Socialist Action (US)

The monthly paper of Socialist Action, San Francisco, 1983–2010

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Socialist Action, Vol. 2, No. 3, March,1984, March 1984 · scan pp. 11–12 · about 1,616 words

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FPL Commung concerns expressea py ine rkı commenMOR's separation from the Salvadoran tary over how revolutionary groups In the first week of December 1983, a split occurred in the People's Liberation Forces/Revolutionary People's Bloc (FPL/BPR), the largest component of the Salvadoran revolutionary front, the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN).

On Dee. 9, 1983, the FPL/BPR majority issued a statement denouncing its founder and historic leader, Salvador Cayetano Carpio. It also condemned the minority of the organization which had formed a new group called the Revolutionary Workers Movement-Salvador Cayetano Carpio (MOR).

On Dec. 16, 1983, the central leadership of the FMEN issued a declaration endorsing the main conclusions of the EDI etntamont and annfirmina tha revolutionary front.

Following investigation and assessment of the sorrowful and repudiated assassination of Companera Melida Anaya Montes (Commander Ana Maria) and the suicide of Salvador Cayetano Carpio (Marcial), the FPL Revolutionary Council has concluded the following:

That Salvador Cayetano Carpio, who was our chief leader and commander-in-chief of the People's Armed Forces for Liberation, embarked in recent years on a process of ideological and political decomposition. This led to grave distortions that eventually resulted in Companera Ana Maria's assassination, which Carpio was the main organizer and responsible for. Among these deviations were the following:

1. Marcial developed an exaggerated estimation of himself....

2. As a consequence of this exaggerated self-esteem, Marcial became the victim of serious political backwardness and became incapable of thinking and acting at the level required by the historic demands posed by the development of our revolution.

Marcial clung tightly to dogmatic and sectarian schemes and plans. This, together with his obstinacy about prevailing at whatever cost, became an obstacle to the progress of the People's Liberation Forces-Farabundo Marti and exercised a negative influence on the process of unification of the revolutionary forces as a whole, thus harming the effort to liberate our people.

Below we publish a series of documents which we hope will clarify the facts and some of the political disputes (at least as far as they have been made public) involved in the split.

We are publishing the comment of the Mexican section of the Fourth International, the Revolutionary Workers Party (PRT), on the communiques of the FPL and FMLN. The Mexican PRT has been at the forefront of the anti-intervention movement in that country, occupying leadership positions in the Mexican Committee Against Intervention in El Salvador and in the newly-formed National Front Against Intervention in Central America and the Caribbean.

Socialist Action solidarizes with the resolve differences over strategy and tac5. In January and February 1983, the FPL-Farabundo Marti Political Committee, and later the Central Command, met to prepare for the Seventh Revolutionary Council, our party's highest body.

When the Central Command met, all of its members, with the exception of Marcial and Marcelo (Rogelio Bazaglia) approved agreements and measures that would enable application of our general strategic line to the new conditions that had arisen, thus assuring the advance o the people's war for liberation.

Salvador Cayetano Carpio, as a member and chief leader of these bodies, had the most ample opportunity to argue in favor of his point of view, but he did not do so frankly and honestly before the collective leadership. He never displayed the proletarian courage of presenting these views before the leadership bodies-the Political Committee and the Central Command....

As a result of the confusion, resentment, opportunism and the fanatic personality cult around Marcial, a few excompaneros were taken by surprise and have gone to the extreme of separating themselves from our party.

They are seeking to split and divide the internal unity of the FPL, using methods that are deviate and harmful to the revolution and to our people and that benefit only the enemy.

This group holds the backward, sectarian, and antiunity positions put forward by Marcial. They deny the FMLN's form of a Provisional Government of Broad Participation" issued by the General Command of the FMLN and the Executive Committee of the FDR on Jan. 31, 1984. This statement can be obtained through CISPES, P.O. Box 50139, Washington, D.C. 20004.)

Finally, we are publishing excerpts from two statements made by Cayetano Carpio shortly before his death on April 12, 1983. The longer excerpts are from a speech he gave on April 1, 1983, commemorating the 13th anniversary of the founding of the FPL. This speech appeared in full in the December issue of Quatrieme Internationale, the theoretical magazine of the Fourth International.

