El Salvador is undergoing a creeping civil war.
In 1979 there were more than 1,000 political deaths and disappearances. Many of the victims were killed when the repressive forces opened fire on demonstrators, striking workers, or peasants occupying the land. Others were union activists and members of left organizations who were kidnapped and murdered, often after having been brutally tortured, by paramilitary gangs such as the White Warriors Union (UGB) or particularly the powerful Democratic Nationalist Organization (ORDEN). The network of ORDEN informers (the "ears") and killers extends throughout the Salvadoran countryside.
All these paramilitary organizations, modeled on the notorious pattern of the Guatemalan military's White Hand, have close ties with every level of the state apparatus, the army, the Treasury Police, and the National Guard.
Military and police violence has been a constant theme in the history of El Salvador, which is now the longest-running military regime on earth.
Ever since 1931, without interruption, the army-at the general-staff and officercorps levels—has regularly decided who would occupy the National Palace, and has enforced these decisions through coups, edicts, and rigged elections.
The preeminence of the "military party" in public life was established in the period of political and social difficulties that the oligarchies encountered after the onset of the 1929 worldwide depression. But this preeminence should not blind us to the strength of the Salvadoran bourgeoisie. It is far stronger than the bourgeoisie in any other Central American republic.
The Fourteen Families
The strength of the Salvadoran bourgeoisie is due primarily to its concentration. The "fourteen families," with their associates and allied families, control virtually all the country's business.!
Their wealth is primarily built upon ownership of the land and cultivation of coffee, which replaced indigo in the nineteenth century as the main export crop. Bl Salvador is the sixth largest coffee producer in the world, and the third largest coffee exporter after Brazil and Colombia. Coffee provides two-thirds of the country's foreign currency earnings.
The concentration of land ownership is stunning. Although there are about 300,000 landowners, 40 percent of the cultivated land is owned by less than 2,000 owners. Thirty families (including seven of the "fourteen") each own more than 1,000 hectares (one hectare equals 2.47 acres). The largest landowner, the Dueños family, annually harvests nearly 9 million pounds of some of the best coffee in the world, and owns nearly 60,000 acres, which is more than 1 percent of the entire surface of the country.
At the other end of the scale, the 130,000 farmers whose holdings are under one hectare cultivate only 5 percent of the farmed land.
The wealth of the coffee barons, which has allowed them to become involved in banking, manufacturing, and the exportimport trade, flows from the harsh exploitation of the landless workers, who are hired on a seasonal basis. According to Marcel Niedergang:
The secret of the record productivity of the coffee plantations is simple: the Salvadoran peons are extremely hard workers. They live in ranchos de paja [huts], bare footed and dressed in shapeless rags. Each day they eat two or three tortillas, a handful of beans, and, luckily, some wild plants that are rich in vitamins. When they work, they receive incredibly low wages-an average of less than two francs [$0.50] a day.
"When they work," because the other side of the coin that has forced the agricul tural laborers to accept such conditions for so long is the reality of 45 percent unemployment among landless peasants.
For several years in a row, the income of these landless peasants declined absolutely. From 1965 to 1970, for example, their income fell from 1,230 colóns a year to 1,140 colóns, while the income of the large landowners, those with holdings of more than 200 hectares, rose 24 percent (186,130 colóns to 232,270 colóns).
Partial Industrialization
In the mid-1970s a United Nations aid mission found that fewer than 5 percent of the housing in the countryside had sanitary facilities, the peasants consumed virtually no meat or poultry, and the illiteracy rate in rural areas was nearly 75 percent.
The diversification of the Salvadoran oligarchy's economic interests began quite early-at the end of the 1930s. But the partial industrialization of the country got two big boosts in the 1950s. In 1952 the "Law to Encourage Manufacturing Industries" permitted duty-free importation of machine tools and raw materials. And in 1959 the establishment of the Central American Common Market provided an enlarged market for production.
El Salvador was in a more favorable position to take advantage of the establishment of the Common Market than its Central American competitors precisely because of the already existing tremendous concentration of wealth in the hands of the "fourteen families."
Alongside the agribusiness sector, a major assembly industry (electronic components) and subcontracting industry (cheap clothing) developed, particularly after the creation of the "free trade zone," which is an imperialist enclave.
