but, above all, of the relationship of forces. • It is not then, as has been seen elsewhere, a process of negotiated surrender, but, as you have said, a question of the relationship of forces.
Exactly. The aim of fighting for a political solution is to economize on human and material resources and to obtain political stability in the region - the Salvadoran conflict has a direct relevance in Central America.
As long as the Salvadoran government hoped to crush us militarily, the dialogue underway had no chance of leading to genuine negotiations — what has changed the situation is the offensive of November 1989. Before then, starting from the analysis that the new situation was going to lead to the international isolation of the revolutionaries, President Cristiani thought that the FMLN would accept a surrender and that it was only necessary to propose to it the legal framework for doing so - the concept of negotiations was only a tool to bring this about.
But the November offensive modified the co-ordinates of the problem - no longer could anybody believe that the FMLN was weakened and that it would accept a demobilization — the dialogue was thus transformed into a genuine negotiation. • The FMLN analyses the November 1989 offensive as a success then, which has shown the true relationship of forces in El Salvador.
The speech of General Maxwell Thurwell before the United States Congress in January 1990 proves the extent to which we have overturned the idea according to which a military defeat of the FMLN was possible. After November, Thurman said, *there is no chance of arriving at a military solution in El Salvador". And this soldier is surely not a partisan of political solutions — he participated in the invasion of Panama and he was chief of the Southern Command of the US Army! • You have said something that seems to me very important - the armed struggle is born of the need for an expression of the people, as a democratic right in the face of a closed oligarchy. I think that the FLN has always been guided by the concern to give priority to the interests of the nation. From this point of view, all military operations, all mass actions or any negotiation confronts the other forces in the or savede premi of the 16 whole of Salvadoran society. country with the problems of the International Viewpoint #197 • December 24,
It has often been said, for example, that it is the Sandinista revolution that has really created the Nicaraguan nation. The propositions of the FMLN — its last appeal to the nation, its practice, and so on - flow from this vision of the national interest, which, once again, shatters the idea according to which the Salvadoran problem is part of the East-West conflict.
In the doctrine of low intensity conflict, fomented by the US government, there is a strategic factor — the necessity of a political component which opens the road to the military solution. The Christian Democracy (CD) and Duarte have fulfilled this role. Before, this party was in the opposition and had a broad social base. Duarte was a popular leader and the best instrument through which US military aid could be justified. From the time when he left the military junta in which he had participated to become a constitutional president, unrestricted military support began. The CD became the cover for the low intensity war and Duarte was our principal enemy. Today we have every interest in the CDs' participation in the search for a popular solution.
The relations established with those who, not so very long ago, were our principal enemies, shows the national interests which guide us. For example, the CD used its trade union, the National Union of Workers and Peasants, created by Duarte, as a social base against us. For the FMLN, on the contrary, an alliance with this federation was justified even before Duarte left the government, because the National Union had its own specific interests.
After losing the last elections, the CD has ceased to be the ally of the Uniteed States, to become an opposition force that we consider as an allied sector - not as an organızation which supports our positions, but as a force which, distanced from the government, must also participate in the national struggle.
The project today of the CD to retake political power situates itself above all on the electoral terrain; all its calculations are guided by this, but conditions have changed. For us, this change is positive.
The attitude of the FMLN is not rigid, it depends on the circumstances, and the role played by this or that force. • Today, despite the problems, negotiations are underway and the FMLN explains that their outcome will depend on demilitarization. What is the interior and international situation of the Cristiani government in this new context?
The Alliance for National Renewal (ARENA) has launched a clearly neoliberal economic programme, abandoning the clearly counter-insurrectional reforms of the CD.
To implement his project, Cristiani 1990 entered into negotiations — he had to lower the tension of war, and play for time, but he in no sense sought to resolve the conflict. Thus he said publicly: "We are agreed on a dialogue, but not on negotiations"
But the offensive of November 1989 has changed things - the project of Cristiani to reduce the military conflicts so as to apply his project collapsed. He was then obliged to admit that, to achieve his goal, he needs peace, without for all that renouncing his economic programme — but he maintains his project of dialogue without negotiating anything.
Before the electoral victory of Cristiani and ARENA, the international context favoured the CD - when ARENA came to power, the US administration was obliged to help them to break their international isolation and to construct a good image of the president, "the man who wants to modernise the country", "he is fair", "he is reasonable" — but without great results, notably after the assassination of the 6 Jesuits in November 1989.
