Our ministers accredited to the five little repub- lics.., have been advisers whose advice has been accepted virtually as law... We do control the destinies of Central America and we do so for the simple reason that the national interest absolutely dictates such a course ... Until now Central America has always understood that governments which we recognize and support stay in power, while those we do not recognize and support fall. U.S. State Department memorandum, 1927' 6JulylAugust 1980 The State Department still holds to these assumptions, more tenaciously than ever since the Sandinistas proved them wrong. To fore- stall a popular victory in El Salvador, the U.S. government has tried a number of options since the fall of 1979. In the process, it has abandoned all pretense of concern for human rights when the stakes involve what it perceives as "the national interest. " The U.S. government has painted a por- trait for the American people of a struggle between equally noxious extremes: the right- wing oligarchy of El Salvador, opposed to any mention of reform, embarrassing in its pen- chant for terror; and the Marxist left, irra- tional and desperate, provoking martyrdom to win sympathy from the masses. And in the middle, a team of military officers and civilians who single-handedly would change the course of Salvadorean history. We shall paint a different portrait. 7NACLA Report In September 1979, William Bowdler flew to El Salvador to urge President Romero to resign for the good of his country. Bowdler* - then special envoy, now Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs -had been sent a few months earlier to save Nicaragua from the Sandinistas. He hoped for better luck in El Salvador. On October 15, 1979, Romero was over- thrown in a coup d'etat that surprised no one. With lightning and almost embarrassing speed, the U.S. government announced its support for the new junta: Colonels Adolfo Majano and Jaime Abdul Gutierrez. Three separate coups had been in the works within the Army. One was led by the young officers, committed to structural reform; an- other by forces close to the U.S. Pentagon; and a third by the fascists. The young officers won the race by a nose and chose Majano as their candidate. But to secure support, mean- ing U.S. approval, they enlisted the pro- Pentagon faction in their conspiracy. Gutie- rrez would hold the key to the junta's future course. Each faction of the military had its own allies and patrons, and the power struggle among them consumed the energies of the first junta. The young officers flirted with the opposition parties, dominated by the tiny middle class. The pro-Pentagon faction was content to link the country's development to the United States. They were modernizers; anti-communists but not fanatics. And they were supported by the "enlightened" bourgeoisie and, of course, the United States. The fascists, temporarily on the sidelines, enjoyed the powerful backing of the agrarian bourgeoisie. They admired Hitler and Musso- lini, read Mein Kampf and specialized in repression. On off-duty hours, they staffed the para-military gangs and composed death *Bowdler, active in counterinsurgency operations in LA since 1956 was in charge of the Cuba desk at the State Dept. from 1961 to 1964. Transferred to the National Security Council, in 1965 supervised the invasion of the Dominican Republic. A key planner in the operation which captured and murdered Che Guevara, Bowdler was rewarded, in 1968, with the ambassadorship to El Salvador and then, in 1971, to Guatemala. In 1975, as part of the efforts to defeat the MPLA in Angola, Bowdler was sent as ambassador to South Africa. Colonel Adolfo Majano, reform-minded member of the junta. lists and slogans: "El Salvador is the tomb of the Communists. Prepare to end that race." A CIVILIAN PRESENCE Except for two brief periods, in 1960 and 1961, no civilian had occupied the highest of- fice since 1931. But now it was obvious that the military could not rule alone. They were simply too despised. The new junta looked for respectable civilians to share the seat of power. The young officers looked to the progressive faculty at the Central American University, while the Pentagon faction looked to their patrons among business sectors with ties to U.S. capital. The three civilians chosen to fill out the five-man junta were Guillermo Ungo, leader of the small social democratic party (MNR); Roman Mayorga, rector of the Central Amer- ican University; and Mario Andino, manager of the local subsidiary of the Phelps-Dodge Corporation. The cabinet included represent- atives of the opposition parties, independents 8JulylAugust 1980 and the "enlightened" bourgeoisie. The absence of Christian Democrats on the junta was striking. The party was caught off guard by the coup. Its leadership was in a period of transition. The old guard-- Napole- on Duarte, Morales Erlich and others-- were still in exile or were out of touch with ac- tive party life. A new generation of leaders was trying to make the party more responsive to the political climate created by the mass organizations. Many of them, generally asso- ciated with the party's left wing, accepted posts in the new cabinet. The new government was impressive. Its civilian members were well educated, honest and committed to reforms. But they also har- bored serious doubts as to the viability of the government they had agreed to join. They wanted to believe in the young officers, yet doubted their ability to withstand the pressures of the pro-Pentagon and fascist sec- tors. And