A Spartacist Pamphlet $1.00
1
U.S./OAS Hands Off Central America! Defense of Cuba and USSR Begins in EI Salvador! Break with the Democrats- For Workers Action to Bring Down Reagan!
Spartacist Publishing Co., Box 1377, GPO, New York, N.Y. 10116 2
reprintedlrom Workers I~"angy!!.!sl !I/O. ]00, 5 March 1982 Table of Contents £\ SQ\vador: EI Salvador' Military Victory to Leftist Insurgents! ...... 2 EI Salvador: "Negc,tiated Solution" Means Bloodbath Smash the Junta, - I\,\\tarl · Workers to Power!...... 4 May 3 EI Salvador Protests Anti-Imperialist Contingent Draws Class Line ...... 8 Speeches at D.C Anti-Imperialist Contingent Rally "Anti-Imperialism Abroad Means Class Struggle at Home" , ...... 9 Which S1de They Were On ents PAM Marches for \nSBrg . Imperialist Doves ...... 11 Militant LA Phone Workers Say: U.S. Hands Off EI Salvadorl .. 14 Longshore Militants Say: "For Military Victory to the The hlood'y civil war in FI Salvador is ~ l.F is Going to Win!" Today the ex Salvadoran Leftists!" ...... 15 raging at white heat. Lehist guerrilla radicals call for a "political solution" in The First Communist-Led Uprising fighters have got the hutcher Junta on II Salvador-a coalition with sections in the Americas the run. Reagan has proclaimed Central of the military/Christian Democratic EI Salvador 1932: America the front line of his anti-Soviet junta. It is a dangerous illusion to think La Matanza ...... 16 Cold War. Frustrated hy the hlow to that the massacre, can he stopped hy Front Line EI Salvador their "roll hack" plans in Poland. the talking with the hlood-crall~d military Smash Junta Terror! ...... 19 warhawks in Washington want to hutchers. For the hrutally oppressed Revolutionaries Said "All Indochina "teach the Russians a lesson" hy working masses of EI Salvador. the only Must Go Communist!" drowning the Central American masses just "political solution" is workers EI Salvador: New Vietnam?.... 26 in a sea of hlood. Which ,ide are you on? revolution. WV Exclusive Daily. Reagan and Haig escalate their A decade ago the ;-';ew l.eft marched Salvadoran Insurgents threats to usc a Hig Stick to stop to chants of 'Two. Three. Many Speak ...... 27 Communism in "America\' hackyard." Vietnam,'" Hut as the Repuhlicans talk Leftist G uerrilias Say: Helicopter gunships. Cin:en Heret tor of falling dominos in Central America. Win the War in EI Salvador! ... 29 ture training for Salvadoran troops. the Democratic Party "doves" are Pop Frontists in NYC Anti-Red Attack CIA hit teams of Cuhan gusanos and flapping their wings in fear of heing YAWF Goons Beaten :\ica~aguan exiles. now talk of a drawn into "another Vietnam." Today Attacking SL Demo ...... 30 Carihhean blockade and sending in the the reformists call for ";-';0 More Chicago SL Campaign Exposes Marines. Yet the reformist organilers of Vietnams." appealing to the liherals' Stalinist Exclusion the "official" EI Salvador protests, eager fear of heeoming mired in one more CP Nailed for Calling Cops for an alliance with Democratic losiflg imperialist adventure. On March on Revolutionaries ...... 32 "doves." refuse to call for leftist rebels to 27, only the Sf-initiated Anti Letter to the win the war. Imperialist Contingent will say "Viet Communist Party...... 33 Last May 3 w(. marched on the nam wa., a Victory" over imperialism. SL "Defense of Cuba, USSR Pentagon calling for the leftist rehels to I he reformist, try to hide from the l Begins in EI Salvador " win the war in EI Salvador. protesting Cold War and the class war. On FI Reformists Call Cops ~;.S. imperialism's anti-Soviet war Salvador they arc in cahoots with the on Reds ...... 35 drive. :\ow more than ever' The Democrats (who hrought u, the "human CISPES Sabotages Asylum for Spartacist I.eague and Spartacus Youth right.,"' junta). Over Poland many of Salvadoran Refugees them join the oh,cene hypocrisy of No Deportations! ...... 37 I.eague are calling for an Anti Imperialist Contingent to march in Reagan. who crus he., PAl CO and "Revolution or Deathl" proclaim., "solidarity with Solidar EI Salvador Fact Sheet...... 40 Washington. D.C. for"1\-lilitan Victon to I.eftist Insurgents in EI S~lvador!;' nose." the company union for the CIA "Defense of Cuba/ISSR Begins in EI and the hankers. The l·.S. imperialists Sal\ador!" and "Break with the arc taking aim at :\icaragua, Cuba. Poland, the So\iet Union. We sav: Cover photo: Democrats-For W'orkers Action to May 3 Anti-Imperialist Bring Down Reagan!" Dcfeme of Cuha/USSR Hegins in Contingent. A decade ago the :'-iew Left marched Central America! (Credit: AP) to chanh of "Ho. Ho. Ho Chi Minh. Reagan has brought the Cold War
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Washington, May 3: Anti-Imperialist Contingent marches for victory for Salvadoran leftist insurgents.
