The tremendous rise of struggles by the Salvadoran masses, which caused imperialism and the oligarchy to get rid of General Romero on October 15, 1979, have continued to spread throughout the country since then. The rise in the struggle reached a first climax in the gigantic January 22, 1980, mass demonstration of a quarter of a million people in the capital, called by the Revolutionary Coordinating Committee of the Masses (CRM).
Despite the constant step-up in repression, there have been two general strikes since then. One was on March 17, 1980, with workplace occupations, and the other took place in response to Archbishop Oscar Arnulfo Romero's assassination.
At Romero's funeral, hundreds of thousands of people again demonstrated in the streets of the capital. At the same time, land occupations by day-laborers, landless agricultural workers, are increasing. The ruling class and imperialism are in turn stepping up their acts of terrorism and intimidation against the mass movement.
All this gives evidence of an extremely explosive situation that is rapidly evolving towards a showdown.
Imperialism and the oligarchy, learning from the precedent of the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) victory in Nicaragua and the total destruction of Somoza's regime and repressive apparatus, are doing their utmost to prevent a repetition of the Nicaraguan revolution in El Salvador. To this end, they installed a "democratic" junta that promised "reforms," seeking to defuse the revolutionary and anticapitalist potential of the mass upsurge. They made every effort to win support from several sectors of the bourgeois and petty-bourgeois opposition.
One segment of the Christian Democrats, in fact, continues to support the junta to this day, despite the massacres for which the junta is responsible (more than 1,000 deaths in less than six months). The Communist Party and its legal arm the Nationalist Democratic Union (UDN), as well as the liberal bourgeois Revolutionary Nationalist Movement (MNR)—which is formally a member of the Second International—had also initially participated in the government.
This maneuver of establishing a facade of "liberalization" totally failed. Owing to the exacerbation of the social contradictions and the growing strength of the revolutionary organizations, the mass struggles and mobilizations did not diminish, did not just wait for "reforms" to be announced. On the contrary, the struggles spread.
The junta responded to all this with increased repression, which left no room for any reformist illusions. For example, the junta's "agrarian reform" was accompanied by the proclamation of a state of siege. Its actual result was simply that the army occupied the large agricultural estates and launched bloody repression against the agricultural laborers and poor peasants.
Moreover, it was these notorious massacres that led Archbishop Romero to call on soldiers to no longer obey their officers' orders to kill. Romero's appeal was described as "criminal" by army spokesperson Col. Marco Aurelio Gonzalez, sealing the fate of the archbishop of San Salvador. On March 24, 1980, Romero was gunned down by a hired assassin of the far right.
The Salvadoran class struggle has clearly reached a new stage following the failure of the "liberalization" maneuver.
Imperialism, the oligarchy, and the Salvadoran far right are making preparations to try to physically destroy the revolutionary organizations and those sectors of the masses who support them. To carry out this goal, the Salvadoran reactionaries can count not only on a well-trained army that imperialism continually reinforces, but also on the private militias of the oligarchy and the various right-wing terrorist organizations, such as the Democratic Nationalist Organization (ORDEN). These forces, composed of thousands of people, are based on backward layers of the peasants. They were created and trained by the leading cadres of the army and police and are closely linked to them.
The counterrevolutionary forces are therefore much larger and stronger than what existed in Nicaragua, and they are the political expression of the Salvadoran oligarchy. Whatever tactical differences exist in the oligarchy, it has had considerable experience in carrying out bloody repression. In 1932 the oligarchy crushed an insurrection led by the young Communist Party, killing 30,000 poor peasants and agricultural laborers.
The well-known "fourteen families"— who own 60 percent of the land, and control a good portion of industry, finance, and wholesale trade, as a result of which they have developed ties with broad layers of the bourgeoisie—are not about to give up their wealth and power to the people without a struggle to the death. There is no limit to the crimes and massacres they are prepared to commit.
Imperialism, especially American imperialism, is deeply involved on the side of the oligarchy in battling against the rising Salvadoran revolution. Not only is imperialism continuing to provide a flow of economic aid to the junta that it brought into being, in order to counter the effects of the massive exodus of capital in recent months. It is also increasing its arms and ammunition shipments to the army, hypocritically using the argument that Cuba is aiding the leftist guerrillas.
