In 1990 the Sandinista revolution in Nicaragua was overturned at the ballot box, and a right wing government elected under Violeta Chamorro. Now the FMLN, the revolutionary front that has waged a guerilla struggle in El Salvador for ten years and more, has agreed to lay down its arms. Patrick Baker from Socialist Outlook asked JAMES DUNKERLEY, author of such works on Central and South America as Rebellion in the Veins, The Long War and Power in the Isthmus, for his view of developments. PB: The El Salvador Accords represent a turning point - either the end or a turn in a process unleashed in the late 1970s with the Sandinista revolution and the armed struggle in El Salvador. What is your assessment of the accords? Do they represent a capitulation by the FMLN or a tactical setback?
JD: It's still not clear, because any decisive victory or defeat takes time- if's a they're a tactical decision, although it's process. My inclination is more to difficult to say anything's a tactic after 10 years of civil war. I think the Bolsheviks' Treaty of Brest-Litovsk is better than most historical analogies, though there aren't many precedents for this agreement. strategic change in the line of the FMIN There's been significant in the past few years. You could even argue it's a partial victory. Anyone who's been to El Salvador knows that after November-December 1989 it was quite implausible that they would win by force of arms The United States was not going to allow that. You could fight, but not win.
Any responsible political leadership was going to have to take decisions.
So i don't see it as a capitulation, par ticularly compared with the 1983.84 GAP accords lin which the liberation organisations proposed a government of broad participation']. I think it corre sponds fairly accurately to the balance of forces within El Salvador, but much more importantly to the global balance of forces, for which the FMLN bears no responsibility.
PB: But the real question is: what are the possibilities of the accords being implemented, given that the whole Feb. 15, 1992 No. 16 apparatus is riddled with the goons of the death squads? It's quite difficult to believe that the police and the army will be depoliticised, integrate both sides, and move towards a more or less liberal democratic state.
JD: Yes. That's clearly the case. It's also worth making the point that the balance is not the same as in Nicaragua, where the Sandinistas held state power. But some of the comparisons there are worth drawing, if only because some of the actors in El Salvador are looking at Nicaragua.
The accords are bound to be broken on a tactical level. But the question is whether there will be a major break by either the paramilitary or even the cenit inevitable or likely?
At the moment i think the FMLN's justified in saying there's a possibility it won't happen, and the guarantees in the administration of the accord give them some security.
It could go horribly wrong, nobody's disputing that. But the war had to end somehow, and if it's not on the basis of surrender, then there have to be deals.
here clearly needs to be a degree o rust -they've been shooting each other and in the case of the right murdering sure, it's not easy. PB: It's not easy to imagine anyone trusting people like D'Aubuisson...
D: But D' Aubuisson is dying and his nfluence inside ARENA and the spook network of the right in El Salvador is on the wane. These people aren't very ro mantic or sentimental and they know ne saying So what do you have on the right? No proper class analysis avoids dealing with the enemy tirst and foremost. You have a right which is no more though with picasant " rather less blood on their hands - but which is pared to listen to the USA The US has decided - particularly the State Department but even the Pentagon with the left, but that El Salvador is an inconvenience. The "demonstration effect of defcating the left in El Salvador has become negligible for them.
ATC:AMNLAE As in Nicaragua US strategy in El Salvador has forced the revolution to disarm So any deal that involves just minor concessions is relatively unimportant in the imperialists' logic. Just as in El Salvador itself, you have people in the ap paratus who would prefer to go for an all-out offensive against the FMLN. But after ten years, the purely military aspect showsthe FMİ.N is capable of surviving.
The FMLN is divided on this point, because it's not a truly united political force. There is a faction which is for upholding a maximum programme for social change, not negotiation on civil democracy.
But it would lose significant popular support if it implemented that line. It wouldn't be able to engage in the battle of ideas, which is what the rest of the FMLN now wants to do. PB: Going back to the links between the accord and what's happening on an international and regional level, those events at the end of the 70s -the Sandinista victory and the FMLN guerrilla conflict - have now come to an end. It doesn't look so long before Cuba will join them. So what many on the left saw as a chance for a real breakthrough on an international level seems to have fallen through. What do you think?
JD: The linkage between El Salvador and Nicaragua is interesting because one took state power and the other didn't, but they're still suffering the same crisis I think this means that in this part of the world, holding state power doesn't always hold the same advantages that we'vealways figuratively assigned to it. For a lot of the Latin American left, the important thing was conquering the institutions of the bourgeois state. That may have been misconceived in many **Thebalance in Latin America is mixed you can accuse the Brazilian Workers Party of harbouring a mish-mash of all sorts of things, but within it contains some very important movements. And millions of people voted for it.
Similarly, millions voted for Carde nas in Mexico and there were elements in his campaign that were far from a sell-out. There were also elements that were even closer to the right than the PRI, the party in government. But there were movements there that showed that elements of the historic left programme haven't just been junked.
So I wouldn't say it's all downhill. I wouldn't say that the Latin American social balance necessarily measures up as negative, in the context of the region as a whole. I think you're right that it t matter of time before the Cuban regis The big question - what's the ne agenda - clearly involves a lot of rec sideration across the board. But with Latin America, 1 don't think it mes throwing the baby out with the I think there are elements there in d past decade that are positive and a tive means of organising civil society maybe not the economy - which if est is institutionally, would have i proved the lot of the poor and the Part of that has to be the indigeno American character of things, so times crudely put as 'nationalism, F republican nationalism.
