[campaign on the narcotics epidemic, which has won…]

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campaign on the narcotics epidemic, which has won broad support from the religious community. This effort links the drug issue with U.S. government agencies that are illegally involved in drag trafficking.

It will also support efforts to open government files associated with the Kennedy assassination.

A number of the Institute's La Penca defendants have been associated with Kennedy-era "Shooter Teams" of anti-Castro Cuban professional assassins associated by Oliver Stone and others with the murder of former President John F. Kennedy.

The Institute will also defend itself from government attacks on its tax-free (501C3) status, and against efforts by the former defendants in the lawsuit to extract an additional $400,000 in legal fees.

Contributions to the Christic Institute can be sent to: 1324 North Capitol Street NW, Washington, D.C., 20002. Phone: (202) 797-8106. ment in one of this country's oldest and firmest allies." improving their living conditions. This explains why women who had taken part in demonstrations against fundamentalist attacks voted for these same fundamentalists on June 12, 1990, and contributed to their massive victory.

The electoral law was devised so that a man could vote for himself, for his wife, and for three other people. On the eve of the 1990 poll, the interior minister publicly stated that there would be no identity checks at the voting stations. In this situation, every kind of electoral fraud could be practiced. People would vote several times in different booths or towns. Votes were cast for people who were absent or dead.

This led the women's movement to concentrate its attention on the electoral law. It has succeeded in getting the right of men to vote for three other people withdrawn.

However, it has not yet succeeded in depriving a husband of the right to cast his wife's vote. Nonetheless, the women's movement won a victory. Once again, it was this movement and the far left who fought for democratic rights. Now, the front has widened. Twenty-eight parties are demanding reform of the electoral law.

Deterioration in living standards Women do not only have to deal with democratic questions. Another issue is the economic crisis, which has worsened in recent months.

The agreement made by the govemment with the IMF has meant massive job losses. The official unemployment rate is 22 percent, but is in reality higher. The national currency has already been devalued Protest Tunisian Police Torture of Fourth Internationalists On Jan. 4, Tunisian police arrested eight political activists in the city of Tajerouine, Tunisia.

Members or sympathizers of the Revolutionary Communist Organization (OCR), Tunisian section of the Fourth International, they were of literature which threatens the public order."

At the time they were put in jail, they were distributing a leaflet that protested the government's arrest of members of a Tunisian Muslim fundamentalist organization.

One of the activists, Hammadi Dalhoumi, was released on bail a week later. He reported that he and the others were subjected to brutal torture and intimidation. They were compelled to give the names of other members of the OCR who are being sought by the police. A public trial is imminent.

The arrested activists are: Fathi Salawi, Saber Saidi, Mohammed Kamal Charni, • Nureddine Salmani, Imad Zoghalmi, Charafeddine Ben Ali, and Habib Souihi.

Letters of protest are urgently requested. Protests should be faxed and addressed to the President of the Republic/Minister of Justice, Tunis, Tunisia, and faxed to the Tunisian Embassy in Washington, D.C., FAX Number:

202)862-1858.

twice, but wages have risen hardly at all. Purchasing power has been sharply reduced, and the government has decided to abolish subsidies on basic necessities.

This means a huge deterioration in the living conditions of women. Previously, the healthcare system was free, but now you have to pay.

State plans for healthcare have disappeared in the bottom drawer, since the state is withdrawing from the health service. This means a huge rise in the death rate for women.

The price of school books has risen sharply. Families will soon have to decide which children to send to school. On the average, every woman has seven children. It will, of course, be the girls who lose out.

Similarly, it is women who get laid off first. They will thus have to enter the shadow economy, selling home-made products in the markets to supplement their shrinking housekeeping money. The prospect looms of growing impoverishment, which will destroy all possibility for women's emancipation.

The fear is that the subjection of the government to the IMF's diktats will only serve to make the reactionary ideology of the fundamentalists more popular. Women are the victims in both cases—on the one hand from the FLN's free-enterprise, pro-capitalist orientation, and on the other from the Islamic movement, which wants to go back to the past.

This situation obliges the women's movement to look for new answers, and in particular to address social problems.

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"While the leadership of the FMLN has signed on for now, their worker and peasant base may not be able to make the necessary concessions."

SOCIALISTACTION FEBRUARY 1992 15 ...El Salvador (continued from page 1: “Recession: Why can't everyone have a job?”)

cial landowners and industrialists closely tied to U.S. corporations.

The Salvadoran rulers have been organized, trained, and funded by the U.S goverment, which has poured in $1 billion in aid in the last decade. Some 75,000 people have been killed in the war, with thousands more lives disrupted by injury, prison, expulsion from the land, and exile.