From 1960 to 1977 industry's share in the Gross National Product rose from 15 to 20 percent. By 1977 exports of manufac tured goods represented one-fifth of foreign currency earnings.
The industrialization and transformations that took place in agriculture spurred urbanization. It also led to the growth of an industrial working class, which rose from 3.6 percent of the workforce in 1950 to 11 percent by 1971.3 (Despite the continuing exodus from rural areas, however, improvements in medical care and the resulting rise in the population growth rate has caused the pressure on the land to remain constant.)
Of course, the partial industrialization that has taken place, initially based on "import substitution," was unable to bring the country out of underdevelopment. Nor could it solve the two great structural problems linked to underdevelopment: massive unemployment and inequality in income distribution.
Nevertheless, the increased urbanization, and the growth in the industrial working class that resulted from the partial industrialization, help explain the growth of workers struggles in El Salvador. For the first time in Salvadoran history, the center of gravity of class struggles has moved from the countryside toward the cities.
The condition of the Salvadoran working class was worsened by the economic difficulties caused by the 1969 "football war" between El Salvador and neighboring Honduras. As a result of the war, relatively underpopulated Honduras expelled 100,000 Salvadoran workers from the country and closed its borders to Salvadoran exports.
The workers have also been hit hard by the repercussions of the worldwide economic crisis on the Central American Common Market.
A History of Class Struggle
There has been a long history of class struggle in El Salvador. The revolutionary movement began to develop in the 1920s. At that time, it was largely made up of artisans, peasants, and some university students. It was influenced by the farreaching reverberations of the Russian Revolution, as well as the nearby agrarian mobilizations of the great Mexican revolution.
In 1924 the first "regional" union of Salvadoran workers was formed. At that time the initial structures of the workers movement in the area were organized on an all-Central American basis. By 1932 the Salvadoran "regional" workers organization had 72,000 members.
The Communist Party of El Salvador was founded by Farabundo Marti in 1930, at the height of the Comintern's ultraleft "third period."* Martf-who closely followed the Mexican revolution and then became an associate of "the general of free men" Augusto César Sandino in Nicaragua-quite correctly articulated the connection between anti-imperialist struggle and socialist revolution.
The Salvadoran CP soon became one of the major forces within the Salvadoran trade-union movement. In particular it developed a base in the peasantry, particularly in the Indian communities of the central and western regions of the country, where the agricultural workers were crowded onto the large coffee plantations.
The 1929 depression and the drop in coffee prices had reduced this poverty-stricken agricultural proletariat to starvation. From its founding, the CP's goal was to organize an insurrection by this agricultural proletariat, an insurrection that would reinforce the Sandinista guerrilla struggle then taking place in Nicaragua.
The insurrection broke out on January 22, 1932. Peasants armed with machetes took control of the villages of Sonsonate, Sonzacate, and Nahuizalco, and executed the big landlords. But the Salvadoran army, in power since 1931, had been aware of the plans for the insurrection all along, and responded with ferocious brutality.
The revolt was smashed in a few days. The Communist leaders were executed, and the trade-union movement was decapitated. To reestablish order, the dictator Maximiliano Hernández Martinez, known as "the Sorcerer," had 30,000 peasants executed.
The 1932 insurrection and the bloody repression that followed were to leave a deep mark on the collective consciousness of the Salvadoran masses. The uprising took place around slogans for "all power to the soviets" and the establishment of a socialist federation of Central America.
The repression by the oligarchy and the army was one of the greatest massacres of the twentieth century-and set the tone for the next half century of the "military republic," with its exactions, repression, and massacres. The repression further weakened any illusions the mass movement might have had about the progressive role that the "national bourgeoisie" or "nationalist" sectors of the armed forces might play.
The CP never fully recovered from the effects of the 1932 defeat. Moreover, in World War Il its new leadership adopted the same line as all the other Latin American Communist parties: that it was necessary to ally totally with U.S. imperialism against the main enemy, fascism.
Furthermore, when the Communist International closed the book on the "third period" and turned to the policy of establishing People's Fronts, the Salvadoran CP concluded that the 1932 insurrection had been an adventurist action.
