Background to war in El Salvador 50 years of struggle against repression

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Black trade unionists THE concentration of the Salvadorean working class in the centres of economic and political power has long given it a significance out of all proportion to its numerical size.

This lesson has been well learnt by the country's rulers who have attempted either to co-opt or repress the proletariat in order to achieve "stability"

The coffee boom of the late nineteenth century led to the establishment of an elementary economic infrastructure and a corresponding growth in the working class - at this time the most important workers were those on the railways, ports and in such skilled trades as printing.

In 1923 the first labour unions were formed (many of them composed of artisans) and in 1924 the Regional Federation of Salvadorcan Workers (FRTS) was established. As the unions grew, so did the politicisation of the most advanced layers of the proletariat.

In 1925 the Salvadorean Communist Party (PCS) was formed by organisers from Guatemala and Mexico. At first the PCS was mainly student based, but throughout the late 1920s it waged a political struggle against the anarchists and syndicalists who controlled the FRTS and by 1930 it had established control over the labour federation.

The PCS May Day. parade of 1930 was attended by 80,000. The PCS also organised many workers through such front organisations as International Red Aid (SRI), which distributed propaganda in support of political prisoners and gave material aid to their families.

Despite these advances the PCS was still organisationally very weak. Until 1929 it took its instructions from the Guatemalan Party and then from the Comintern secretariat of the Caribbean in New York. it was only in 1930 that the PCS established its own Central Executive Committee resident in San Salvador. The cell structure, however, remained weak.

The world economic crisis of 1929 had a devastating effect upon the Salvadoreán economy. The fall in demand for coffee meant. that most of that year's harvest was left to rot in the fields. Because the coffee econoiny had swallowed up vast sections of arable land and turned peasant communities off of their farms, the depression meant unemployment, and starvation for many.

Those who remained in work saw their wages fall from 50 to 20 centavos a day. Between 1928 and 1931 the national income fell 50%.

As peasant resentment mounted, the PCS began to organise in the countryside. In April 1930, 50,000 peasants signed a petition SOLIDARITY oppar.srorer Conference: June 4 and 5, County Hall, London SE1 demanding a minimum wage law. Many joined the SRI. The government response was repression -laws prohibiting agitation were passed and between November 1930 and February 1931 1,200 were imprisoned.

In mid-1930 the government surprised everyone by announcing a free presidential election for February 1931. The winner was Arturo Araujo, a "good landlord" figure and head of the newly formed Labour Party. Araujo promised a motley collection of reforms such as improved sanitation, greater municipal autonomy, free medical aid, etc.

Araujo's hollow rhetoric achieved nothing except greater mobilisation among the peasantry and a growing anger among the landowning oligarchy. Enraged by Araujo's support for worker candidates in the December 1931 Mayoral elections, the army staged a coup and handed power over to General Hernandez Martinez.

Throughout the Araujo period the PCS had been organising workers and peasants more and more effectively. A PCS manifesto which appeared in Sonsonate in May 1931 proclaimed.

"The Communist Party of El Salvador denounces the government of Arturo Araujo as a government of assassins and animals and calls on the poor workers and peasants of the world to solidarity with their brothers in El Salvador ... The Communist Party calls all the poor workers and peasants of El Salvador to bloody • struggle against the national bourgeoisie, who are unconditionally allied to Yankee imperialists...

The new dictatorship, however, allowed the PCS to take part in the municipal and congressional elections of January 193.2. In those places where the PCS won seats, they were denied them by ballot stuffing and other frauds.

It was at this point that the PCS decided to set a definite date for rebellion. A Revolutionary Military Committee was established and a barracks revolt prepared. In the - countryside the SRI increased its agitation.

The PCS, however, was betrayed and on January 18 (only four days before the revolt) the leadership was arrested and the barracks revolt crushed. With the urban insurrection stifled at birth the peasant "jacquerie" was headless, nevertheless it went ahead and in some rural towns soviets were established for a few days.

It was a relatively easy matter OFFICIAL Contact: -IKF Neville Adams 115 Neville Rd, London N16. for the army to suppress the revolt, and in the fortnight of reprisals that followed it is estimated that up to 30,000 were slaughtered.

Martinez remained in power until 1944, during which time all labour unions were outlawed and laws were passed against industrialisation. He was eventually overthrown by an alliance of the working class, radical democrats and some sections of the military. In October 1944 however there was a counter-coup and the old regime re-installed.

The December revolution of 1948 brought to power a regime of radical officers and civilians. The official Revolutionary Party of Democratic Unification (PRUD) promised social reform and economic growth.

The PRUD recognised that in order to win urban support and expand the domestic market it would have to pass some legislation in the interests of the proletariat. Urban (but not rural) trades unions were legalised and minimum wage and social welfare legislation was passed. Workers thus had certain privileges vis-a-vis the rest of the population.

The PCS had been slowly rebuilding its cadre since about 1936 and between 1948 and 1951 they attempted to build a new national labour federation. With the support of shoemakers, barbers, many small craft unions and the electrical workers they twice set up new national groupings.

