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El Salvador THE 1970s: THE ROAD TO REVOLT
The government of President Molina attempted to exert oldfashioned coercive control over the country, using a relatively
new instrument, a peasant organization known as the Nationalist
Democratic Organization (Organizacion Democratica Nacionalista--
Orden). Orden was established partially in secret in the early
1960s by then President Rivera and General Jose Alberto "Chele"
Medrano in association with the GN, which provided some level of
counterinsurgent training to peasant cells throughout the
countryside. The counterinsurgent orientation of Orden was in
keeping with the anticommunist tenor of the times and the general
intent of military training and assistance provided to the armed
forces of the region by the United States. Orden, however, never
became a military force per se but functioned as a paramilitary
adjunct and an important part of the rural intelligence network
for the security forces. By the late 1970s, its membership
reportedly totaled 100,000.
While Orden served as the eyes and ears of the security
forces in rural areas, the military was confronted with a growing
new phenomenon in the urban setting, that of left-wing terrorism.
Soon after the failed coup attempt of 1972, kidnappings for
ransom and hit-and-run attacks on government buildings and other
targets became increasingly common in San Salvador. The groups
claiming credit for the majority of these actions were the
People's Revolutionary Army (Ejercito Revolucionario del Pueblo--
ERP) and the Farabundo Marti Popular Liberation Forces (Fuerzas
Populares de Liberacion Farabundo Marti--FPL), both radical
offshoots of the PCES (the ERP was the new designation of "the
Group" that had killed Regalado in 1971).
In 1969 the initial split took place between the followers of
party leader Salvador Cayetano Carpio ("Marcial"), a Maoist
advocate of a revolutionary "prolonged popular war" strategy for
achieving power, and those of Jorge Shafik Handal, who held to
the prevailing Moscow-line strategy of electoral participation.
By the end of the 1970s, however, political violence and
instability had increased markedly, strengthening the position of
those who advocated a violent path to power. The success of the
1979 Nicaraguan revolution led by the Marxist Sandinista National
Liberation Front (Frente Sandinista de Liberacion Nacional--FSLN)
apparently served to alter the thinking of policymakers in the
Soviet Union, leading them to endorse the strategy of "armed
struggle" long advocated by Cuba. By the end of the decade, no
less than five Marxist guerrilla groups, including one directly
affiliated with the PCES, were recruiting members for military
and terrorist action against the government
(see Left-Wing Extremism
, ch. 5).
Popular support for radical leftist groups appeared to expand
rapidly in El Salvador in the mid-1970s, although the ideological
uniformity of that support was suspect. The vehicles for the
mobilization of the "masses" behind a revolutionary program of
radical reform were the so-called mass organizations (also known
as popular organizations). Established and run clandestinely by
the guerrilla groups, these organizations drew much of their
leadership from radical Roman Catholic groups known as Christian
Base Communities (Comunidades Eclesiasticas de Base--CEBs) that
had been established by activist clergy throughout the country.
The largest of the mass organizations was the FPL-affiliated
Revolutionary Popular Bloc (Bloque Popular Revolucionario--BPR),
with nine constituent peasant groups and an estimated 60,000
members. Other mass organizations included urban trade unions
among their ranks. Through public demonstrations, strikes,
seizures of buildings, and propaganda campaigns, these
organizations sought to undermine the government and create
conditions conducive to a revolutionary assumption of power by
the left.
Right-wing reaction to the rise of the radical left took
several forms. The Molina government made a belated and feeble
attempt to appease rural demands for land by passing a law in
1974 calling for the forced rental or possible expropriation of
unexploited or inefficiently used land, but the law was not
enforced. The government, however, took another step toward
reform in 1976, when it declared an agrarian transformation zone
of some 60,000 hectares in San Miguel and Usulutan departments
that was to be divided among 12,000 peasant families. Large
landowners, incensed by this prospect, sent a delegation to meet
with the president, who subsequently agreed to exempt from
redistribution all lands fulfilling a "social function." This
euphemism effectively encompassed all the land in question, and
the redistribution never was effected.
Although efforts at small-scale reform were unsuccessful in
the 1970s, the other side of the reform-repression coin was much
in evidence. A new development was the rise in nonofficial
repression from the shadowy right-wing bands that came to be
known as the "death squads." Apparently bankrolled by the
oligarchy and drawing on active-duty and former military
personnel for their members, the squads assassinated
"subversives" in an effort to discourage further antigovernment
activities and to deter potential expansion of the ranks of the
mass organizations and other protest groups. From the perspective
of the Salvadoran right, the most urgent threat emanated from the
CEBs, which by the mid-1970s had incorporated large numbers of
people into politicized Bible study and self-help groups. The
death squads targeted both religious and lay members of these
groups.
The first of the squads to make itself known publicly was the
Wars of Elimination Anti-Communist Liberation Armed Forces
(Fuerzas Armadas de Liberacion Anti-comunista de Guerras de
Eliminacion--FALANGE), a title obviously concocted more for its
acronym than for its coherence. Others, such as the White
Warriors Union (Union de Guerreros Blancos--UGB), would follow.
These organizations found their inspiration in the severe
anticommunist tactics of the military regimes in Guatemala (many
Salvadoran death squad members had direct ties to the Guatemalan
right) and Brazil. The example of extreme military reprisals
against the left in Chile after the 1973 coup against Allende
also was influential.
Official repression also prevailed during the 1970s. Crowds
of antigovernment demonstrators that had assembled in the capital
were fired on by the military in July 1975 and February 1977. The
passage of the Law for the Defense and Guarantee of Public Order
in November 1977 eliminated almost all legal restrictions on
violence against civilians. Political scientist Enrique A.
Baloyra has compiled statistics for the 1972-79 period showing a
tenfold increase in political assassinations, a tripling in the
prosecution of "subversives," and a doubling in the number of
"disappeared."
The government's record in the electoral arena was equally
discouraging for the opposition. The UNO coalition participated
in the Legislative Assembly and municipal elections of 1974.
Duarte even managed to slip back into the country to campaign
briefly on behalf of coalition candidates. His efforts were
wasted, though, as the balloting was manipulated even more
flagrantly than that of 1972. In 1976 the opposition parties
decided that electoral participation was pointless and declined
to run candidates. Presidential elections in 1977 were too
important to pass up, however. The atmosphere was too volatile to
allow another run by Duarte, so UNO nominated retired Colonel
Ernesto Claramount Rozeville to head its ticket. He was opposed
by the official PCN candidate, General Carlos Humberto Romero
Mena. Once again, electoral fraud was clumsy and poorly
disguised. Claramount, his running mate Jose Antonio Morales
Ehrlich, and a crowd of thousands gathered in the Plaza Libertad
in San Salvador to protest Romero's election. Their assembly was
the occasion for the February 1977 attack that left as many as
fifty protesters dead. As he was taken from the scene in a Red
Cross ambulance, Claramount declared, "This is not the end. It is
only the beginning."
Data as of November 1988
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