most of all, they were unconvinced that the oligarchy would stand by and allow their interests to be touched. Guillermo Ungo expressed these doubts in a recent NACLA interview: "The first junta was a risk--but we had to take it. It was the last possibility for peaceful change."2 THE POPULAR RESPONSE The new junta had another, more fatal flaw. Its civilian members did not represent a significant social base. Years of repression and fraud had depleted the ranks of electoral parties, leaving the field open to the more militant and radical left: BPR, FAPU, LP-28. These popular organizations, with memberships in the tens of thousands, were not represented in the newly formed govern- ment. Their response to the October coup was im- mediate and negative. They denounced the coup as a maneuver from Washington to isolate the left and preempt the creation of a truly popular regime. They argued it was wishful thinking to believe that change would be passively accepted by the bourgeoisie. And too many of their militants had been killed to believe that the armed forces could have a change of heart. When the junta announced a platform of reforms--originally proposed by the Popular Forum* in the final days of Romero's re- gime- sectors of the left adopted different at- titudes toward the new government. The UDN, legal arm of the Communist Party, ac- cepted several cabinet positions. The LP-28, which had called for an insurrection im- mediately after the coup, now said that it would give the junta time. FAPU and the BPR maintained a position of staunch opposi- tion to what they viewed as a U.S. maneuver to put the "enlightened" bourgeoisie in power and eliminate the popular organizations. The BPR strategy was to press the new govern- ment to keep its promises--knowing that it was powerless to do so. Events in El Salvador quickly pushed the left toward a unified position. The death toll in the first two weeks of the junta exceeded the rate of deaths for the first 91 months of the year under Romero.s One demonstration on October 29th left 21 dead at the hands of the National Guard and led the LP-28 to join in condemning the junta. Daily, the mass organizations filled the streets with demonstrators, demanding a full accounting of the whereabouts of the "disap- peared" and political prisoners of the Romero regime, demanding that the torturers be punished. The military quivered: pointing a finger at one of them would tangle hundreds in a web of murder and corruption. The mass organizations used civil disobe- dience-occupying churches, ministries and markets-to press their demands for higher wages, lower rents, agrarian reform and an end to repression. They held public meetings in movie theaters. Ten years of slow but steady organizing, under the most difficult and brutal conditions, were bearing fruit: the junta had opened a small democratic space for the first time in 50 years; the mass organizations were filling that space and mov- ing beyond its bounds. The civilians in the government allowed the demonstrations to continue. They set up a commission to investigate the fate of prison- *The Popular Forum was a broad-based coalition formed in September, 1979 to formulate and press for a program of reforms. It included members of the Christian Democratic Party, the MNR, the Communist Party, the LP-28 and a FAPU-related labor federation. Of the mass organizations, only the BPR did not join. 9NACLA Report ers-and discovered clandestine cemeteries that solved the mystery of the "disappeared." ORDEN, the para-military forces used to spy upon and control the opposition, was abolished by decree. And after long nego- ciations in early November to end an oc- cupation of the Ministry of Labor, the junta promised the BPR to end the repression and to implement reforms. The BPR gave the jun- ta 30 days to prove its sincerity, and called a moratorium on all occupations. At the end of 30 days, the junta had ac- complished very little. Power struggles within the military--reflecting larger struggles within the bourgeoisie-had paralyzed all reforms. The bourgeoisie was outraged at the junta's "permissiveness" toward agitation in the streets. And the fine line between the "enlightened" sector and the old agrarian in- terests began to fade. All could agree that repression was the only effective response to the growing strength of the left. Day by day, the civilians on the junta could feel their influence waning. The pro- Pentagon faction of the military was in clear control of the junta, the fascist sectors were operating with impunity through the para- military bands, and' the bourgeoisie was financing the death squads and controlling the economic program of the junta. Guiller- mo Ungo and Roman Mayorga, two civilians on the junta, recognized that they were being used as window-dressing for international consumption -and nothing more. 4 THE U.S. FORMULA The U.S. government embraced the new junta as the answer to its prayers for a centrist solution. U.S. Ambassador Frank Devine met privately with the business sector, urging them to cooperate, to sacrifice a part in order to preserve the whole. The United States was confident that a small dose of reform could woo the masses away from the left. But it grossly underestimated the loyalty of the masses to their own organizations and goals, and therefore the desperate belligerenGy of the right. As the terror intensified, U.S. of- ficials continued to insist that the left was to blame. As for the so-called center, the United States distrusted the civilian members of the junta--except for