El Salvador
The FMLN Taking Risks to Win
Envío team
Once the Salvadoran peace accords began being put into effect, the big game in town for accord watchers became tallying non-compliances and calendar delays. For this breed, April was not very spectacular, despite the visit of UN Under-Secretary Marrack Goulding. It was sort of a breathing space before the big test of the process, scheduled to take place at the beginning of May (D-DAY + 90). On that day, a full 20% of the FMLN's military forces are scheduled to return to civilian and political life. A similar number are to take the plunge 30 days later.
The FMLN obviously requires certain guarantees for the safe and effective re-entry of its combatants. The most important of these hinge on the creation of a new public security force and the provision of land to the former combatants. The land tenure problem in the conflictive zones seems to be getting sorted out slowly but surely and in an atmosphere of greater confidence than in March; at the very least, the special commission dealing with it is still plugging away. ANEP, El Salvador's private enterprise association, has stopped its campaign against land distribution, and funds for the National Reconstruction Plan, some of which must be used for purchasing lands in the conflictive zones, have been promised.
The process of creating the National Civil Police, on the other hand, is, at best, intentionally dragging its feet. While the Cristiani government, ARENA and the rightwing newspaper Diario de Hoy continue complaining about a growing crime wave and the FMLN's lack of compliance with the accords, little has been done to improve the effectiveness of the transitional National Police or to speed up formation of the National Civil Police. The first steps should have already been taken to set up the new Academy of Public Security and admit police candidates. To all this must be added the still-pending problem of the "officially" dissolved security corps, now simply turned into army corps. The Cristiani government has not hidden its desire to strengthen the transition police force with former security corps members. In many rural zones where old National Guard posts had disappeared, National Police agents (read Guardsmen dressed as police) have recently shown up.
The FMLN has responded to all this with two measures. One was a visit to the United Nations by a high-level delegation made up of Schafik Handal, Guadelupe Martínez and Salvador Samayoa. The other was an assembly of the military chiefs of the FMLN's National Army for Democracy to evaluate how the peace process is unfolding.
Business in the big appleThe FMLN's visit to UN headquarters in New York had two goals. The first, two-pronged one was a) to involve the UN and friendly member countries more deeply in the accord implementation process and b) combine the verification work of ONUSAL, the UN oversight commission, with certain control and pressure mechanisms that would make the parties' cessation of armed confrontation an "irreversible, short, dynamic process of determined duration"—in other words, as soon as possible.
The second goal was to investigate possibilities of renegotiating the calendar for executing the accords. Most political entities involved, including ONUSAL, acknowledge that the calendar is tight, which itself could create a backlog of projects and slow up execution. But those dead-set against the accords cannot be permitted to deliberately shackle their execution. The government and armed forces, for example, could try to force the FMLN into disarming without the conditions guaranteeing their full political participation. These conditions include not only the full public security guarantees scheduled for the beginning of May, but also the separation of the two military forces into their respective zones and the signing of a decree legalizing the FMLN as a political party—the deadline for which is also the beginning of May. Those who oppose the accords get particularly apoplectic about this decree.
Taking the moral high groundThe assembly of the National Army for Democracy (END) broke the stalemate in a press conference held in the southern Guazapa zone on April 23. There it announced that its combatants had been concentrated into 15 areas established in the accord for the cessation of armed confrontation. According to the calendar, that was to have been completed between D-Day + 6 and D-Day + 30 (in other words, during February), the same period in which the army was to do the same with its own forces and the security corps were to be dismantled.
With all its troops grouped into 15 zones, the FMLN risked exposure to any actions that might be taken against it. And, in fact, the incursions of combat planes denounced in February have been followed by others in the second half of April. Furthermore, the army has not yet fully regrouped its soldiers—or those of the former National Guard and Treasury Police—into their respective zones. Army mobilizations have even taken place in areas adjacent to the END zones. All this renders strange and suspicious the defense minister's April 23rd petition to the Legislative Assembly to allow US boats and troops to hold naval exercises in the area between the Bay of Jiquilisco and the Gulf of Fonseca on May 2-8. The petition has been shuffled off for study by an Assembly subcommittee.
