1. The imperialist intervention in Central America has reached a new stage. The United States is directly involved in the counterrevolutionary struggle in El Salvador, in the military harassment of Nicaragua, and in the threats of all kinds against Cuba and the liberation movements in the Caribbean.
This is the Reagan government's answer to the progress being made in the struggle for national and social liberation in the region as a whole.
Economically the dictatorships in El Salvador and Guatemala are totally bankrupt. It becomes increasingly clear that only through terrorism, massacres, and torture can they impose their rule over the workers and peasants living in desperate poverty and oppression.
The March 7 elections in Guatemala and the March 28 elections in El Salvador are farces. More than ever, these elections are marked by manipulation and fraud, and are incapable of providing any democratic legitimacy whatsoever to these regimes.
By contrast, the revolutionary organizations have demonstrated their authority and have increased their ability to carry out actions. In El Salvador, the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN) has not only fought off the junta's large-scale military operations, but it has also struck increasingly precise and effective blows against the dictatorship's forces.
In Guatemala, the four main politico-military organizations have come together to form the Guatemalan National Revolutionary Union (URNG). This creates favorable conditions for stepped-up political and military activity.
The revolution in Central America is becoming increasingly internationalized.
That is why the representatives of the Reagan administration are carrying out an active campaign to prepare U.S. public opinion for an increasingly massive military commitment, up to and including a direct intervention in Central America and the Caribbean.
Explaining the difference between Vietnam and Central America, U.S. Secretary of State Alexander Haig stated: "This is a profound challenge to the security of our hemisphere. . . . We are talking about vulnerability of . . . the Central American complex. . . . We are, in effect, at the very core of United States hemispheric interests" (New York Times, February 8, 1982). Haig had earlier pledged "whatever is necessary" to prevent the Salvadoran junta from being overthrown.
There is not a minute to lose! All the working-class and democratic organizations must mobilize to stop imperialism's criminal undertaking in Central America.
Junta's failure in El Salvador
2. The March 28 elections in El Salvador have already been shown to be a sinister farce and a failure. How can anyone believe in the democratic validity of these elections, which are limited to 60 days of official campaigning under the constraints of the martial law and state of siege that are in effect, and without the participation of any significant opposition force?
The ruling military-Christian Democratic junta has publicly rejected all proposals by the FMLN and the Revolutionary Democratic Front (FDR) for a dialogue.
In a December 17 letter to the secretary of the Organization of American States (OAS), five parties participating in the elections themselves had to recognize the illegitimate character of the vote: "By dropping the provisional draft electoral law approved by the political parties and by imposing the Christian Democrats' proposals, the Salvadoran government has completely lost the confidence of the political institutions of the Republic."
In an attempt to justify his new plans for economic and military intervention, on January 28, Ronald Reagan had the gall to tell the Congress that El Salvador had fulfilled the five conditions required by the 1981 international development and security agreement to continue to receive aid.
In a February 1 statement, the FMLN and the FDR had no difficulty refuting these claims point by point.
In his speech, Ronald Reagan went so far as to state that the restoration of civil liberties was well underway! The former U.S. ambassador to El Salvador, Robert White, was quick to contradict his president:
"Unfortunately for the people of El Salvador," said White, "and for the reputation of President Reagan, the exact opposite is true" (Miami Herald, Feb. 7, 1982).
Reagan is a bald-faced liar, and his lies are complacently spread by the bourgeois press of the entire world.
According to religious sources in El Salvador, 12,501 murders of civilians were recorded in 1981, compared to 9,239 in 1980 and 1,030 in 1979 (before the formation of the junta)! The basic freedoms of expression, association, and movement remain suspended due to the state of siege.
Decree No. 507, in effect since Dec. 3, 1980, allows the authorities to hold a prisoner secretly for 16 days and to suspend his right to a legal defense for 195 days. Decree No. 544 of Jan. 5, 1981, deprives workers of their trade-union rights by prohibiting collective bargaining.