The CP's line made it incapable of capitalizing upon and giving form to the new rise of the mass movement that took place in El Salvador, as in other Latin American countries, at the close of World War II. As a result, the overthrow of the "Sorcerer" Hernández in 1944 was carried out to benefit the new industrial sectors of the oligarchy, while the workers movement was unable to intervene in any way in this family quarrel within the Salvadoran bourgeoisie.
Impact of the Cuban Revolution
The victory of the Cuban revolution in 1959 reshuffled the cards within the Salvadoran workers movement.
In an attempt to counter the rise of the revolution in Latin America, the U.S. government under President John Kennedy launched the Alliance for Progress. In 1960-61 in El Salvador a shortlived civilian-military junta tried to carry out a reform plan: agricultural workers were to be paid for Sundays, rents were lowered 30 percent, and the Central Bank was nationalized.
But the oligarchy's opposition and the junta's inability to carry out fundamental reforms (especially in agriculture) set limits on and put an end to this first experience with a "reformist" military regime. (The Salvadoran experience foreshadowed the experience of General Velasco's government in Peru in 1968.)
The July 26 Movement's military victory over the Batista dictatorship and the deepening of the Cuban revolution and establishment of the Cuban workers state gave clear evidence of the profound degeneration of the Latin American Communist parties, at a time when a wave of struggles was unfolding throughout the continent.
Drawing support from the public criticisms the Cuban leadership levelled at the CPs for their legalistic attitudes and their concept of revolution "by stages," a leftwing tendency developed within the Salvadoran CP. Between 1962 and 1969 there was a constant confrontation between the "trade unionists" who defended legal work, and the "integralists" who favored politicizing economic struggles and developing into armed struggle organized them around guerrilla nuclei.
A split took place in 1969 as a result of the war with Honduras. The right-wing majority in the CP leadership lined up whole hog behind their own national bourgeoisie in the conflict. The "integralist" minority, which included many workingclass cadres, broke with the CP. Many of these people were to play a leading role in the formation of the first political-military organizations.
Many became involved in the Farabundo Martí People's Liberation Forces (FPL). In fact, one of its leaders was the former first-secretary of the Salvadoran CP. Another group, the Revolutionary People's Army (ERP), developed out of the radicalization of progressive Christian currents.
The FPL and the ERP soon found themselves in a strategic impasse due to their concept of establishing small rural guerrilla groups (focos), which was further complicated by the geographic conditions in El Salvador.
El Salvador is a tiny, densely populated country, with no mountainous region where a rural guerrilla force could survive against a highly trained repressive apparatus with an excellant communications network at its disposal.
In spite of their courage in action and the widespread sympathy toward them among the Salvadoran masses, the guerrilla organizations left the field open for the electoral maneuvers of the bourgeois opposition and reformist sectors. In 1972 the head of the Christian Democratic Party, José Napoléon Duarte, ran for president, supported by a "multiclass" coalition of bourgeois groupings and the CP (with the CP operating under the cover of the Nationalist Democratic Union, the UDN).
The oligarchy and army had to resort to blatant electoral fraud to get their candidate, Col. Molina, "elected." The workers and the small peasants voted massively for Duarte.
Under Col. Molina the repression deepened. He patterned himself on the model of the other Central American military dictatorships. His minister of defense was Gen. Humberto Romero, who was in charge of the repression.
The experience of the 1972 elections provoked an intense period of debate over strategy in the far left. These debates were also spurred by the radicalization of the mass movement. For the first time a "progressive" sector, opposed to the oligarchy, appeared within the Salvadoran Catholic church. (In 1932 the church had hailed the bloodbath as an example of God's justice against satanic Bolshevism.)
Sections of the labor movement were beginning to break from reformism, or at least from the official union movement. In 1972 the National Federation of Salvadoran Workers (FENASTRAS) was formed when eighteen unions split from the progovernment General Federation of Unions. In 1974 the powerful teachers union (ANDES) and the Christian Federation of Salvadoran Peasants (FECCAS) participated in the establishment of the United People's Action Front (FAPU), and then in 1975 joined the Revolutionary People's Bloc (BPR).