Sense of identity is something important in a region that has suffe acute imperialist oppression during t century: These features are importa although they run a danger of beingi cused of modishness at the moment. post-modernism But I think the left has been scarec getting into these dangerous zoe If we have to compete in areas whi are ideologically dominated by -bourgeoisie, then we should have guts to do it. That's one area where oft in Latin America has to get up a do something. PB: An important factor in the case i Cuba's decline but also Nicaragua'sl the withdrawal of Soviet aid, especially oil to the Cuban economy That has an impact on standards of living, and I think there's no doubt one of the reasons Castro has maintained so much popular suppor is that standards of living have beer remarkably high. But Soviet aid was mainstay.
Given that, how do you think the downfall of the Soviet regime was seen by the FMLN, the FLN and - d slightly different case - the Workers Party?
JD: Going back to Cuba for a min the kind of analysis of ordinary Cub in the '60s and "70s would be thro comparing the workers state of G with the capitalist state beforehanc through a memory of somewhere e But it was their own, autonomor came fom the miss Now that generation is old, it's not bulk of the population any more.
majority compares this regime with
previous period of this regime and sees à tangible decomposition. And it's more amenable, because of its youth and the history of the regime itself, to the imIf you talk to other Latin Americans, they are much more concerned about Cuba than they Union. If you talk to the average lefteaning Latin American - in Chile or in Mexico - most people have given up on Fidel, in terms of having the resources to survive this. On the other hand, they respect damue and venerate mim be cause he stands up to the north AmeriCuba stands for Latin American antiimperatsm, a peacon or oppositonism Neither in the period of peaceful coexisteriod of the Brezhnev doctrine, has the oviet Union ever stood for that.
The Soviet Union was never seen as counter to US capitalism. So with that gone, the impact is much more on Cuba ogistically than the disappearance of what was called really existing socialcreating an ideological trauma for the left in Latin America.
They didn't really see it like that. The groups coming up are the Brazilian PT which profess to be socialist, the FMLN, he FSLN - these were almost all created after the Cuban missile crisis, after peaceful coexistence. So I think the colapse of the Soviet Union represents a shift in the balance of power, not an PB: The Soviet collapse, along with a string of events including the Gulf war, means that there will be a big global recomposition in terms of zones of influence. But South and Central America are still two regions where some mass support exists for a kind of revolutionary socialism. The question is how that support can be used to create a new breakthrough against Bush's New World Order. given that the left is on the defensive.
JD: These are peoples who, with the exception of Cuba, have a deep experience of capita list management and econ omy and therefore are not duped. History has dealt them a very poor hand But it does mean that they understand the changing nature of capitalism, that capitalism can take various different quises We should recognise the reality of where most poor people who labour are at - they move between very radical so!utions and survivalist ones. That's ideologically where their terrain tends to be quite broad, why in these very violent situations people are not continually on You haveto develop, sometimes with. in the realms of theory, alternatives that are perceived by the masses as viablenot least because they should come, at mortin being aoreto anaryse, chuceand which is to propose an alternative whid is perceived as viable. Of course they can't be viable unless the masses make Then o No left wing activist is ever going to masses are there to do it. But we have to That's what the Sandinistas had in their bow, that's why I'm prepared to -tone cool condemn the FMLN for failing to allow peace to go ahead, if they didn't sign the pact and take a risk. PB: If we want to pitch the struggle on a different level - one that doesn't Involve such direct confrontation, but is on a more ideological level - surely that presupposes a certain transformation of these societies, a liberal democratic framework. But is it realistic, given the socio-economic reality of Latin America? These are tiny, poverty-stricken countries on the doorstep of the USA, and the world economy is in massive recession.
JD. Well, the ideal of liberal democracy has never been achieved anywhere. But that aside I think it is possible, be cause this is an economic question and capitalism in El Salvador is quite effi The fact is it's efficient by exploiting the masses more - but it's far more efficient than in vicarasua. but this 15 pol popular support and liberal democratic norms - again, a new historical experience for us.
It is not driving the right to the use of force of arms to suppress the masses -of course, there are exceptions, like Haiti. The historical conjuncture is perverse in terms of our old analysis.
Grow. PB: The pay-off - a There is a certain internal satísfac there is for that in a Latin America. agree with because the masses peace, and would through. These villages chetes. chery. We cannot stop it by force of arms, only limit it. We can protect our own, but we can't liberate the whole. masses as a whole know that. Why don't we engage with that? Of course this isn'ta system that is going to significantly their lot in terme of economic fac tors. upsurge on their lives, and I the Salvadorean people will through for next two to five years.
Photo: Bob Gannon But it is a new conjunc ture - 1 agree that it won't last, but it will for more than a couple of vears. Therefore we shouldn't say that it's going to go tomorgradual improvement in living standards - has been the common ground of Keynesianism and social democracy in the West. But it's difficult to see how much space semi-colonial country in JD: Structurally, there can be virtually none, 1 you. But the problem is that that's not you could even get an in. creased pauperisation of the masses and they'd still buy the system, because of they've lived people have watched slaughter, whole razed, their Tamines curto bits with ma These are people Ired of war and death I think that's why the FMLN leadership has said The masses are tired of butGUATEMAL The SALVADOR improve the HONDURAS NICARAGUA Plane shot COSTA RICA No. 16 Feb. 15, 1992 Page 9
Amazon Sisters Directed by Anne-Marie Features
thousands of innocent people and 'ideo- logical enemies' for the last decade. So