As recently as December 1981 the United Nations General Assembly adopted a resolution denouncing "the persistence of a situation in which the government paramilitary organizations and other groups continue to act with total contempt for the lives, security, and peace of the civilian population."
How can Ronald Reagan have the indecency to announce progress in this sphere at the very time when more than 1,000 peasants in Morazán province were murdered in December during operations by the elite Atlacatl Brigade; when the army murdered 472 people while destroying the village of Mozote; when more than 400 civilians were killed in February in reprisals in the Usulatán region, which had been occupied for more than a week in late January by the FMLN; when most of the officers and soldiers purged after the October 1979 coup d'etat for being too compromised have been reinstated?
Progress in carrying out reforms?
There were supposed to be three phases in the Fundamental Agrarian Reform Law in El Salvador. The first dealt with lands over 500 hectares and began in March 1980. The second was to involve estates of between 150 and 500 hectares, meaning the coffee-producing sector that is decisive in the Salvadoran economy.
In March 1981 the president of the junta, José Napoleón Duarte, announced that this second phase was suspended indefinitely. On the other hand, the government's Restitution Commission decided to return 45 expropriated estates to their previous owners.
In a report in late 1981, the Salvadoran Communal Union (UCS), which has pushed the program of reforms in the countryside, stated that more than 25,000 families had been illegally chased off their land and that a new wave of land-grabbing is under way:
"What began in March 1980 with great promise and was still promising up to the end of 1980 now threatens to become a bureaucratic nightmare of pillage and murder. . . ."
Despite foreign aid, in 1980 El Salvador's gross domestic product fell 13 percent, industrial production fell 16 percent, and agricultural production 6.6 percent. Private investment shrank nearly 15 percent in 1979 and more than 38 percent in 1980.
In late 1980 the official unemployment rate was 23 percent of the active population, and underemployment stood at 38.9 percent. Of the $8 billion of capital that has left Central America for the United States in the past five years, between $2 billion and $3 billion came from El Salvador, according to the United Nations' Economic Commission for Latin America (CEPAL).
Given this situation, it is not surprising that Mexican President José López Portillo publicly acknowledged that the elections organized in El Salvador are not valid. "It is difficult to imagine what elections could take place while the guerrilla war and confrontations continue. We think that before any elections, there must be what I call a constituent agreement guaranteeing the authenticity of the electoral process" (Le Monde, Feb. 27, 1982).
This statement is a de facto condemnation of American policy and its results.
FMLN's growing strength
3. While the political and economic bankruptcy of the Salvadoran junta becomes more obvious every day, the FMLN has stepped up its military pressure over the last six months. On February 2, the junta's Defense Minister Gen. José Guillermo García stated that the elections may not be the solution. And on February 15, President José Napoleón Duarte admitted: "We are losing the fight with the guerrillas in the countryside."
After the partial failure of the insurrectional offensive of January 1981, the FMLN went into a period of reorganization and consolidation. Since the summer of 1981 it has relaunched a large-scale campaign including sabotage of the electrical network and the means of communication, and occupations of strategic cities. In mid-October, it successfully destroyed the Golden Bridge connecting the eastern and western parts of the country.
Despite the peasant massacres, the army's December operation in Morazán did not break the spirit of the revolutionary organizations. In late January the FMLN occupied the city of Usulatán for nearly one week. It also occupied Tonacatepeque, a suburb only 10 kilometers away from the capital. It increased its pressure on the strategic axes, the Pan-American highway and the east coast highway.
The armed struggle is moving back into the urban centers, but now with solid rear areas. In the areas controlled by the FMLN, which cover a quarter of the country, there are permanent guerrilla "war colleges." The ability to capture weapons from the enemy has grown considerably. The communications network and radio facilities have been perfected. Two days after the end of junta military operations aimed at silencing Radio Venceremos, the broadcasts began again, and in the north Radio Farabundo Martí has come on the air.