In the countryside peasant unions began to be established in 1975-76, under the influence of far-left organizations that had broken with focoism and were turning toward mass work. In a few years the farleft organizations wrested control of most of the trade-union and peasant movement from the Communist Party.
Three Currents in the Revolutionary Left
There are three main currents in the Salvadoran revolutionary left. Each has an underground political-military organization as well as a mass organization that takes advantages of all the legal opportunities. (In the interests of simplicity we will refer to them by the initials of the mass organization.)
The largest current is the Farabundo Marti Peoples Liberation Forces (FPL) and its mass organization the Revolutionary People's Bloc (BPR). It was characterized by a sectarian rejection of any alliance with the reformists (the CP). The BPR has a strategy of "prolonged revolutionary war," with the formation, over a rather long period, of a workers and peasants army. It calls for the immediate establishment of a "dictatorship of the proletariat" following the victory.
Very sectarian toward the two other currents of the revolutionary left until very recently, the BPR is unquestionably the organization that has historically had the closest ties with the Cuban leadership.
The other two currents are the Armed Forces of National Resistance (FARN) whose mass organization is the United People's Action Front (FAPU), and the Revolutionary People's Army-Party of the Salvadoran Revolution (ERP-PRS) with its mass organization the February 28 People's Leagues (LP-28). FAPU and the LP. 28 both arose out of an internal crisis in the ERP in 1974-75.
FAPU is mainly based in the urban milieu, among workers and students. The LP-28 has more influence in the agricultural proletariat, especially in the eastern part of the country.
The political positions of these two currents are quite similar. They call for a "workers and peasants people's government" and advocate an alliance against the dictatorship that would be the Salvadoran counterpart of the FLN's policy in Nicaragua. It is important to stress that they advocate such an alliance, because given the specific character of the Salvadoran bourgeoisie, it is hard to imagine any sector of it actually participating in such an alliance.
The LP-28 has a clearer position than the FAPU on the socialist character of the Salvadoran revolution, and it stresses the importance of coordination among Latin American revolutionary forces.
Despite its origins in the Maoist milieu, the LP-28 rejects the idea that any sector whatsoever of the national bourgeoisie could play a revolutionary role. It has developed criticisms of Stalinism in China and the USSR, and stresses the importance of "socialist democracy" in preventing any degeneration of a revolutionary government.
The FAPU does not have clearly delineated positions on most of these questions, even though it, like the other two currents, basically follows the Cuban leadership on the international level.
The growth of these three revolutionary currents, which may have as many as 100,000 members and organized sympathizers, has been linked to their ability to take the leadership of the main union organizations from the CP and to make a new beginning in giving form to and leading the struggles of the poor peasants and agricultural proletariat. They also got a boost from the results of the 1977 election, which the Salvadoran masses saw as a setback for the electoralist strategy followed by the Stalinist party.
In the 1977 elections the bourgeois opposition parties-the Christian Democratic Party and the Revolutionary Nationalist Movement (MNR)-still had not learned the lessons of the 1972 electoral farce. Loyally followed by the CP's UDN, they ran an officer, Col. Ernesto Claramount, against the official candidate of the general-staff and the "fourteen families," Gen. Humberto Romero. Although Claramount beat Romero in the election, in the end Romero was "elected" through new frauds, and was declared president of El Salvador on February 20, 1977.
Claramount responded by going on a hunger strike, while his supporters issued a call for a general strike. On February 28, 1977, Gen. Romero decreed a state of siege and troops opened fire on the demonstrators, killing several. (The ERP mass organization is named the February 28 People's Leagues in honor of those vietims.)
1978 as a whole was characterized by an intensification of class struggles, a resurgence of armed actions carried out by the political-military organizations, police and paramilitary repression, the beginnings of strike movements, and agrarian ferment.
In March 1979 a new stage was reached with the electricians strike (they belonged to FENASTRAS). After twenty-three hours on strike the electricians won twenty-three of their twenty-four demands.
The Impact of the Sandinista Victory
On May 23, 1979 Romero attempted to stem the rise of the mass movement by decreeing a state of siege. But the occupations of churches and embassies continued.
The Sandinista victory over Somoza in July 1979 had enormous repercussions on El Salvador, only a stone's throw away.