The military/death-squad killers have not been brought to justice. For example, there is strong evidence that the murder of six Jesuits and their two housekeepers was directly ordered by the military high command. They are still in charge, while a colonel has been convicted of the crimes.

This background of stark terror gives an aura of unreality to the peace celebrations. It is all the more startling that all sides are lavishing praise on the settlement. Chief FMLN negotiator, Jorge Shafik Handal, long-time leader of the Salvadoran Communist Party, crowed: "These agreements are going to transform the country. ... There is going to be a great effort to achieve basic levels of social justice."

The right-wing President Alfredo Cristiani agreed: "This signing constitutes the beginning of a new era of rebuilding toward democracy and freedom." (El Salvador on Line, Jan. 6, 1992.)

Peace accords provisions The specifics of the peace accords are contained in a set of new laws that must be enacted by the right-wing ARENA-dominated National Assembly. They detail changes in the army, government, and society that the pro-FMLN Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador (CISPES) claims are "unprecedented."

"If implemented, CISPES states: "Salvadoran society stands to undergo a profound transformation by means of agreements curbing the power of the military, institutionalizing democracy, and reforming the economy." (Alert!, January 1992).

On military reform: The most notorious repressive forces are to be dissolved. According to Shafik Handal, the reform reduces the military's function to only "the defense of the country's territory and its sovereignty." In two years, the Salvadoran military will be halved down to 26,000. For internal security, a National Civilian Police will be formed in which ex-combatants of the FMLN will participate.

The human rights record of the army officers will be reviewed by a three-person civilian review panel to be jointly appointed by the government and the FMLN Under United Nations supervision, the units of FMLN troops, estimated at 6000, will be phased out. They will turn in their weapons and re-enter civilian life.

On land reform: The struggle for the land by El Salvador's peasantry has been at the heart of the civil war. The accords provide that land held by peasants in FMLN-controlled zones will be kept by them, while legal owners (i.e., absentee landowners) will be compensated. Land in "contested zones" is to be adjudicated by a special government commission.

Beyond this, the accord calls for the implementation of previous land-reform decrees, which were sabotaged by opposition from large landowners and the far-right.

Several land reform proposals were developed in the early 1980s by "moderate" bourgeois forces in conjunction with the U.S. government, which hoped that agrarian reform could stave off another Nicaraguan revolution. But the laws did little to curb the power of the big landowners and provided no solution to land-starved peasants.

On political reform: The National Assembly is to issue a decree legalizing the FMLN as a political party. A general amnesty is to be declared for FMLN members, and political prisoners are to be freed. Further, a "forum" is to be created that will allow further negotiations on social policy, the situation of labor, and to join "representatives of the popular movement and the business community to discuss plans for revitalizing the Salvadoran economy" devastated by 12 years of civil war.

In the last few years, the most dramatic development in El Salvador has been the revival of the labor movement, which was brutally decimated in the early 1980s. In great waves, whole sectors of the working population have been organized, and unions have waged heroic struggles for wage and social benefits.

As recently as Nov. 15, 1991, thousands of public sector workers marched in the streets of San Salvador in support of strikers demanding wage raises. Three days later, barricades went up to stop ARENA scabs. Despite harsh repression, the unions have maintained their forces and entered into the political arena as a key factor.

A short-term respite from the repression, which may be provided by international supervision, could give a new impetus to the workers' movement. Likewise, democratic openings would encourage peasants to voice their demands.

Worsening economic conditions Conditions are worsening for the Salvadoran masses. In 1991 alone, 20,000 public employees have been laid off as part of the government's privatization plans. Continuation of the policy would mean another 33,000 layoffs. (El Salvador on Line, Nov. 25, 1991.)

Likewise, the government was moving to disband cooperatives last fall. The U.S. may use the peace settlement as an excuse to deport more Salvadoran exiles, further swelling the ranks of the unemployed. Popular demands can be as basic as the defense of the right to a job or to the land.

The FMLN will be now in a position where it has to contain the "excesses" of such just demands, in the interest of a smooth process of "reconciliation." The problem is that the fundamental demands of workers and peasants for social justice cannot be "reconciled" with the iniquitous system of capitalism. The oligarchy and the army which was reared to defend it must first be smashed.

The U.S. government is all too aware of the explosive nature of the situation. Speaking in El Salvador the day after the formal signing of the agreement, Secretary of State James Baker warned that if the FMLN wants international help, it must also prove to its adversaries at home that the accord is not "an enormous trap—a political Trojan horse" through which the rebels could reenter society only to tear it apart.

Baker also pledged $1.6 billion for national economic reconstruction in the next five years. The U.S. support for peace is clearly conditional on the implementation of its stabilization plans.

While the leadership of the FMLN has signed on for now, their worker and peasant base may not be able to make the necessary concessions.