The successful attack on the Ilopango air base in late January, resulting in the destruction of a major segment of the dictatorship's air force, illustrates the FMLN's growing audacity and the official army's disintegration. Following the attack, an inquiry was convened to investigate the accomplices that the attackers must have had within the army.
In contrast to the junta's decomposition, the divisions in the bourgeoisie, and the signs of demoralization within the army, the FMLN-FDR is steadily increasing its authority and shows it is poised to take power.
Growing internationalization of struggle
4. This evolution in the relationship of forces in El Salvador has an impact on the regional context.
• In Guatemala the revolutionary forces, now working together inside the URNG, are active in 18 of the country's 22 departments. Extending the progress toward unity that has been made on the military level, in late February it was announced in Mexico that a Committee of Patriotic Unity (CUP) has been established. The Committee states that its views coincide with those of the URNG, which includes the four guerrilla organizations, and that revolutionary war is the only road open to the Guatemalan people.
The economic situation continues to get worse. The capital flight is accelerating. Only 18 percent of the active population has a stable job.
According to the International Federation for the Rights of Man, 26 years of military dictatorship have caused more than 50,000 deaths. The group estimates that there have been an average of between 30 and 60 murders per day in recent months, with about 5,000 for 1981. In July and August of 1981 alone, more than 3,000 peasants sought refuge in Mexico. The response of the chief of staff is to propose that the regular army alone be increased from 20,000 to 50,000 men.
The dictatorship views the entire population as suspected subversives, as active or potential combatants. This allows it to present the murders of civilians as "losses inflicted on the guerrillas."
The March 7 electoral farce increases the regime's discredit. No sooner had Gen. Angel Anibal Guevara proclaimed himself the winner than the three competing candidates denounced the enormity of the fraud, contested the results, and called a national protest action.
The regime rules only through terror. In Guatemala and in El Salvador, as was the case in Nicaragua, the national bourgeoisies are too weak and stunted to sustain economic development and save even a semblance of democracy.
The sole safeguards for the imperialist order are force and reliance on the local military cliques.
• In Nicaragua, the revolution faces growing threats from imperialism outside the country and the pressures of the bourgeoisie inside. International organizations like the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the Inter-American Development Bank, as well as the United States, are trying to place the revolution under economic seige by suspending their credits to it.
On the diplomatic level, imperialism is orchestrating a broad campaign to isolate and discredit revolutionary Nicaragua. Its latest slander is the orchestrated campaign over supposed persecution of Miskitu Indians.
The U.S. representative to the United Nations, the ultrareactionary Jeane Kirkpatrick, even charged that more than "250,000 Miskitus were interned in concentration camps," although there are at most 100,000 Miskitus.
This campaign serves as a pretext for intensifying the military harassment and border raids against the Nicaraguan revolution from Honduras. In Nicaragua itself, plots and attacks are increasing. In recent weeks, several dozen members of the Sandinista militia have been killed in skirmishes.
These attacks against the Nicaraguan revolution are taken up inside the country by the bourgeoisie. It is estimated that in 1981 private investment fell more than 50 percent, despite the loans received. The foreign-debt service in that year absorbed 28 percent of all export income. The training of an army of 40,000 soldiers and the costs of a militia of 200,000 men and women to stand up to the violent aggressors also weighs heavily on an economy that was already bled by the destruction in the civil war and the flight of capital.
Despite these attacks and these difficulties, the Nicaraguan people and the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) have not given up and have never renounced their solidarity with the Salvadoran revolution.
Imperialism, seeing the relentless process of internationalization of the class struggle, sponsored the establishment on January 19 of a three-member coordinating committee of Honduras, El Salvador, and Costa Rica, called, ingenuously, the Central American Democratic Confederation (CDCA)! The United States portrayed this community as "a first step toward collective security activities." The members, along with Colombia and Venezuela, are committed to coming to each other's aid in the event of aggression. Since one of the preconditions for membership in the CDCA is support for the electoral process taking place in El Salvador, this means Nicaragua is excluded.