Romero, under pressure from the U.S. government, which was worried about the possibility of a repeat of Managua in San Salvador, announced a new political opening, known as the "national forum."
Romero freed some political prisoners and announced to great fanfare that "free" legislative and municipal elections would be held in 1980. He even announced that the official party's candidate for president in 1982 might be a civilian.
But while political discussion began to take place in the barracks and officers' mess, no significant bourgeois opposition groups joined the "national forum." Instead, the Christian Democratic Party and the Revolutionary National Movement formed the "people's forum," which was supported by the church, and which the Stalinist UDN then joined.
By way of the leadership of FENASTRAS, the LP-28 and FAPU also participated in this coalition with the bourgeois forces. The "people's forum" called for "democratization" of the existing regime. Neither the LP-28 nor the FAPU, however, were locked into this operation, which they basically saw as a tactic. Instead, in September and early October the FAPU and the LP-28 were trying to reproduce the general scenaro of the Sandinista victory in Nicaragua and centered their efforts on preparing for the early outbreak of an insurrection that could finish off the Romero regime.
The October 15 coup that overthrew Romero, which was organized with the open and active complicity of the U.S. State Department, temporarily interrupted these plans, and the reactions to this coup showed the differences between the various forces in the "people's forum."
The Christian Democrats and the MNR rushed to the aid of the new junta, which they called "moderate" and "reformist." Moscow also hailed the military coup (in contrast to Havana's attitude), and a member of the UDN was brought into the government, naturally as minister of labor.
In contrast, FAPU and the LP-28 broke with the "people's forum" on October 18, arguing that the new junta had a bourgeois character, despite its demagogic speeches. The only change in their attitude was that they put the slogan for an immediate insurrection on ice. That was the content of the "truce," the unilateral suspension of offensive guerrilla actions announced by the two organizations.
The meaning was to become clear: FAPU and the LP-28 felt that they had to wait a few weeks or months until the Salvadoran masses as a whole went through the experience of the new junta's inability to respond to even their most minimal aspirations. Once this happened, the crisis of bourgeois leadership would reemerge on a higher level.
And in fact that was what happened. The junta quickly began to show its true character and the civilian ministers were seen to be simply hostages of the military officers. The fact that the repression continued, and was even stepped up, played a big role in clarifying the new situation.
Following the coup the new regime sent troops in against occupied factories (a wave of occupations began in August 1979 when foreign investors, particularly Americans, began shifting their operations out of El Salvador due to the evolution of the international political situation) and against peasant villages occupied by BPR guerrillas. Dozens of people were killed in these operations.
The paramilitary organizations ORDEN and the White Warriors Union continued to operate with total impunity, while the repressive forces began opening fire on demonstrations with increasing frequency.
Since the junta took power, there have been hundreds of assassinations and "disappearances" of demonstrators, trade unionists, and opposition political leaders.
At the heart of the question, of course, is the military junta's inability to carry out a real program of radical reforms, especially in agriculture, and its inability to satisfy the demands of the masses. In its initial program, the junta announced it would "put an end to the violence and corruption" and would "guarantee the rights of man." We have seen what came of these promises.
The junta also explained that it "was going to adopt measures that would lead to an equitable distribution of the national wealth and permit the Gross National Product to rise rapidly over the short term."
The Revolutionary Coordinating Committee
In December 1979 the political crisis picked up again when all the civilian UDN and MR ministers quit the government. After the energetic intervention of the U.S. State Department, a new military cabinet was formed, with the participation of the Christian Democratic Party. But the groundwork was being prepared for a real confrontation with the far left.
On January 11 a Revolutionary Coordinating Committee of the Masses was set up. It involves the three main far-left organizations-the BPR, FAPU, and LP. 28-and the UDN.
Although the platform of the Revolutionary Coordinating Committee of the Masses includes statements calling on "honest" officers to join it, no sector of the committee (with the possible exception of the UDN) has any illusions at all about the possibility of this call being widely answered.
On the contrary, the coordinating committee is seen by the masses and the vanguard militants as a united front vehi cle, under the leadership of the far left and breaking with the years of sectarianism, to prepare for the final confrontation with the regime.
Throughout the entire Romero period, sectarianism was the dominant feature of relations between the CP and the far-left organizations, and among the three main revolutionary organizations themselves.