home. Auto plants arc closed while war On'" collaboration abroad means class col prod uction booms. Race terrorists in Last May .I, the SL/SYL organi7ed a laboration at home. For us, anti white sheets and blue uniforms are on SOO-strong Anti-Imperialist Contingent imperialism abroad means class struggle the rise. Desperate Haitian refugees are to march for military victory to Salva at home. As we chanted on February 20, put in concentration camps, while doran leftists. The reformist Workers "We Call for Rebel Victory, They Call Polish anti-Communists are welcomed World Party/People's Anti-War M obi the Cops'" with open arms. Anti-imperialism li7ation (WWP/PAM) tried to seal us There is a fundamental political abroad means class struggle here. off with a line of goons: a month later in contradiction within the FI Salvador Military cargo to right-wing juntas in New York they attacked a Spartacist protests between those who want to Central America must be stopped by protest outside a PA M meeting with pressure imperialism and those who labor boycotts. But this will never be planks and broken bottles. When such fight to defeat it. Genuine anti done by the Cold War giveback gangster tactics didn't work, the imperialist militants must be for Salva bureaucrah, linked to the Democrats. reformists-including the Communist doran left-wing rebels getting a\ many When half a million workers marched Party (CP) and Socialist Workers Party guns as they can, wherever they can, on Washington September 19 it showed (SWP)-called in the cops to keep out certainly, if they can, from the treacher that labor has the power. Class-struggle the communists. They did it on May .10 ous and reluctant Soviet bloc. Revolu militants fight against the anti-Soviet in Chicago, in New York on 1\0vember tionaries say: F[)R/FMl.~ attempts to war drive, against Reagan racism, for 21, and on February 20 provocative placate Yankee imperialism by begging workers action to bring Reagan down. attempts by goons of the Committee in for a "political solution" will leave lhe retormists look not to the Solidarity with the People of EI Salva oligarchic-landlord capitalist rule in working class but to the Democratic dor (CIS PES) again brought in the tact. ;-";0 popular-front illusiol1\-Hreak Party. Ihe imperialist liberals want to armed fist of the capitalist state. The with the bourgeoisie' Sweep away the "stop Communism" too, but worry that WWP/CP/SWP/CISPES resort to murderous generals and their death Reagan's shoot'em up methods could anti-communist cop exclusions because squads through workers revolution' backfire. The reformists want to get the red flags and revolutionary politics The line is drawn in Fl Salvador. movement "ready for Teddy" Kennedy threaten their alliance with the Demo Those who fight for a victory of the (just like they kept the Vietnam antiwar era tic "doves." Salvadoran masses over their oppres movement "clean for Gene" McCarthy). Today the slogans of the Anti sors, who oppose Reagan's anti-Soviet And so they do everything possible to Imperialist Contingent are more urgent war drive, will march in Washington on exclude the reds. After all, they don't and obviously necessary than ever. March 27 with the Anti-Imperialist want their speakers to be embarrassed Salvadoran leftists, P ATCO strikers, Contingent initiated by the Spartacist by chants of "Remember Bay of Pigs, black welfare mothers-we're all on League/Spartacus Youth League. In EI Remember Vietnam-Democratic Reagan's Cold War hit list. For the Salvador the choice is revolution or Party, We Know Which Side You're reformist thugs and betrayers, class death' Which side are you on') Join us'. 4
reprinted/rom Workers Vanguard No. 283, 19 June 1981
