Salvadoran regime steps up repression after FMLN thrust

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The dramatic military offensive of the Farabundo Marti National Liberation front (FMLN) has shaken the Salvadoran regime of Alfredo Cristiani. In response, Cristiani has launched an open war against the popular movement, with the full aid and support of the U.S. government.

The FMLN offensive, launched in the aftermath of the Oct. 31 rightist bombing of the FENASTRAS union offices, puts the lie to the Salvadoran government's claim of FMLN weakness [see Socialist Action, December 1989].

Attacking in the capital city of San Salvador and most major Salvadoran cities, the FMLN carried the fighting to the very doors of the ruling class. This was most graphically expressed when the FMLN attacked in the Escalón region of the capital, an area containing the residences of the leaders of the right-wing National Republican Alliance (ARENA) government and the military.

The offensive hit dozens of military targets throughout the country, attacked five of six Brigade headquarters early in the fighting, burned the military censorship office (CIN)

To protest continued U.S. support to the death-squad government of El Salvador's Alfredo Cristiani, various groups in the nonintervention, peace, and solidarity movements have called for demonstrations in cities across the country on Jan. 23.

Organized by the Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador (CISPES), the Pledge of Resistance, Witness for Peace, and a host of other solidarity, religious, and anti-intervention groups, the actions will largely consist of non-violent civil disobedience protests at various government buildings.

In the San Francisco Bay Area a broadly sponsored march and rally is in preparation for Saturday, Jan. 20. Initiators include the central labor councils of San Francisco, Alameda, San Mateo, and Contra Costa counties, as well as the International Longshoremen's Union, CISPES, Nicaragua Information Center Community Action, and the Pledge of Resistance.

Also playing a key role in the protest, scheduled to assemble at the San Francisco Civic Center for a march to Dolores Park, are an impressive number of religious organizations led by activists representing several orders of clergy within the Catholic 14 SOCIALIST ACTION to the ground, and brought the economic life of the capital to a standstill.

The Salvadoran military's response to the offensive was a wave of attacks on the civilian population. Working-class areas of San Salvador were bombed indiscriminately. An estimated 150,000 refugees fled the bombings. The Manchester Guardian Weekly of Nov. 26 reports, "Residents fleeing areas where combat continued said bodies were piling up in the streets."

Witchhunt of oppositionists

The ARENA government is also conducting a witchhunt against all popular organizations and international observers. Over 100 union members have been abducted since the offensive began, and a state of siege persists. International attention has been most prominent in two cases, the grisly murders of the six Jesuit priests and their two housekeepers at the University of Central America, and the frame-up of Jennifer Casolo.

An eyewitness to the murders at the University, Lucia Barrera de Cerna, implicated an army unit of the First Infantry Brigade in carrying out the massacre, and the Army high command in allowing it to take place in a secured area. Taken to Miami, Ms. Barrera de Cerna was interrogated by the FBI with a Salvadoran colonel present, intimidated, threatened with deportation, and forced to change her testimony.

After Barrera's release to American Jesuits, the Rey. Patrick Burns, SJ, the highest ranking Jesuit in the United States, asserted that the FBI "obviously tried to influence her testimony." Archbishop Rivera y Damas of El Salvador also condemned the harassment, and the Archdiocese's human rights monitoring agency charged the Salvadoran military with responsibility for the Jesuit priests' murders.

Jennifer Casolo, a church worker for Christian Education Seminars, was arrested on a charge of hiding a weapons cache in her back yard. The Bush administration aided in her victimization, with White House spokesman Marlin Fitzwater remarking that "There are indications of her involvement. That's for certain."

Sen. Christopher Dodd of Connecticut, Casolo's home state, commented that Fitzwater "signaled open hunting not only on Jennifer but on hundreds of other legitimate pluralistic and participatory processes," according to their statement. They further blamed the FMLN for the violence against the civilian population and called for the guerrillas' demobilization.

The FMILN condemned the five presidents' accord as strengthening the "fascist policies" of Cristiani, and noted that the emphasis on shoring up Cristiani indicated his desperation in the face of the FMLN offensive.

U.S. out of El Salvador!

The crisis in El Salvador has entered a crucial stage. While the FMLN's stated policy is still one of attempting to keep the door open for a negotiated settlement with "non-fascist" bourgeois forces in El Salvador, for now negotiations are not on the agenda.

With firm U.S. backing and diplomatic cover, the ARENA government and the military are unlikely to be open to negotiations unless threatened with a complete collapse of the regime. The FMN and the popular movement are considering the results of the offensive, which appears to have strengthened the FMN, although the popular movement now struggles with severe repression.

As long as U.S. aid props up the Salvadoran government, life will continue to be a choice of suffering or rebellion for El Salvador's workers and peasants. Our responsibility in this country is to translate the widespread feelings of outrage against the Salvadoran government's murderous policies into mass actions against U.S. government intervention in all its forms.

such a demand is that the government of the