The establishment of this community is another link in imperialism's counterrevolutionary apparatus in Central America. It furnishes a new "legal" channel for a future intervention in El Salvador, and at the same time tightens the encirclement of revolutionary Nicaragua. It is part of a series of moves aimed at isolating and crushing Nicaragua, such as the formation of the "Northern Triangle," whose objective is to coordinate the armies of Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador.
'The Managua Appeal' and Cuba's response
5. In an attempt to respond to this evolution in the situation, Mexican President José López Portillo launched his "Managua Appeal" on February 21. It was an overall peace plan aimed at resolving — through "separate" but "convergent" channels — three kinds of conflicts: those involving Nicaragua, those involving El Salvador, and relations between the United States and Cuba.
Concerning Nicaragua, José López Portillo proposes a reduction in Nicaraguan military forces in exchange for a U.S. renunciation of military threats and the disarming of the reactionary groups operating out of Honduras.
In regard to El Salvador, he offered his mediation to find a compromise between "elections without negotiations and negotiations without elections," without being more specific.
Finally he encouraged the continuation of contacts between the United States and Cuba within the framework opened by the meeting between Carlos Rafael Rodriguez and Alexander Haig that took place in November in Mexico, a meeting that was supposed to have remained secret.
For the Mexican bourgeoisie, the search for a negotiated outcome — however difficult and uncertain it might be — is motivated by its desire to protect its own economic interests by trying to reestablish stability in the Gulf of Mexico and prevent the danger of a political crisis that a massive American intervention in Central America would provoke even in Mexico itself.
Whatever its aims and intentions, the objective result of the "Managua Appeal," made on the eve of Ronald Reagan's speech on Central America and the Caribbean (and with knowledge of its content since José López Portillo stated that the two speeches were exchanged before being delivered), is to make a direct U.S. military intervention more difficult by condemning it in advance as "a huge historical error that would cause a wide upheaval throughout the hemisphere and would rekindle deep-rooted anti-U.S. feelings among the finest people of Latin America."
It was in this respect that Fidel Castro warmly saluted the "Managua Appeal," without retreating an inch under imperialism's threats and without renouncing his commitment of solidarity to the Central American revolutions.
In a February 22 letter to José López Portillo, Castro wrote:
The tone of [the U.S.] threats grows more harsh from day to day and the campaign of lies and slanders against our country reaches unprecedented heights. Its foremost officials persist in refusing to rule out a military attack as one of the options that — illegally and without the least respect for international law — they claim to have available to "punish" Cuba and destroy it if possible because of its unshakeable determination to be independent.
Thus it is the legitimate, sacred, and inalienable right of self-defense that has led the Cuban people to organize themselves on a mass basis to undergo military training. For that reason, Cuban arms will never pose a threat to the sister nations of Latin America and the Caribbean; but rather they symbolize a resolve expressed by José Marti in his time: by securing Cuba's independence, to prevent the United States from extending itself throughout the region and to stop it from pouncing with renewed force on our American territory. We are in fact a solid unbreachable barrier against this expansionism, which has cost the peoples of this hemisphere so much pain and which has cost the heroic Mexican nation such a high price in blood, humiliation, and substantial portions of territory.
If the government of the United States — the source of all the problems that affect Latin America and the Caribbean today — pledges not to attack its neighbors and halts its constant threats, if it stops putting its arms and financial resources at the service of genocidal regimes, if it stops its subversive activities — all of which have absolutely no legitimacy — Cuba is willing to cooperate in the noble efforts you outlined in Managua to establish in the region a climate of peace, mutual respect, and necessary change to which we also aspire.
But while the first effect of José López Portillo's proposals is to stay imperialism's hand in terms of a direct military intervention, the proposals do not represent disinterested support to the revolution in Central America. On the contrary, their aim is to prevent a generalized flare-up in the region by opening the possibility of a negotiated solution in the not-too-distant future.
