Unions stand up to repression THE FOLLOWING is a report on the FENASTRAS convention, which was held in San Salvador on November 5-9. FENASTRAS is one of three major union federations in El Salvador. It has 23 affiliated unions and a membership estimated at 100,000 workers.
The author was a member of the San Francisco Bay Area trade-union delegation and represented the Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers Union local 1-326 as an observer at the FENASTRAS convention.
North American unionists escorted Hector Bernabe Recinos from Mexico City to the San Salvador convention site. Recinos is the exiled general secretary of FENASTRAS who had been imprisoned from 1980 to 1984 for his role in the electrical workers' strike of 1980, which shut off power to the city. Recinos' wife and daughter
Dublin claims to represent.
The British commentators and politicians have indeed been at such pains to explain that the purpose of the agreement is to give the the neocolonial regime «cover» for closer cooperation with the military and police in Northern Ireland that they risk leaving their Irish bourgeois collaborators even more scantily draped than before.
The eruption of Protestant paranoia was, of course, predictable. It does lend the accords some credibility as a compromise, suggesting that the Unionists lost something and therefore the nationalists must have gained accordingly.
But, as always, the problem for Britain is that when the Orange watchdog is aroused, it shows the savagery that is inherent in its function and its inability to learn any new tricks. Move a muscle, and it starts howling and raging.
In fact, the Unionist «community» was built up specifically to defend British domination. It is entirely identified with the subjugation of the majority of the population of the island and particularly that section delivered into its hands directly by partition. A good part of it even lives immediately from employment in the repressive forces. Northern Ireland is no march land of warring tribes. It is a prisonhouse society. The guards did not make it, but the gates will not be opened until the function of the guards is eliminated.
Gerry Foley have been disappeared since 1980. CARL FINAMORE
SAN SALVADOR - This capital city has a population of two million in a country of slightly over five million people.
The city streets are in serious disrepair, lined by old, single-story stucco buildings cracking from age, and teeming with street vendors, who are among the 40 percent unemployed barely living off the sales from their small stands.
In the finer section of town, the wealthy vainly attempt to shield themselves from the desperation, poverty, and squalor common to most of El Salvador. Here, sprawling haciendas are obscured by 12-foot-high walls of concrete and stone, often guarded by heavily armed private security guards.
At first glance, infrequent visitors to El Salvador may consider the accusations of government human and civil rights violations to be exaggerated. The regime in El Salvador has attempted to revamp its image through a USsponsored public relations campaign.
A recently leaked confidential memo of a meeting of the Chiefs of Mission of the US Armed Forces in Central America held in Panama on September 8-10, 1985, states: "We have finally gotten people to believe that El Salvador is a reforming society and that the guerrillas do not rephe cay. necios wue and daugater resent the Salvadoran people. We need to continue to encourage this belief."
Certain steps have been taken, therefore, to create the impression that the Duarte regime has largely eliminated the abuses openly practised during the 1980-83 reign of the Death Squads.
For example, though large numbers of troops are stationed around government buildings and even occupy others, the military is remarkably absent from the city streets and market places.
And, it is true, public events like the four-day FENASTRAS convention,
FMLN FDR EL SALVADOR UBRE 3
International Viewpoint 9 December 1985
The FENASTRAS platform
FENASTRAS' platform of struggle, adopted by the federation's national convention, includes the following points.
- The fight for a sliding scale of wages;
- The holding of a national parliament of the workers to debate the current situation in the country;
- For trade-union freedom, dialogue, and negotiations to attain peace;
- For the right to strike and the demilitarization of all work places;
- The abrogation of all anti-labor legislation and decrees;
- The respect of all democratic freedoms, such as the right to assembly, organization, and expression.
The release of all political and trade-union leaders;
- The return of the exiled Salvadorans;
- The punishment of all those found guilty of crimes against the people:
national secretary of the telecommunications union, ASTTEL, an affiliate of FENASTRAS. His sons, Jaime and Jose, are 15 and 20 years old respectively.
The unionists in El Saivador often use the word captured to describe these incidents because, as in the Centeno case, they involve illegal kidnappings by unidentified men.
