[The following article is abridged from the March 12 issue of Rouge, the weekly newspaper of the Revolutionary Communist League (LCR), French section of the Fourth International. The translation is by Intercontinental Press.]
SAN SALVADOR - The welcome in San Salvador's ultramodern airport is abrupt and unexpected, but quite revealing. "You're French? What are you going to do here? The Communists rule your country, right? If you're here to write the same crap as the others, all these American journalists who land here. you'd do better to go back right away...
He is quite nervous, this officer who gives the passports a second check. Apparently he has no confidence in the lesser officials of the immigration service. The incoherent, aggressive tone of his remarks is not just theatrics. True, he wants to make you nervous. But mainly he expresses his own nervousness.
It is the anxiety of someone who is identified with an institution that increasingly seems to have lost the battle. It is the anxiety of someone who knows this and cannot admit it.
We were to run into several others like him in this city under siege.
Meanwhile, the repression continues. Blind repression. Carried out as an example. To terrorize.
Every morning, amid the indifference produced by fear and by the commonplace character of it all, volunteers from the humanitarian organizations and the archdiocese go through the poor neighborhoods. They are looking for the bodies of victims dumped by the "death squads" during their nightly rounds.
The members of these death squads are having an increasingly difficult time hiding the fact that they are members of the National Guard or the army's security services. Every day, dozens of new bodies are added to the total found during these macabre collections. End of an era
There is the barbarism. And there are the immense fortunes, the people of privilege entrenched in the luxurious neighborhoods of Lomas Verdes or San Benito.
There is also the mass of the petty-bourgeoisie, who desperately cling to the idea that they are "successful" because they serve the rich or live off their crumbs.
Many have already left. Others are making their plans. The classified advertisements in the daily press are more credible and more revealing than the communiqués issued by the military junta: the columns are filled with shady ads promising "quick issuance of passport, American visa, and travel arrangements in complete security.
This whole little world is characterized by skepticism and fatalism. It is expressed in the rush to consume, in the packed restaurants, in the crowded discothèques.
Meanwhile, a few hundred yards away "their" thugs are killing in the shadows. Meanwhile, less than forty kilometers away on the slopes of the Guazapa volcano, "their" army is stumbling and falling in its attempt to dislodge the revolutionaries from the mountain.
The atmosphere in the privileged ghettos of this city is somewhat analogous to the atmosphere in the spring of 1944 in the well-to-do neighborhoods of Paris, or in 1961 in the elegant districts of Algiers.
It is the last gasp and, already for some, the desire to forget. It is the last gasp of a class and its lackeys who know that their country and their capital will soon have a rendezvous with history that they cannot do much about. Why hold the elections?
In this context, the question is posed: why hold the March 28 elections? There is already a total dichotomy between the importance that Washington places on the elections, the amount it has staked on them, and the real situ-
ation here. Why even talk about them?
"The game is being played out, or will be played out, somewhere else, on another playing field," we were told by a young lawyer linked to one of El Salvador's famous fourteen families, who divide up most of this country's wealth among themselves.
And he added: "If the elections really take place, they will only cause us additional problems. Look how the campaign divides us, while the communists [meaning the Revolutionary Democratic Front (FDR) and the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN)] are more united than ever. The solution, if there is one, is not electoral but military. In fact, Reagan wants to hold them so he will have fewer problems with his senators."
A different concern is expressed by the owner of a small chain of stores, who is a member of the local chamber of commerce and a convinced Christian Democrat, a man who respects José Napoleón Duarte as "a courageous man held prisoner by the military."
His concern is especially significant: "In a half-century, we have never had a democratic election. We've only had elections that were rigged by the military or stolen by them at the last minute. So to talk about free elections today, to talk of them as expressing the people's will, as establishing democratic legitimacy when the guerrillas control a good one-third of the country, with the civil war raging everywhere, and with the army controlling the slightest movement in the capital, is a complete fraud."
Junta's failure, guerrilla offensive
In fact, when the U.S. embassy and the junta decided to organize these elections, they had a plan that seemed coherent. That was last year, shortly after the relative failure of the general offensive launched by the organizations carrying out the armed struggle.
