Raising the heat in Central America
Central America remained in the news right until the end of the decade. In the last two months, US planes bombed large areas of two Latin American capitals, San Salvador and Panama.
After nine years of large-scale intervention in the region, the US still has had to rely on such barbaric acts as attacks on the urban civilian population as it struggies to get its way.
The situation in El Salvador has shifted significantly as a result of the offensive launched in November by the FMLN liberation forces. The FMLN broke through the military defences of the capital, and were still fighting in San Salvador in the new year.
This has been major military gain both from the viewpoint of recruitment (though the FMLN lost 400 fighters in combat, thay have recruited many more and from the fact that most of the regime's armed forces are now centred in the major cities: this gives the FMLN a comparatively free run in the rest of the country.
For the right wing ARENA goverment, the mass bombings in the capital were a desperate move, decisive in preventing an uprising in the militant working class neighbourhoods; but they have led to growing international promoting differences within the teaching workforce. They want allowances given by LEA's to teachers with additional workloads and pastoral/academic responsiblities to be used as levers in shortage subjects.
Their longer-term perspective is to introduce "merit pay' based on market forces, to destroy national pay bargaining and replace it with local or even school based pay schemes. The intro duction of Local Management of Schools (LMS) will facilitate this.
The main classroom teacher trade unions have policies firmly opposed to these ideas, but, unless national action around salaries is organised, demoralisation will become such that alSOCIALIST OUTLOOK no 21, February 1990
UPDATE isolation. Spain and West Germany have suspended loans, and 159 governments in the United Nations have condemned the bombing of civilians.
Air Force commander General Bustillo saw the bombing as a lever to gain more influence, possibly to set himself up as a new military strong man to run El Salvador: instead he has been kicked out into a diplomatic job as military attache to Israel and Europe.
The most recent blow to the Salvadoran and Latin American left has been the assassination in Guatemala of Hector Oqueti, who assistant general secretary of the Salvadoran MR and a leader of the Revolutionary Democrate Front (FDR). He was also secretary of the Socialist International's Latin America Committee.
Guatemalan death squads that killed him were set up by Salvadoran death squad godfather and ARENA chief Roberto D'Aubuisson. Many countries have now called for an inquiry into Oqueti's death and the involvement of ARENA.
In Nicaragua, the Sandinista govemment is keeping its head down as it approaches a tough political challenge February general election.
In December, President Daniel Ortega, along with the though the Tories are running into stormy waters, their objectives will be caxier to enforce. Industrial action is needed now by the NUT and NASWT in the context of the ambulance dispute and the pay claims by Ford and NALGO workers.
While the left in the NUT around the Socialist Teachers Alliance will be giving unconditional support for the NUTs 40% pay claim over two years, it will continue to campaign for a flat rate increase for all teachers. This would benefit lower paid tecahers who are mostly women. and help make teaching more attractive to potential new recruits. Without a serious pay campaign, the action by London teachers over class size for which there
other four Central American presidents, signed a statement in San Isidro de Coronado. The statement says that : "The presidents express their determined support for the president of El Salvador ... and his goverment as a faithful demonstration of their unalterable policy of sup porting govemments that are the
Cof democratic and popular involvement".
From El Salvador, the FMLN have declared this statement to be the load of rubbish that it is; but they have not criticised the Sandinistas for signing it, since they see it as the Nicaraguan state using diplomacy to defend itself, rather than as a serious political statement by the FLN, who clearly do not believe it.
The invasion of Panama has produced confused responses. The Thatcher goverment was one of the first to recognise the new US stooge regime, which was swom in in English in an American base.
However too many liberals, relieved to see Panamanian dictator Noriega ousted, were silent about the gross violation of Panama's national sovereignty. The Panamanian regime played an important role in breaking the US trade boycotts on Nicaragua and Cuba, as well as being useful to the FMLN. has been a 95 per cent ballot result in favour, will be difficult to maintain.
that socialists need to confront is the question of "licenced teachers'. This scheme is being introduced by the Tories in an attempt to deal with shortages. It involves unqualified teachers working under licence, on lower pay scales for a period of time in schools before "qualification". Again the leadership of the NUT is opposed to this, but lacks clarity over its policies and on the question of action against the scheme.
Socialists should be in favour of increasing the number of routes into teaching for the working class and for black
Castro and the Sandinistas were wrong to give Noriega political support in return for his limited material cooperation. (Indeed according to some reports, even this cooperation ran alongside offers to the CIA that Noriega would help wipe out the Sandinista leadership - if the price was right!)
In Britain, our main task is to condemn the US invasion. The tactics were brutal: wherever the Americans met determined resistance (for example in the working class districts of Chorillo and Miguelito) they retreated, and sent in the heavy artillery and aerial bombing raids. Only after this would they send in US
Staff in the Sante Thomas hospital in Panama City who revealed th real extent of casualties to the press were removed and replaced. The number of dead is still unknown, but is likely to be between one and two thousand.
At the meeting of the Or ganisation of American States, the USA secured only its own vote against condemnation of the invasion. Twenty states voted to condemn the move, with seven (El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Costa Rica, Venezuela, Antigua and Barbuda) abstaining.
Gareth Mostyn people. We should distance ourselves from the all-graduate professionalism' of the NUT leadership.
However, we should oppose licenced teachers completely. The scheme will undermine longer term pay and conditions within teaching through the creation of a cheap labour market. And it will help legitimate the racist policies of the Department of Bducation and Science, as the many black teachers from 'New Commonwealth countries that have had their teaching qualifications rejected by the DES and often work as 'instructors' will be pushed into these schemes.
Martin Allen Page 3
on the unions Neil Kinnock's way with words is well known. In a new development, alongside his tendency to alliterative verbiage, he's now trying out some unusual phrases. He recently wandered into an unfortunate description of how he tried to 'bare Mrs Thatcher's chest' in Prime Minister's ques- tion time - his voice slowing noticeably as he realised, the further he got into his sentence, where it would end up. Speaking recently in a television inter- view about the influence of the trade unions in the Labour Party, he assured viewers that though he would do what he could to freeze out the organised working class. The Labour Party, he said, could not be changed by a "swift flick of the wrist". Not so. It just takes a wanker as adept as the newly-promoted Employment spokesper- son Tony Blair (taking over from the un- manageably left wing Michael Meacher!) - to issue a press release. One Sunday, just before Christmas, Blair announced (supposedly to his constituency - in fact big business and conservative public opinion were his more immediate targets) that the pre-entry closed shop had had it as far as he was concerned. Since the 1989 Labour Party conference had supported the European Community's Social (which guarantees rights to belong to a trade union or not), Labour, argued Blair, would have to come into line. Blair was apparently panicked into the move by the whiff of Tory pressure and political point scoring in the run-up to the govemment's Employ- ment Bill. The Conserva- tives were planning to use the debates on the Bill to attack Labour's policy on the closed shop and to wheel out the Labour in hock to the trade unions" scare stories again. Blair's hope was that this concession would stop the papers from being beastly to him, and that it would give his proposed amendments on the Bill more clout.