For now, the U.S. and Salvadoran rulers seem to be opting for this deal with the FMLN. But it remains to be seen how much of the agreement will be dismantled in the approval process by the ARENAdominated National Assembly. When ARENA party President Armando Calderon Sol called for a general amnesty for military criminals in the Salvadoran National Assembly, it was clear that the Salvadoran bourgeoisie wants to keep this scum on hand for future use.

When that time comes again, the capitalists will find themselves still in control of the military and they will be backed by the guns and dollars of the United States. The FMLN could find itself without the armed strength that has counterbalanced the military.

The FMLN's status as part of the police force is uncertain. Will they be willing to act the part of police and repress striking workers or peasants occupying land? Or will they risk derailing the peace process in order to defend workers against the bosses' continuing attacks? These are the choices of a popular movement trying to reconcile itself with a capitalist state.

Rather than preparing the workers and peasants for the coming confrontations, the FMLN is sowing illusions in the international guarantees provided by the United States and the United Nations.

The UN's international role was made crystal clear in the Gulf War: the UN serves as a weapon in the arsenal of Bush's New World Order. Nor does the UN provide any guarantee against military repression. When the United States supports a brutal military junta, as in Haiti today, it enlists international brokers, like the OAS or the UN, to give a democratic facade to the regime and to isolate the popular-based forces diplomatically.

FMLN isolated internationally The Salvadoran negotiations reflect the real relation of forces in the civil war, but also in the international situation. While the FMLN has scored an impressive record militarily, international factors have made their struggle more difficult.

Support that the USSR had given at times is no longer there. Since the rise of Stalinism in the late 1920s, the Soviet Union has regarded "revolutionary movements" as useful tools, mainly to be used as bargaining chips to exchange for concessions from imperialism. Under Gorbachev and his successors, ever more eager for imperialist support, these movements were increasingly hung out to dry.

Thus, the USSR cut off Sandinista Nicaragua's oil at crucial moments and has abandoned Cuba. These gestures have aided U.S. imperialism in its desire to contain and strangle revolution "in its own backyard" in Central America.

The Soviet government lined up unequivocally with the United States on El Salvador. The two governments even issued a joint statement: "A U.N.-supervised ceasefire is urgently required to consolidate the progress that has been made and to put a definitive end to the conflict." The statement adds that once a ceasefire is achieved, both sides should "start implementing measures aimed at national reconciliation." (El Salvador on Line, Dec. 9, 1991.)

Another difficulty for the FMLN was that the Nicaraguan revolution was greatly weakened with the election of Violetta Chamorro in 1990. The Sandinistas retreated on a whole series of social measures-enforcing capitalist austerity— and legitimizing the U.S.-backed Arias plan for Central America.

Nor is help coming from Cuba. Under increasingly severe pressure because of the Soviet deal with the United States at their expense, the Cubans chose to retreat as well. According to news reports of a recent meeting in Havana with U.S. scholars, "Castro has renounced all support for foreign guerrilla movements." (Boston Globe, Jan. 15,1992.)

Castro was quoted as saying, "Times have changed. We have changed. Military aid outside our borders is a thing of the past." (New York Times, Jan. 20, 1992.)

The FMLN is an indigenous movement, relying on a peasant and increasingly worker base for its support and survival. Nonetheless, international isolation put them in a diplomatic straitjacket. For "friends," the FMLN relied on the Social Democratic parties and the goverments of Venezuela, Mexico, and Spain.

These forces dissented from the Reagan/Bush policy of open death-squad rule, hoping to stabilize capitalist development in El Salvador with a broader social base. However, the international recognition to the FMLN provided by these governments was entirely contingent on the guerrillas' staying within the bounds of social reform and not offering the example of another Cuba.

Important forces in the FMILN looked to the Soviet Union or social democracy and to the strategy of national reconciliation in world "zones of conflict." Furthermore, they look to the strategy of alliances with Salvadoran bourgeois forces in a period of "democratization" separated from the struggle against capitalist rule. In keeping with the retreat of Stalinism, key FMLN leaders have now renounced the struggle for socialism altogether.

It is understandable that after 12 years of war and so much suffering the Salvadoran masses should seek peace. But the FMLN could be sowing the seeds of a disaster when they support a "peaceful settlement" with bourgeois forces that does not alter the fundamental conditions of class power.

As recently as last November, urban units of the FMLN stated in a communique: "We claim the right to defend our people against government repression and to direct our efforts to winning revolutionary changes that will benefit the nation."

The fighting traditions of the workers and peasants of El Salvador reflected in this declaration have been built over decades of tremendous resistance and struggle. What is lacking, though, is a political force that çan clearly express those traditions and direct the workers and peasants toward the socialist society that is glimpsed in their mobilizations.

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accused of illegal association and assembly" and with "distribution