The FMLN did not take these risks gratuitously. By complying with its part of the accord on the separation of forces, albeit somewhat after the deadline, it is forcing the army and the government to follow suit. The encumbered process of creating the National Civil Police, in turn, will be greatly benefited if effective popular pressure for compliance is combined with pressure on the government by the UN and friendly countries. This was probably the intention of the unexpected visit by Joe Sullivan, assistant to US Under-Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs Bernard Aronson, at the end of April.
Political reshufflingEl Salvador's political parties are now playing a major role in the progress of the accords through their participation in COPAZ.
One consequence of the FMLN's entry into legal political life has been some redefinition of these parties' alliances and strategies, much of which is taking place with an eye to the all-important 1994 elections.
The first to engage in such redefinition is the Democratic Convergence, the coalition made up of the National Revolutionary Movement (MNR), whose main leader was the now deceased Guillermo Ungo; the Popular Social Christian Movement (MPSC), headed by Rubén Zamora; and the Social Democratic Party (PSD). Throughout the military conflict, the MNR and MPSC maintained an alliance with the FMLN through the Revolutionary Democratic Front. Even after the Convergence won seats in the Legislative Assembly in the last elections, its political propaganda work remained quite united, but in the new political context, the MNR is becoming more autonomous of the Convergence, and in particular, of the MPSC. Current MNR leader Manuel Valle has even declared that the Convergence's role as a leftist coalition within the Assembly has reached its end. The MNR's view is that only the broadest possible amalgam of opposition forces—among which it would include both the FMLN and the Christian Democrats (PDC)—could be a politically viable alternative for the country. The disadvantage of this position is that the right, including the PDC, is focusing its criticisms of the crisis on the MPSC's Rubén Zamora, due to his obvious leadership role in the Assembly.
Another, more publicized redefinition is taking place within the FMLN itself. At the first big assembly of FMLN cadres, held during the negotiations in Mexico, all five organizations decided to assume the FMLN as their national political expression. In principle, each organization has also undertaken serious consultations with its base, including in departmental and national assemblies.
In public declarations, all five organizations have also recognized the FMLN platform as appropriate for achieving their political objectives, and all are defining democratic socialism as the expression of their political thinking. None has so far opted to change its name, which, up to now, referred to a more political-military structure. Not even the Communist Party (PCS) has considered doing so, even though this has become almost a norm following the collapse of the socialist bloc.
In the assembly in Mexico, the relations between the PCS and the National Democratic Union (UDN) were left undefined. Virtually since the UDN's founding in the early 1970s, it has been the PCS's legal expression, which has always posed a problem of dual political representation—as much for the FMLN as for the PCS itself. The joint announcement last month of the termination of organizational relations between the PCS and the UDN meant the consolidation of the FMLN as the single political expression of its five organizations, although to the detriment of the UDN. What is still unclear is whether the FMLN will be a single party with pluralistic tendencies, a coalition, or will remain a front that joins together five political parties.
Unity and disparityTwo levels of tendencies, one cutting vertically and the other horizontally, can be identified at this point. In the first, the old political-military leadership is thinking more politically. In particular, it is concerned with reorganizing the FMLN to respond to the new conditions, which, in principle, exclude armed struggle. The base, though clearly aware of the new process, views its weapons as the most reliable guarantee of attaining demilitarization, peace and democracy. This is more than a holdover from 10 years of armed struggle; it reflects justified mistrust of the sectors opposed to the accords and the new process and of their intention to comply.
There are also at least two tendencies on the horizontal plane. The first, more pragmatic one is willing to dialogue with all sectors to achieve the most peaceful transition possible without negotiating away principles. The other, while admitting to the real need for a pragmatic policy, also sees confrontation and political pressure as necessary to achieve the objectives of the transition.
After losing their leader Roberto D'Aubuisson, the extreme right is immersed in a struggle for leadership of the ARENA party. The more pragmatic, "civilized" sector grouped around Cristiani could become mired in problems if the recalcitrant sector takes over the party structure and leadership. In declarations to a German journalist on March 30, Cristiani himself admitted that the extreme right was still a danger to the democratization of El Salvador.
The actions of the death squads—such as the killing of the FEASIES night watchman—and the attacks on ONUSAL and the accords in the newspapers by tiny rightwing entities such as the Pro-Peace and Work Crusade are expressions of this. So is the armed forces' reluctance to fulfill the accords or the ease with which military personnel accused of kidnapping escape confinement. The process will depend largely on what sector gains control of ARENA—at least as long as the presidency of the Republic is in its hands.
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