This function is all the more apparent because the Mexican president — instead of recognizing the URNG and welcoming the Guatemalan refugees as political refugees — to establish a special armed force for the defense of its southern border and its oil fields. When a journalist asked why Mexico never took the same position on Guatemala as on Nicaragua or El Salvador, José López Portillo responded laconically: "They are different situations" (Le Monde, Feb. 27, 1982).
It is totally legitimate for the FMLN to take advantage of the contradictions of the enemy by proposing to negotiate without renouncing its political and military independence.
But José López Portillo's proposals for negotiations have a different thrust. By seeking a total solution for the whole region, they try to lay down the terms for a total contract and set the price for avoiding U.S. military intervention: a halt to the revolutionary process in Central America.
By trying to stabilize the present situation in Nicaragua, the proposals are an encouragement to the Nicaraguan bourgeoisie within the perspective of an overall solution for the region.
By banking on the impossibility of an immediate military solution in El Salvador, given the relationship of forces, they seek to provoke divisions and differences within the resistance movement on the question of negotiations.
After the elections in El Salvador, the proposals could offer American imperialism a way to avoid sinking any deeper. From the beginning, the "Managua Appeal" had the support of the European Social Democracy. In early March, the British foreign office (Britain was one of the few European countries to support the American policy until that time) modified its position, emphasizing the differences within the FDR and the possibility of finding responsible people to negotiate with inside it. Finally, the direct discussions held between American and Mexican officials lead in the same direction.
José López Portillo and the Second International have drawn the lessons of Nicaragua. They will do everything they can to avoid a military victory by the FMLN and the Guatemalan guerrillas.
6. On February 24, three days after the "Managua Appeal," Ronald Reagan made public his development and military aid plan for Central America and the Caribbean.
José López Portillo then had to conclude that the chances for success of his own peace proposals "are lower, in that President Reagan was very hard on Cuba and Nicaragua. The chances for détente are diminished" (Le Monde, Feb. 27, 1982).
Ronald Reagan's plan, described by the press as a "mini-Marshall Plan," is in fact a new military escalation, introduced by a speech with the tone of an anti-Communist crusade against "the tightening grip of the totalitarian left in Grenada and Nicaragua, and the expansion of Soviet-backed, Cuban-managed support for violent revolution in Central America. . . . If we do not act promptly and decisively in defense of freedom, new Cubas will arise from the ruins of today's conflicts."
The plan basically consists of $350 million in supplementary aid (bringing the total aid to the region for the current year to $823 million), tax incentives for imperialist corporations investing in these countries, and technical aid to the private sector. Presented with a humanitarian gloss to ameliorate the American Congress's resistance and the public's hostility to a growing involvement in Central America, this aid is very selective.
El Salvador, Costa Rica, and Jamaica are the main recipients, and Nicaragua is excluded. In countries that are already characterized by corruption and the most flagrant inequality, the effects will be slow and limited under the best of circumstances. Under the worst, and most probable, circumstances they will fuel speculation, as was the case with the aid received by Nicaragua under Somoza after the earthquake, without stimulating investment.
Ronald Reagan's so-called aid is limited to making the Caribbean a better base for investment by American monopolies, and to proposing that these countries adopt economic policy identical to the one that the United States has led to higher unemployment and austerity.
It is too late for economic bandaids. Improving the situation for U.S. imperialism requires the crushing of the revolution.
In fact, therefore, the Reagan plan is a cover for a new military effort. Of the $350 million authorized, $60 million is explicitly reserved for military aid. This must be added to the $26 million in military aid already in the regular budget and the $55 million authorized on February 1 to rapidly replace the aircraft destroyed by the Salvadoran guerrillas three days earlier in their operation against the Ilopango air base. The speed with which this was bestowed, compared to the slowness of the interminable wheeling and dealing involved in granting credits to Nicaragua (which were revoked) speaks for itself.
They are part of an unprecedented U.S. military budget — reaching the colossal total of $216 billion — that was presented in early February, at a time when that country has 10 million unemployed, and at a time when Ronald Reagan decreed a cut in social spending of $41 billion in the coming three years.