Centeno was almost immediately released but his sons were charged with supplying food and supplies for the rebels of the FMLN. The two young men are, in fact, Boy Scout leaders who were involved in a food drive.
We were told that it was urgent that immediate action be taken before confessions could be extracted through torture. Forced confessions are used to keep people in prison indefinitely without the right to due process.
These repressive circumstances often lead to spontaneous responses from the unions to win early release of captured unionists. Seven hours after the Centeno incident, 6,000 communication workers answered the call of their executive committee for a strike.
The workers reported to work but they did not perform their duties. This is often the strike tactic in El Salvador because picket lines are vulnerable to police attack. Phone, telex, and telegraph services were all affected.
The North American delegates informed the US Embassy of the capture of the two Boy Scouts, but the public affairs office just repeated the unfounded charges made by the police. The US delegation then told the local papers that it was going directly to the prison to determine the physical condition of the two young men.
We arrived at a fortress guarded by a tank and dozens of nervous teenaged troops armed to the teeth. We spoke with their superiors, who refused to allow us to see the Centeno sons but gave the father a certificate indicating they were in good health.
Not reassured, we went to the press and obtained widespread attention. As a result, the archbishop of San Salvador stated he was beginning an investigation. But, the next day, the father and mother saw their two sons and reported that they had obviously been drugged because they did not recognize their parents.
As we left San Salvador, the strike was still in progress and the Centeno youths still in prison. We promised to tell their story far and wide, hoping to help mobilize public opinion to stop US funding for the crimes of the government in El Salvador. International Viewpoint 9 December 1985
- The punishment of all those fo - An end to US intervention in sovereignty. which was attended by 400 delegates and held in a mid-city hotel, would have been unthinkable a few years ago. There is also a growing number of union demonstrations, with 85 strikes and job actions this year.
Faced with growing inflation and unemployment: with 20 percent of the population receiving only 2 percent of the country's income; and with an average wage of 4.50 dollars a day, the working class in El Salvador is fighting back as a matter of survival.
The next stage in the struggle will be the contest between the working class, which is recovering from the bloody repression to rebuild its organizations and leadership, and the ruling class, which is tor by the dilemma of how to halt this development without resorting to the destabilizing reign of terror that eroded its domestic and foreign support.
Attending the FENASTRAS convention turned out to be an excellent way to determine the real extent of repression faced by unionists in El Salvador.
Last year, 200 delegates attended FENASTRAS' first public convention in several years. At that time, five international guests attended, including only one from the United States.
Since that convention, three leaders of FENASTRAS have been assassinated, with 38 other documented cases unionists being captured, disappeared, or killed. FENASTRAS therefore invited a large number of international guests this year, hoping a security screen would be provided by the foreign observers.
Over 50 international guests, including 35 from the United States, attended this convention. It proceeded without disruption and even included major singing, dancing, and "teatro" performances.
It would be a big error, however, to mistake the new openings, which have been won by the unions in strikes and through international public-opinion campaigns, as a sign of a reversal of the ind guilty of crimes against the people; El Salvador and the respect of national government repression.
None of our FENASTRAS guides, for example, would take us outside the San Salvador city limits. None would accompany us to escort Recinos back to the heavily guarded airport for his flight to Mexico City, where he had to opt for another period of exile.
We were also told that the major leaders of FENASTRAS move from their living quarters frequently and go underground for several weeks after every major union public action.
We also spoke with the financial secretary of the water works union, which has been on strike since May. This unionist was just released from eight days in prison. He had been forced to stand in a cell with six inches of water and to go four days without food. He was accused of obtaining supplies for the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN) because he was gathering food and clothes from the church and union for the strikers. Sons of union leader in dan er
In a Sunday visit to a large textile union hall, the newly elected executive committee described the companyunion mentality of the previous leadership. Yet, despite that conservative stance of the union, its officers had been bombed twice in the last two years.
And as we were leaving El Salvador, our hosts informed us that two members of a national human rights commission had been captured and disappeared just prior to our arrival.
But probably the most dramatic episode disproving the myth of democracy and trade-union rights in El Salvador was the capture of Humberto Centeno and his two sons at 6.00 am on the morning of our arrival. Humberto Centeno is the national and inter-