The military thought that a victory was at hand. Their analysis was that the revolutionaries were "losing their base of social support."
The elections, it was hoped, would politically isolate the FMLN. At the same time, it was decided to create a highly trained airborne unit, the sinister Atlacati Brigade, which could deal decisive blows to the guerrillas, even in its most remote strongholds.
But the new offensive by the revolutionaries, which has developed with growing strength since August-September 1981, made a mockery of these plans. Despite a temporary weakening of their structures in the capital, the FMLN's "base of social support" broadened considerably in the country as a whole.
The zones over which the FMLN exercises
stable and permanent control have dramatically grown, while its military activities have increased in scope and importance.
One of many symbols of this situation was the pitiful state of the Atlacati Brigade's troops in recent days as they returned to their base (which had been the country's only teacher training school and — like the national university - has been closed for nearly a year and a half).
These troops, who were supposed to deal decisive blows to the guerrillas, had been forced onto the defensive, and then had to carry out a sudden withdrawal after suffering heavy losses around the Guazapa volcano, which as we said is less than 40 kilometers from the capital.
Logically, this rapid change in the situation, this evolution in the relationship of forces should have led to the cancellation or indefinite postponement of the elections, since it had become obvious that they could no longer fulfill the function initially projected for them. Division of reactionary forces
However, the international use that the United States had already made of the elections (they were to have provided proof of the junta's legitimacy against the FDR-FMLN), and the splintering of the bourgeois forces in the preelection period, meant that the political price of a cancellation would be very high.
The crisis in the bourgeois reactionary forces, the divisions and growing confrontations
in their ranks, show that they totally lack any perspectives. In addition to Duarte's Christian Democrats, there are five other parties in the race, all to the right of that formation. The most significant are:
• General [José Alberto] Medrano's Popular Orientation Party (POP). Medrano was formerly head of the National Guard and founder of the paramilitary organization ORDEN, which has a fascist-like ideology. ORDEN is responsible for many massacres of the population in the countryside.
• The National Conciliation Party (PCN), which was the official party under the preceding dictatorships. In this capacity, it was the instrument for the massive traditional vote frauds. The PCN candidates have a simple program: place full confidence in the present strongman of the army, General José Guillermo García. In other words, get rid of Duarte.
• Major [Roberto] D'Aubuisson's Nationalist Republican Alliance. D'Aubuisson was thrown out of the army for his extremism and his brutal methods! Openly fascist and a notorious psychopath, he willingly explains that if solving El Salvador's problems requires the massacre of a large portion of its population, he would not hesitate. "Hesitation would be criminal," he asserts.
For the most part, the election campaigns of all these "defenders of Christian and Western values against the Marxist threat" are being waged through paid political advertisements in the newspapers, on radio, and on television. Even Duarte does not dare to organize real campaign meetings for "reasons of safety." In his statements, Duarte appears to be totally on the defensive against his opponents, largely limiting himself to stating that what has been done for the past two years should be continued.
Shaken general staff
And standing "above the parties" there is the pulsating message that the military high command broadcasts several times an hour on all the stations: "The armed forces are the guarantee of the expression of the people's sovereign will." But even the most experienced ballotbox stuffers and election-fraud organizers have already stated that "no more than 30 percent of the people" will take part in the voting.
What impact has the political splintering of the reactionary forces had inside the army? What impact does the growing fatalism and cynicism of the ruling class have on the officers who defend the bourgeoisie's interests, suffering very heavy losses in the process?
These are essential questions that will determine how and at what pace the situation evolves here in the short run. In addition to the developments in the field, this impact is now of major concern to the growing number of military "advisers" sent from Washington under various guises.
At the general staff level, the differences and tensions are virtually out in the open. Some want to continue to put forward the Christian Democrats and Duarte and go ahead with the elections. Others are avowed and unavowed partisans of D'Aubuisson and other fascist-like formations. Then there are an apparently increased number who want to put an immediate stop to the "sterile and useless electoral farce."
But, on a deeper level, there are growing signs that segments of the military are beginning to fall apart.