The BPR totally rejected any unity in action, viewing the FAPU and the LP-28 as "revisionist" organizations. Relations between the FAPU and the LP-28 were entangled in all the acrimony of the dramatic split in the ERP. These relations were hardly improved by the fact that the majority of the FAPU saw unity with the LP-28 as a simple way to gobble it up.
Unity of these three organizations was spurred by two things. First, they were in agreement on the character of the juntathey denounced it. In addition, there was the mass movement's desire for unity and the approaching frontal confrontation with the junta.
In addition to these two factors, there was the model of the reunification of the three factions of the FSLN in Nicaragua in December 1978, which preceded the victory against Somoza by seven months.
The first result of the establishment of this coordinating committee was a revival of the mass movement on a higher level. This was especially evident in the January 22, 1980, demonstration on the anniversary of the 1932 massacre. Some 200,000 people from the four corners of the country participated. The demonstration was viciously attacked by the police and army.
Scores of demonstrators were murdered. A general strike called to protest the repression involved 150,000 industrial workers and 300,000 agricultural workers, according to union sources. This shows the breadth of the revolutionary wave sweeping the country.
Nevertheless, any self-satisfied complacency, any fatalistic attitude about the outcome of the struggle would be, and we are carefully weighing our words, criminal.
To triumph, the Salvadoran revolution will have to overcome enormous difficulties, perhaps far greater than was the case in Nicaragua. It is true that the Salvadoran revolutionary organizations begin with much greater mass influence, and a much greater accumulation of experiences than the FSLN had, even after it reunified in December 1978. But the January accord setting up the coordinating committee still must be further concretized in these areas.
First, there must be unity of the military fronts of the three organizations, which has not yet been achieved.
Second, there must be progress in building united rank-and-file organizations. Such organizations would be the expression of the reforged unity of the workers and peasants movements that would enable them to confront their tasks. At the same time, they would serve as the melting pot that would cut through the old sectarianism.
And third, the political objectives of the mass movement and the political organiza. tions must be defined in this transitional period before the big conflict to come. We have to recognize that this is undoubtedly the weakest point of the January 11 joint document, even though its stated objective is to prepare the insurrection and the destruction of the state apparatus.
While the revolutionary organizations are making their preparations for the final battle, they are confronted by another camp-imperialism and the Salvadoran oligarchy, army, and paramilitary groups. This camp has also drawn the lessons of the Sandinista victory in Nicaragua. They know that because of the politicization and the accumulated experience in El Salvador, a victorious Salvadoran revolution would very rapidly radicalize, and the socialist transformation of El Salvador would soon be on the agenda. And they are extremely worried about the impact of a victorious Salvadoran revolution on the other dictatorships in the region—on Honduras, Guatemala, and in the Caribbean.
We must clearly understand the meaning of the latest U.S. decisions to renew arms deliveries and financial aid to the Salvadoran junta. U.S. imperialism has decided that El Salvador will be the crucial test of whether the revolutionary wave in Central America can be turned back once and for all.
Although the political conditions in El Salvador are more advanced than they were in Nicaragua, the military conditions for a confrontation are more difficult. "In El Salvador, whatever the outcome, there will be a bloodbath," Salvadoran activists told us after the Sandinista victory.
The small size of the country, the dense population, the fact that its only two borders are with military dictatorships (Honduras and Guatemala) that have already massed troops, show that the final confrontation, the open civil war cannot be protracted, as was the case in Nicaragua where it went on for more than six months. The outcome of the battle will be determined in a matter of days, perhaps even hours if there is an intervention by CONDECA troops.
El Salvador could be one of the first tests of strength for the Carter administration. Washington needs a military victory, even if achieved only through Honduran and Guatemalan intermediaries, to reverse the course of American public opinion, which is still affected by the 1975 defeat in Vietnam.
This shows how high the stakes are in the fight to build solidarity with the Salvadoran revolution. The Fourth International has decided to throw all its forces into this fight.
February 15, 1980
Land Reform and Bank Nationalizations
The land reform announced by the Salvadoran junta in early March, which is the main point in its reform program, is a limited measure designed to rationalize the capitalist system. The land reform is combined with repressive measures aimed at stopping the development of the independent mass movement of poor peasants and agricultural workers.