Imperialism is exerting a lot of pressure on the bourgeoisies of Central America and the "Andean Pact" countries to prevent them from adopting a policy of "nonintervention" or refusing to support the junta. This pressure already has had considerable success in Costa Rica and Venezuela, where the bourgeoisies have shown very clear hostility towards the Salvadoran revolutionary organizations. By contrast, in Nicaragua they provided a certain amount of aid to the FSLN against Somoza, in order to try to keep the FSLN within the framework of the capitalist system through replacing Somoza in a way that would not call into question that framework.
A more direct counterrevolutionary intervention by imperialism cannot be exluded in coming weeks. Already a big U.S. military mission has arrived in El Salvador, composed of a large number of "advisers." We should remember that American imperialism's massive intervention against the Vietnamese revolution in the early 1960s also began with the sending of large numbers of American "military advisers" to help the Saigon dictator Ngo Dinh Diem.
An army of 10,000 counterrevolutionary Cubans and former members of the Nicaraguan National Guard is across the border in Guatemala, ready to intervene.
In face of these numerous threats and provocations against them, the Salvadoran working masses and the four revolutionary organizations that have been established—the United People's Action Front (FAPU), the February 28 People's Leagues (LP-28), the Revolutionary People's Bloc (BPR), and the People's Liberation Movement (MLP)—are confronted by greater difficulties than those the FSLN had to face in Nicaragua. But they also have some bigger advantages.
Among the difficulties they face are:
• The ruling class in El Salvador is better organized, more highly armed, and has a bigger base in the petty bourgeoisie than was the case in Nicaragua;
• The layout of the land (a big plain) is less favorable to a massive guerrilla struggle than is Nicaragua's geography;
• The revolutionaries cannot set up an armed base just across the border;
• There are greater differences among the revolutionary organizations themselves, and some of them have a sectarian tradition in their dealings with each other;
• There are no real united rank-and-file bodies in the neighborhoods and villages.
Among the advantages for the development of the Salvadoran revolution are:
• The positive effect that the fall of the Somoza dictatorship and the gains of the Nicaraguan revolution have had on the combativity of the masses throughout Central America;
• The Salvadoran proletariat is larger than the Nicaraguan proletariat, and has greater experience and traditions of struggle;
• The semiproletarian character of a large part of the rural population (80 percent of the rural population earn a living primarily through wages, even though they are only seasonal), who are accustomed to trade unions or semiunion organizations;
• The more developed tradition of class struggle in El Salvador than in Nicaragua, where direct confrontation between the "oligarchic" and "nationalist" bourgeoisie on the one hand, and the disinherited masses on the other hand, has long been instilled in the ideology and strategy of the revolutionary organizations. (This was also partly because of the greater weight of a rightist CP, that is still up to its neck in the strategy of class collaboration).
In the present stage, the principal task of the Salvadoran masses and their revolutionary organizations is to put an end to the bloody repression from the junta, from the far-right organizations, and from the direct representatives of imperialism and its Israeli and South Vietnamese mercenaries. In order to accomplish this, there must be the broadest unity in action among the workers and peasants organizations, not only at the top—where on January 11, 1980, the Revolutionary Coordinating Committee of the Masses was created—but also and especially at the rank-and-file level. Unification of the mass organizations and trade unions is the most appropriate means to go beyond the stage where each revolutionary organization formed its own "mass front" that excluded members or sympathizers of other organizations or those who were not affiliated with any party. That kind of unification is also indispensable for the development of massive self-defense bodies, supported by all the urban and rural masses, as was the case in Nicaragua with the development of united committees of civil defense.
The tasks of self-defense and protection against repression and counterrevolution are closely linked to the vital immediate tasks of the Salvadoran revolution itself, which can only be achieved through a general people's insurrection. These tasks are by-and-large summarized in the "Programmatic Platform of the Revolutionary Democratic Government," published on February 28, 1980.