The government, however, would not allow any independent working class organisations and on both occasions PCS organisers were arrested and beaten up.

As long as coffee and cotton prices held up well on the world markets the PRUD taxed landowners and redistributed the surplus in the form of credits to industry and the construction of such infrastructural projects as the Hydro-Electric dam on the Lempa river. In 1957, however, prices on the world market tell and the Salvadorean economy was wracked by unemployment.

Toppled

Political gangsterism by the PRUD alienated many erstwhile supporters and in 1960 the regime was toppled by a heterogenous alliance of young officers, workers, and pro-Cuban intellectuals.

In a repeat performance of 1944 the nêw Junta was soon overthrown by a "Directorio" of mildly reformist officers. The new President Col. Rivera, declared that 'in El Salvador the exploitation of man by man is ended" and declared his support for Kennedy's "Alliance for Progress."

Laws were passed giving agricultural labourers one day of paid rest a. week, nationalising the mortgage bank and imposing currency controls. Urban rents were controlled and noises were made about agrarian reform.

The official Party of National Conciliation (PCN) soon came to an accord with the landowners, however, and concentrated its efforts on industrial growth. In 1961 the Central American Common Market (MERCOMUN) was formed.

It had long been recognised that the domestic markets of the Central American republics were too small to promote industrialisation and thus it was hoped that growth would be promoted by reducing or abolishing tariffs between the republics and erecting common tariffs against imported goods.

Industrialisation was promoted by establishing Central American credit agencies which were generously funded by Us loans. Throughout the 19605 intra231002 made Turished and A victim of the death squads foreign capital flooded into manufacturing in alliance with domestic capital.

The PCN sponsored an official trade union federation, the CGS, which in the early 1960s organised more than 15,000 workers. Repression of the independent left wing unions (the CGTS and then the FUSS) drove them to concentrate on purely economic demands.

The PCS accommodated to this economism and to the radical petty bourgeoisie organised around the Christian Democrats) by putting forward a programme of demands for improved working conditions and advocating a progressive "anti-oligarchic, anti-imperialist" alliance.

The industrialisation experienced under the MERCOMUN was capital intensive and between 1961 and 1971 the labour force in manufacturing grew only by about 4%.

Industrialisation had favoured those countries with a more developed manufacturing base (Guatemala, El Salvador) against the less developed economies (Honduras, Nicaragua). Honduras experienced a continual trade deficit with its northern neighbours and underwent little growth, furthermore it was flooded with Salvadorean peasants who had been expelled from their land by the oligarchy.

The resentment of the Honduran bourgeoisie against its Salvadorean competitors boiled over into a six-day war in 1969. Because the "progressive" Christian Democrats supported the war effort so did the PCS.

El Salvador won the war, but it had lost the Honduran market, and more importantly it was no longer able to push its peasantry across the border. The vast influx of refugees in 1969 created an even greater land hunger and gave greater urgency to the demand for agrarian reform.

The issue of agrarian reform split the more moderate wing of the PCN from. the openly prooligarchic wing and gave great impetus to the united Christian Democrat/MNR (Social Democratic/PCS presidential campaign of 1972. By ballot stuffing and manipulation of the electoral machinery, Molina of the PCN beat Christian Democrat Duarte by 22,000 votes.

Reformists in the military responded to the fraud by an attempted coup, supported by Duarte, which was bloodily crushed in a day.

Fraud and intimidation have characterined the Salvadorean alitical press eter since. When Molina attempted a mild "agrar• an transformation" in 1976 the oligarchy had him ousted replaced by the more reliablé komero. Protestors claiming thal Romero's election was frauculent were massacred front of San Salvador cathedral on Feuruary 28, 1977.

Peasant unions such as the radical Christian FECCAS and the UCS flourished from the 1970s and soon became aligned with the FPL (Forces of Popula ly, the PCS lost control of the and FENASTRAS which jointly comprised one-third of the total workforce and organised such strategie sectors as the power workers.

split led to the tion of FAPU (Front of Popular Unified Action) which argued for a broad "anti-fascist" alliance coordinating parliamentary and extra-parliamentary activities.

El Salvador Solidarity Campaign The reformist coup of Cctober 1979, failed to achieve either the land reform or the democratisation it promised. The PCS had five ministers in the new government: In the interest of unity with the "progressive bourgeoisie" , FAPU gave the regime a breathing space to see how "antifascist" it was. Assassinations by the army and "death squads" escalated and the last fragments of the PCS's.... "peaceful road" illusions were shattered.

Reagan and Thatcher have supported the Salvadorean bourgeoisie's attempts to "democratise" El Salvador. Britain was the only European state to send observers to the farcical March 1982 elections: In addition, Britain is playing a major role in the militarisation of Honduras Reagan's new garrison in It is the duty of all British trade unionists to show solidarity with our class brothers and sisters in El Salvador.

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WORKERS who follow the news on El Salvador or attend El Salvador very different.

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