Andino. They couldn't be sold to the bourgeoisie, since the reforms they envisioned were more than cosmetic. So behind the smokescreen of even-handedness, the United States threw its weight to the col- onels. In November, when Carter sent a Defense Survey Team to El Salvador to assess the situation, neither the U.S. embassy nor the colonels thought to inform Ungo or Mayorga of the delegation's visit.s In case the reforms didn't work against the left, the United States resumed military aid to El Salvador to carry out what officials private- ly referred to as "clean counter-insurgency." In November, tear gas, gas masks and bullet- proof vests were sent along with a six-man Mobile Training Team to teach "riot control" to Salvadorean troops. In December, Carter re-programmed $300,000 to El Salvador, to purchase training for Salvadorean troops in U.S. military schools. 6 The rationale for U.S. military aid went something like this: the growing strength of the left provokes harsh repression from the right; this in turn sets the human rights organizations--so influential in Romero's downfall--into motion. So while the left had to be cowed into submission, it had to be done with finesse. The Salvadorean Army, with 30 years of U.S. training behind it, was said to be more "professional" than the security forces- meaning less prone to "excess" in controlling the opposition. New equipment would be channelled to the Army, while the National Guard and Police would be trained to use less barbaric methods. "The idea is that if a guy is standing with a protest sign, you don't have to cut him down with a machine gun," a U.S. of- ficial explained. "You just gas 'em."' THE CENTER COLLAPSES By December, the autumn lull in the repression had ended. Demonstrators were fired upon by the National Guard. ORDEN, reconstituted as the Broad National Front (FAN), began to terrorize the countryside and eliminate key leaders of the popular organiza- tions. And still there were no reforms. Then, to everyone's astonishment, during the first three days of January, virtually the entire cabinet resigned in protest. Ungo and Mayorga resigned from the junta. The civilian presence was gone. The center had 10JulylAugust 1980 collapsed. The junta's remnants and the U.S. govern- ment tried to downplay these events as a "cabinet crisis." But in the eyes of Guillermo Ungo, it was much more: "It was the crisis of a model imposed by the U.S. government that had failed and would continue to fail." 8 As the junta disintegrated, the left began to coalesce. Long-standing debates over strategy and tactics were being decided by the test of practice, and certain common conclusions were being reached. The question of armed vs. electoral strug- gle- which had divided the Communist Party from all the mass organizations--was settled by the fall of the first junta. The last chance for peaceful change had been lost; the CP ad- mitted its errors and began military prepara- tions. A people's army was taking shape. The question of alliances with reformist sectors was settled by the preponderant strength of the popular organizations. The FPL had argued consistently- against the CP, FAPU and others-that alliances with the petty bourgeoisie had to be contingent upon the ability of the working class, allied with the peasantry, to lead a broader front. ByJanuary 1980, proletarian hegemony was a fact. The question of divisions within the bourgeoisie--and the possibility of alliances with the "enlightened" sector-was settled by the bourgeoisie itself, as it closed ranks against reform and financed the growing ter- ror. The CP notion of a "national bourgeoisie" had long been rejected by the FPL, which saw this sector as too compro- mised by its ties to U.S. capital and to the old agrarian forces. Other questions remained to be settled. But on January 10, the FPL, the RN and the Communist Party announced the formation of a coordinating council of the political- military organizations.* One day later, the BPR, FAPU, LP-28 and the UDN established the Coordinating Council of the Masses (CRM). The country was unquestionably polarized into two camps: the popular and political- military organizations, now attracting the support of moderate sectors after the first jun- ta's failure to implement reforms; and the in- transigent oligarchy, with its private and public armies, intent on eliminating the left. The United States would continue to insist that a middle ground existed, and would find willing accomplices to this farce in the Chris- tian Democratic Party--waiting in the wings to fill the seats on the junta left empty by men of conscience. *The People's Revolutonary Army (ERP) did not par- ticipate in the Political-Military Coordinating Council because of unresolved differences, esecially with the RN. Unity march, January 22, 1980. References THE RISE AND FALL OF THE CENTER 1. Under Secretary of State Robert Olds, State Department Memorandum, 1927, quoted in Richard Millet, "Central American Paralysis," Foreign Policy, Summer 1980, p. 101. 2. NACLA interview with Guillermo Manuel Ungo, New York City, July 28, 1980. 3. Tommy Sue Montgomery, "Politica estadounidese y el proceso revolucionario: el caso de El Salvador," Estudios Centroamericanos, Nos. 377-378, March-April 1980, pp. 241-252. 4. NACLA interview, Ungo. 5. Cynthia Arnson and Delia Miller, "Background Information on El Salvador and U.S. Military Assistance to Central America." Institute for Policy Studies, resource paper, June, 1980, p. 7. Also, NACLA interview with Guillermo Manuel Ungo, July 30, 1980.