The tasks in the CRM's platform include: the complete destruction of the political-military machine of the dictatorship, which has been in existence for half a century, i.e. the destruction of the bourgeois state apparatus; a definitive break with economic, political, and military dependence on imperialism; the guarantee of democratic rights; a radical agrarian revolution; and, through nationalizations and the creation of collective enterprises and cooperatives, the transfer into the hands of the people of the basic means of production and distribution, especially the companies that produce and distribute electricity, the oil refineries, the financial sector (banking and insurance companies), and the large industrial, foreign trade, distribution, and transportation companies.
This program, which is more radical than the FSLN's program during the final phase of the struggle against Somoza, clearly opens the perspective of a revolution that will pass, without interruption, from anti-imperialist and antioligarchic tasks to the anticapitalist tasks of the revolution.
A government that carried out all these measures could no longer serve the capitalists and the military caste, but rather would be a government that defends the interests of the workers, peasants, and other exploited layers.
Revolutionary Marxists struggle consistently and uncompromisingly for this perspective—for a workers and farmers government, without bosses or generals. To achieve this perspective, the broadest mobilization, organization, and arming of the masses is called for. This process could lead to a large network of democratically elected peoples committees in the cities and in the countryside. These in turn could deal the final blow to the bourgeoisie's entire economic and political power, a bourgeoisie that as a class shares responsibility with imperialism and the oligarchy for the last half-century of suffering by the Salvadoran people and for all the crimes committed against them.
While imperialism and its stooges are laying the groundwork for carrying out their policy of bloody, large-scale repression, they are also trying to change the orientation of the revolutionary organizations. This pressure will become even greater if the mass upsurge continues and the repressive policies fail. The enlargement of the forces preparing to create an alternative government to the junta could be the occasion for such a maneuver.
Any political bloc with the bourgeoisie that hinders the unified mobilization and independent organization of the masses to accomplish the central tasks mentioned above would constitute a brake on the Salvadoran revolution and not an advance. It would objectively facilitate the ruling class's efforts to replace the state apparatus of the dictatorship, which the revolutionary organizations and the masses are ready to destroy, with some other form of bourgeois state apparatus.
On April 1, 1980, the Revolutionary Coordinating Committee of the Masses issued an appeal for international solidarity with the struggle in El Salvador. The Fourth International calls on the workers movement and the anti-imperialist movement in Central America and throughout Latin America, in the United States, in Europe, and in all other imperialist countries, to organize a massive campaign to get out the truth on the situation in the Caribbean, on the bloody repression that is taking place, and the threats of even greater repression and direct imperialist intervention that hang over the Salvadoran revolution, and it calls on the workers and anti-imperialist movements to organize a broad campaign of international solidarity with the Salvadoran revolution.
Imperialism wants at all costs to create a hermetically sealed ring around the Nicaraguan revolution in order to prevent it from spreading throughout the region. If imperialism succeeds in doing this, the danger that the Nicaraguan revolution could be strangled, as well as the danger of a new attack against the Cuban revolution, would increase.
But if the Salvadoran counterrevolution is defeated and if the revolution scores a decisive victory, the whole counterrevolutionary triangle—El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras—could be broken up. This would be a giant step forward for the entire Latin American revolution, when added to the effect of the Nicaraguan revolution.
All revolutionaries, all working-class and anti-imperialist activists must be fully conscious of the stakes involved in the showdown that is brewing in this small Central American country.
This is why it is our duty to mobilize all our forces and throw all our resources into staying the criminal hand of imperialism and the Central American oligarchy.
Hands off the Salvadoran revolution!
Immediately halt the dispatch of arms, "advisers," and imperialist mercenaries to El Salvador!
Not one cent for the junta, the army of assassins, or the paramilitary gangs such as ORDEN!
Immediately lift the state of siege and restore all democratic rights with no restrictions!
We must defend all those who are battling imperialism and the oligarchy and all victims of repression!
Solidarity with the four revolutionary organizations of the Salvadoran masses: the BPR, LP-28, FAPU, and the MLP!
All power to the Revolutionary Coordinating Committee of the Masses!