EI Salvador: "Negotiated Solution" Means Bloodbath Smash the Junta, Workers to Power! JUNE 15--hghting ha, ,harply in newski met with governments through forces, the Salvadoran military has been crea,cd in EI Sahadol\ hlood) ci\ il war out the region to push for mediation. No unable to inflict serious dam~ge on the as leftist guerrillas arc mounting a rainy dice. The latest S I maneuver sent leftist insurgents. The "liberated lOnes" season offensive that ha, huilt in Canadian New Democratic Party leader controlled by the FM LN fighters have intemity from week to v.eek. hom the Ed Broadbent on yet another regional reportedly been expanded since the northeastern province 01 Moradln to junket, which predictably brought no January offensive. Rebel sources now the western hills of Chalatenango. the better results. report that 50 percent of the northern entire northern tier of the country has Among the advocates of a "political departments of Moranin, Chalatenan been the scene of coordinated guerrilla solution" in EI Salvador are the populist go and Cabanas, as well as large assaults on the forces of the lJ .S.-hacked regime of Mexico's Lope7 Portillo, portiom of other areas. are in their military (Christian Democratic junta. Venezuelan Christian Democratic presi hands. Many towm nominally under So far, insurgent advances contrast with dent Herrera Campins, the Nicaraguan government control arc completely cut the January "final( general" offensive Sandinistas and Castro's Cuba. All off and surrounded hy FM LN forces, that was callcd on after only ten days. voice a common fear of the Salvadoran , v.ho stop short of taking them only to But government t wop, a nd police are civil war expanding into a region-wide moid being bombed hy government not the only ohstacle facing rehel conflict. But another of the supporter, plane,. fighters-treacherous calls for negotia of a "negotiated settlement" is the I hou,ands of guerrilla, have massed tions with sectors of the junta pose a Salvadoran opposition popular front, to attack the "hfth of :'Iiovember" dam dangerous roadhloek to a left-wing the Revolutionary Democratic Front on the l.empa River. which provide, all victory on the hattlefield. (I-DR). and the guerrilla coalition, the the electricity for the capital city of San As rebel forces step up their attacks, Farabundo Marti National Liheration Salvador. Yet government forces arc so Reagan continue, to pour millions in Front (FMLN). Thus we have the self husy facing guerrillas throughout the weapons into the junta's armory. Mean defeating, ultimately suicidal spectacle country that journalists who visited the while, imperialist liheral, have launched of the FDR(FMLN leaders trying to area report that the dam and surround an offensive of their ov. n, pleading for a strike a bargain with sectors of the ing towm arc barely defended. San "peaceful solution" to the civil war butchering junta. By preventing a leftist Francisco (iotera. capital of Mora/kIn. which has claimed 2(),OOO lives since victory, this would prepare a bloody is under siege and FMI.N(FDR forces January of last year. But the Reagan massacre of the insurgent masses-and reportedly plan to establish a provision regime isn't huying. While supplying the on a scale far larger than that already al government there "in the near future." junta colonels with Huey helicopters experienced following the installation of According to the well-informed Briti,h and Green Berets, Washington tries to a "reform" junta in October 1979. publication, iA.lIill Americall Wee'''r win over wavering Latin governments But the guerrillas entrenched on the Repor/ (5 June): with promises of a new "Marshall Plan" volcanic slopes and in the FM LN "After n:sistJng a pov.erlul liuntaJ for the region. Meeting last week with border strongholds of El Salvador face ofiensivc lor thc past two Ill()nths. Mexican president Jose Lopez Portillo, an enemy in no mood to bargain. guerrilla lInlh ()f til<: Ijcrcito Rc\(,[u Reagan offered them U.S. private "Power is not negotiable." says a former cionan() del I'uehl() (L R 1') arc rcported investment as a hribe to get them to turn military leader. "If we sit down with [the to h'l\e Imced the arlll\ to v.lthdraw J.O()() troops lrom the a·rca. I he arlll) their backs on the Salvadoran in,urgen rebels] what would there be to discuss')" has sufkred he,1\ \ casualtil". and the cy and give a cold shoulder to Fidel and asks a top junta commander ( Wa.lhinK hospital at (;otela IS so lull that a the Sandinistas. ton Post, 21 April). The junta killers constant helicopter shUllk scn ICC IS The Reagan line in the Caribbean know that behind them stands a U.S. IcrrYlng the wounded toSan Salladm" area has been challenged within the government which badly wants a leftist On June 10 FMI.N guerrillas imperialist camp by the West German defeat in order to "draw the line" against annihilated an army garrison at Arcatao dominated Socialist International (SI), the Soviets and Cubans in Central in Chalatenango. The WashinK/on POol/ which is leading the drive for a negotiat America. Reagan. thinks he has a (12 June) reported the battle by moni ed solution to the Salvadoran struggle. winnable war in El Salvador; his toring army radio messages: "As the day Meeting in Panama last March, SI National Security Council considers it a progressed the operator's pleas became leaders proffered West German Social "target" area where the U.S.