In El Salvador itself, this government is still more isolated than during the elections. It should be recalled here that only 20% of the electorate participated in the elections - very many people were not registered on the electoral lists, and the majority of these who were did not vote. Finally, ARENA had led people to think that it would be capable of putting a final end to the war and that it could crush the FMLN. Cristiani had also promised that poverty would be eradicated. Today, numerous Salvadorans, of different social sectors, have been disappointed. • In Latin America, two interpretations are put forward of what is happening in El Salvador which are in my opinion false. Some see in the FLN's proposals for negotiations the very essence of its strategy -"even the FMLN has come to negotiate", they say. Others try to differentiate between the propositions of the FMLN and its strategic goal, as if the Front was Machiavellian.
I think that there are very close links between the two projects (how to make alliances? how to isolate the immediate enemy? what is the meaning of entering into negotiations?) and the very principles of the FMLN. To analyze all this separately runs the risk of analyzing events in El Salvador in a partial manner.
As I just said, for the FMLN negotiations have always had a strategic character — whatever our enemies say, we do not treat this subject in a tactical manner -which does not means that we ignore the tactical questions.
Those who claim that "even the FMLN negotiates" are wrong because they think that we have not been sincere in seeking to negotiate and that negotiations represent a turning away from the revolution. If
this was the case, they would be right, but we have renounced nothing. We desire that El Salvador should preserve a maximum of resources with which to build a more just society — that is what impels us to negotiate. If, on the contrary, the process undertaken with the government reduces the possibility of building a more just society, it would have no sense. The negotiations have a clear purpose - they must not undermine the revolution.
But obviously those who have pushed us to the situation where we have taken up arms wish to use these negotiations to maintain the present state of affairs and crush the revolution. Evidently we are not in agreement. • International solidarity with the Salvadoran revolution is essential. At this level, there is, apparently, a contradiction - whereas the government of the United States is reducing its aid to Cristiani, US public opinion is beginning to understand that this war is very costly and the strength of the FMLN is beginning to be recognized - both because of its military capacity and because of its popular base -everything seems to indicate that solidarity has diminished compared to the 1980s.
Indeed, the level of solidarity has fallen. Certain reasons for this are easy to understand. In the 1980s, the perspective of victory seemed almost immediate - to the extent that the war has continued, the euphoria has diminished. Moreover, other poles of conflict have broken out and have diverted solidarity.
An important part of the solidarity movement was of a humanitarian nature movement was of a humanitarian nature and there are very many problems of this kind (the famine in Africa, the difficulties in the countries of the former socialist bloc, and so on) - the centrality of the Salvadoran case is therefore diluted. In my opinion, political motivations were not central in solidarity, if not it would be stronger.
The Salvadoran people have great hopes in relation to what is happening elsewhere in the world, in Eastern Europe, in the Soviet Union, in the countries of the third world which adhere to a socialist project.
The Salvadoran revolution is in movement - it is necessary then to maintain hope, and this must encourage a wider solidarity. The political forces of the left have a great responsibility in this reduction of support to El Salvador - some do not give the necessary attention to those struggles which truly have need of it. For example, in Latin America, it is necessary today to defend the Cuban revolution, it is the task of all the left, who can do it without illusions. Imperialism will enjoy a great success if it crushes Cuba! And the message Cuba hears today is, "OK, we will give you petrol, but at world market prices" - the dominant model of accounting is no longer socialist.
The Salvadorans have a great responsibility today. They must make the revolution in totally new conditions and with supplementary problems; if we come to power we must take into account, in our international relations, the weight of capitalist forces, whether that pleases us or not - one can no longer speak of "socialist relations" or of "relations with the socialist camp". In general, the trend today goes in the direction of capitalism. The Salvadoran revolution must advance in this new, more complicated context — A Constitue Accamhlv
EL SALVADOR / COLOMBIA in Salvador itself, we must establish a much wider framework of alliances.
International support could reinforce the popular sector of this alliance, otherwise the internal or international allies of a different character will have a greater weight.
The Latin American left must reinforce that of El Salvador and I believe that this objective is not truly shared.
It is necessary to avoid any foreign intervention that will destroy the chances of the revolution and, for this, it is crucial that international, above all popular, solidarity is as effective as possible. * ent vithont