The second statement was made by Carpio in October 1982. It is taken from an interview with Latin-American revolutionists published in the August-September issue of La Batalla, the theoretical journal of the Mexican PRT. It has been translated from the Spanish by Socialist Action. The entire interview appeared in a pamphlet printed in Mexico by Ediciones Enero, No. 32, 1983.

Socialist Action has selected the excerpts and documents which we feel shed some light on the longstanding political debate within the Salvadoran revolutionary movement. We do not know if these are the specific political issues involved in the split, but, as our readers will see, the selected material does point to important differences which have existed within the FMLN.

We believe that the various issues raised in these selections go beyond El Salvador and are of concern to all revolutionists and supporters of the struggle of the Salvadoran people led by the FMLN.

Like the PRT, we believe that the debate within the FPL and FMLN is over the general political orientation of the revolutionary process in El Salvador. From the documents that have been FPL FARABUNDO I MART role as the vanguard of the revolution and proclaim themselves the sole representatives of the working class. They deny the role that all democratic and progressive forces, together with our working class, can play in our process. They are deeply impregnated with an antiparty way of thinking and acting....

In the face of all the slanders spread by this group about supposed deviations of the FPL-Farabundo Marti and of the entire FMLN, there is an undeniable fact that the entire world can see: the powerful advance of the revolution; the striking political and military victories won by the people's forces; the critical political and military situation in which the dictatorship finds itself; and the unquestionable advances in the process of unification and consolidation of the FMLN.

We call on this group (Revolutionary Workers Movement-Salvador Cayetano Carpio) to exercise good sense and however, feel that this debate is of great importance to all defenders of the Salvadoran revolution.

The debate over class alliances has long divided revolutionists in Latin America and the rest of the underdeveloped world. The main arguments have always centered on whether or not the "anti-oligarchic" bourgeoisie has a strategically progressive role to play, as opposed to a tactical one. In other words, can the revolutionary struggle be advanced by subordinating the independent struggle for power of the workers and peasants to a program centered on bourgeois-democratic reforms based on the maintenance of capitalism?

The Trotskyist movement has long answered this question in the negative, while at the same time recognizing that limited tactical alliances with bourgeois forces-including of a military natureare necessary provided, however, that they do not derail the workers' movement from its independent course.

In the United States, the debate over class alliances takes the form of whether or not the workers' movement can be advanced by supporting the Democratic party or any wing of this capitalist formation.

Socialist Action, of course, will continue to solidarize with the struggle of the FMLN against the brutal Salvadoran dictatorship. We pledge our commitment to help build a broad united antiwar movement that can stay the hands of the U.S. warmakers. Sentiment against the U.S. war against the Nicaraguan revolution and all U.S. intervention in this region is very great among the U.S. population.

At the same time, however, we feel that material such as that published below can contribute invaluably to the political understanding of American working people, particularly antiwar activists. We intend to publish more of this information in future issues as it becomes available. —THE EDITORS• reflection, to understand that their attitude is harmful to the interests of the proletariat and of the entire world, that it benefits only the enemy. In face of the treacherous plans of imperialism, the oligarchy, and its puppet dictatorship, the attitude of every revolutionary must be to strengthen internal unity among revolutionaries and to consolidate the FMLN.

To conclude, the Central Committee of the People's Liberation Forces-Farabundo Marti states before the people of El Salvador and the world:

• That we are making clear to all companeros who have been confused or deceived that the ranks of our organization are open to all who wish to return and rejoin, to close ranks and unify around our efforts to defeat the enemies of the people....

• The FPL-Farabundo Marti is irrevocably committed to the working class and the people....

• That the plenary meeting of the Seventh Revolutionary Council ratified the strategic politico-military line of our organization and enriched it on the basis of the new revolutionary experiences and requirements of the revolution....

• Finally, we call on all the working class, on all working people, and on the democratic and progressive sectors not to allow themselves to be confused by the campaign of slanders and lies propagated by the enemy and by all those who, directly or indirectly, are playing the enemy's game.

Signed by ten members of the Political Committee of the FPL on Dec. 9, 1983 Socialist Action March 1984 11

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committed any counterrevolutionary act. What is more, the press has reported

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FPL statement (Excerpts)

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