At this stage of the reform, 500 hectares (1,235 acres) has been set as the maximum landholding, and land in excess of that amount is expropriated.
Even in its final phase the reform is not designed to affect holdings of less than 100 or 150 hectares (247-371 acres), depending on the quality of the land.
The expropriated landowners are to be indemnified with "State bonds," which will be redeemed for the full amount of any investment made in the industrial sector. This measure is identical to the one carried out by the "reformist" generals in Peru.
But the junta wants to ensure that the partial expropriation of the landholdings of the "fourteen families" does not lead to the development of very broad peasant movements. This is shown by the fact that the Salvadoran army has occupied the ninety large estates involved in the reform, as well as by the maintenance of the network of far-right terrorist organizations in the countryside, particularly ORDEN, and by the continuation of the repression.
The nationalization of banks has the same thrust. The junta needs to have banking and financial instruments at its disposal that allow it to carry out its "reforms." We should point out, however, that not a single foreign bank (and particularly no U.S. bank) was touched. At any rate, 94 percent of the deposits in the nationalized banks were made up of government funds, which had been put at the disposal of the oligarchy of fourteen families for their own investment needs.
The real policy of the bourgeoisie and imperialism in El Salvador is shown by the military preparations that are being made. It is significant that the ruling junta announced the declaration of a state of siege at the same time it announced the land reform.
Michel Rovere
Notes
1. The fourteen families are Dueños, Regalado, Hill, Mesa Ayau, de Sola, Sol Milet, Guirola, Alvarez, Meléndez, Menéndez de Castro, Deinniger, Quiñonez, García Prieto, Vilanova. The Mesa Ayau family has the beer monopoly. Benjamín Sol Milet is the principal stockholder in the Agricultural and Commercial Bank. The Meléndez family controls electric power. The Quiñonez family imports tractors and agricultural equipment. The Dueños family is the largest coffee grower. (See Marcel Niedergang's Les vingt Amériques latines, p. 110 and passim.)
2. In addition to processing coffee and sugar for export, El Salvador is the second largest producer of beer and cotton in Central America.
3. Eduardo Colindres, Fundamentos económicos de la burguesía salvadoreña, Edición Universidad Centroamericana.
4. The "third period," according to the schema proclaimed by the Stalinists in 1928, was the final period of capitalism, with revolution just around the corner. The Communist International's tactics for the next six years flowed from this assessment and were marked by ultraleftism, sectarian "red" unionism, and refusal to build united fronts with other working-class organiza. tions. The Stalinists abandoned this policy in 1934, and the following year adopted the People's Front policy. According to the Stalinist schema, the "first period" was 1917-21 (capitalist crisis and revolutionary upsurge); the "second period" was 1925-28 (capitalist stabilization).
5. Before the firing started, the contingents in the parade numbered more or less as follows: The BPR contingent had more than 80,000 participants, the majority being agricultural workers. The LP-28 contingent numbered 30-40,000, a majority being agricultural workers. FAPU had about 40,000, heavily working-class. The UDN had some 20,000, divided among workers, clerks, and students. There are two Salvadoran organizations that continue to publicly claim adherence to the Fourth International, although both have joined the "Parity Committee for the Reorganization (Reconstruction) of the Fourth International." That body is mainly made up of supporters of the Bolshevik Faction (BF), which recently split from the Fourth International, and the Organizing Committee for the Reconstruction of the Fourth International. Each of these groups—the PST (formerly the LOR, which was part of the Bolshevik Faction) and the GSI—had about fifty members. Their support for the BF-led Simón Bolivar Brigade's criminally sectarian adventures in Nicaragua [see the December 24, 1979, IP/I, page 1275] has deepened their isolation. It was undoubtedly to try to cut through that isolation that the PST supported the "People's Forum" last September. As regards the GSI, it continues to center all its agitation around the slogan for a Constituent Assembly, despite the fact that the establishment of the Revolutionary Coordinating Committee of the Masses has openly placed on the agenda the preparation of a workers and peasants insurrection against the junta.
6. CONDECA, the Council for Central American Defense, is a military alliance between the United States and the Central American military dictatorships.