This military aid is already creating the preconditions for the presence of many instructors and advisers, who are the first step in direct intervention.
It is combined with intensive military aid from Israel and the now publicly acknowledged presence of Argentine military personnel, especially in El Salvador and in Honduras. When he went to Buenos Aires, Ronald Reagan's envoy Thomas Enders, who was once responsible for the U.S. bombing of Cambodia, clearly stated that Argentina would have "an active participation in any action undertaken in Central America."
When Reagan stated at a February 18 press conference that the United States has "no plans to send American combat troops into action any place in the world," he was again lying. To the extent it is possible, the United States will try to get others to do the fighting for it. It will offer them the material and financial means. Throughout February the U.S. press has been revealing that along with the direct military aid there have been "special" appropriations to the CIA, such as the $19 million to encourage the formation of a broad political opposition and paramilitary groups in Nicaragua.
But in the final analysis the United States will never give up its option to directly intervene.
The debate is not over the need to intervene, but over the forms. One possible form is to support a regional war against Nicaragua waged by Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador with the combined help of Argentines, Chileans, and U.S. money and technical aid. Another possibility is to provoke a civil war in Nicaragua itself. Finally, there is the possibility of a direct intervention by the U.S. Marines, or of combining all these variants in different proportions.
The United States is already in fact involved in the counterrevolutionary war in Central America: through arms deliveries, through the presence of military advisers, through the organization of the current NATO naval maneuvers, through opening training camps for the Salvadoran army's shock troops. This aggression is aimed at crushing the revolution in Central America, and beyond that, threatening the peoples of Cuba and Grenada.
7. In Central America the possibility of winning power and setting up new workers states is now on the agenda in several countries.
Throughout the world a vast movement can take shape against the threats of imperialist intervention.
Active solidarity with the revolution in Central America is still limited. It must be expanded and broadened, rising to the challenge of the real stakes involved, renewing the internationalist tradition seen in the defense of the Vietnamese revolution.
The mobilization against the war in the United States itself is central to creating obstacles to imperialist intervention. Public opinion, still feeling the effects of the defeat suffered in Vietnam, remains hostile to a direct military involvement, despite the calls for a crusade by Ronald Reagan, Alexander Haig, Jeane Kirkpatrick, and the like. According to recent polls, more than half the population rejects the idea that the United States has a mission to stop communism in Latin America, if that would mean supporting governments that deny the most elementary human rights; more than 80 percent of the population is hostile to a military intervention in El Salvador. This opposition was also expressed through trade-union demonstrations against the austerity budget.
The National Conference of Catholic Bishops came out against sending arms to El Salvador. Public opinion was shocked to see broadcasts showing armed American advisers at the side of Salvadoran government troops.
In Europe and in Latin America new large-scale mobilizations are on the agenda. Two million trade unionists and youth mobilized in Europe last fall against militarization, nuclear missiles, and the war threats. A war is in fact already taking place in Central America. U.S. imperialism is already intervening there. That intervention can take new qualitative steps from one day to the next.
Mobilizing against war begins with mobilizing against the imperialist intervention in Central America. Big demonstrations are projected for March 27 in the United States and March 28 in Mexico and several European countries.
In the month of May an anti-imperialist and "anti-interventionist" caravan will travel through twelve European countries, with representatives of the FSLN, FMLN-FDR, and URNG. Big demonstrations will take place at that time. New demonstrations are being planned for the United States on June 12.
Also in June, "Reagan-the-plague" will visit Europe to attend the summit of the Atlantic alliance. He will be in Paris June 5, in Britain June 7, and Germany on June 9. This visit must be the occasion for new and powerful demonstrations against imperialism's crimes in Central America and against the deployment of its death machines in Europe.
The sections of the Fourth International will throw all their energies into these struggles:
• Against imperialist intervention in Central America;
• In defense of the Cuban, Nicaraguan, and Grenada revolutions;
• For the victory of the FMLN in El Salvador and the URNG in Guatemala.