-backed more frantic. He described a column of Democrat Willy Brandt as a mediator to butchers have a "clear advantage." 600 uniformed guerrillas equipped with bring the warring sides together. When machine guns progressively encircling neither Reagan nor his junta leaped to Junta Troops: "It's Finished" the garrison. He,I\Y shooting could he meet with Brandt, German Social Nevertheless, despite all the tons of heard in the background. Late in the Democratic leader H ans-J tirgen W iseh- military equipment shipped to the junta afternoon the operator said the column
HIIIHllilltj III 5
any other) struggle have heen reported since the collapse of the general strike in January. And the policy of the 0ppo'ii tlon coalition in recent months has followed the lines laid out hy !-DR leader Ana Guadalupe Martine/: "Our main task IS pre,cntly to huild a hloe of states to oppose an intervention in EI Salvador" (]lIKe.l::eillUlK p.. rankfurtJ, 31 January). "Political Solution"? Dopite the continued rejection of their peace overtures, the FDR\ M exico-hased Political-Diplomatic Commission continuall) repeah its desire to "maintain conversations and explon: all road, that could kad to a political solution" (So/icia.1 de fJ ,)'a/mdor [San Jose], 29 April-S May). What exactly would .'iuch a so-called "political solution" or "negotiated settkment" mean') Alan Ridll1g in the SCII Yor/.. liml'l (7 May) cited a scenario "most ilTljuently mentioned hy optimists in the region": "AlTonling to ploponcllt, 01 thc Idca,a rcgional /llCdlatlllt! group 1\(lulL! help thc warring ,Ide, t() tlc!,!lltlalL' the condiliom 101 flee ekClion, "lhL' armed IOILT' I\ould thell he re,trtctcd to thCli hatr,ld.' and the gllclrill;l' tll tlll'll camp', 1I1r11c the COlllllf\ \\()uld hc [wbccd hI Ottllntclna tltlllal IOlce. Aitci the cit'ctlom. a nell arnl\ \\(luld he iOllllCd, ... llfllllwtlll!,! und ... ,lrahlc ClclllClih Irol1l 'clthcl ,idc." This scenario, known as the "Zimbabwe solution," is a schernc to defeat the NAC~fI "undesirable" leftist guerrillas at the hargaining tahle. It is a plan for the restahili/ation of Salvadoran capital ism, with the use of foreign troops if necessary. It IS a formula for counterrevolu t iOll. The professors a nd bourgeois politi cians who dominate the !-DR Political Diplomatic Commission have studious ly avoided saying just what sort of negotiated "solution" they have in mind. But the scheme reported by Riding is the plan being put forward by the imperial ist liherals and social democrab to whom they appeal. It was the plan suggested in the "Dissent Paper" circu "'''''_~O'':~'' lated last fall by liberal CIA and State ".. ~ Department officials. NACLA 22 January 1980: 200,000 take to the streets of San Salvador to commemorate FDRjFML!\ spokesmen plead ever the 1932 uprising (above). The bloody aftermath: junta sharpshooters more shamelessly for negotiations of murder 200, wound 300 (below). any kind, on any terms. Last year Guillermo Ungo, a member of the junta was made up of 1,000 guerrillas. is clear that the guerrillas are far from who switched sides and now heads the Ammullitioll was parachuted in, but the defeated. :--Ionetheless, their long-term FDR, declared that he would talk only opera tor ,a Id t he guerrillas got to the military success is far from assured. For with the U,S. directly, with the "circus drop first.! he transmission ended in the the I-MLl\i/FDR leadership has aimed owner, not the acrobats," By Fehruar), late afternoon with the words 'It's not at w inning on the hattlefield but Political-Diplomatic Commission mem finished'." achieving a compromise through di ber Salvador Samayoa (minister of [kspite the Saigon press conference plomacy. \0 attempts to raise the urhan education when Ungo was in the junta) style hody counts issued hy the junta, it working masses in insurrectionary (or was saying that "we're willing to give the 6
Christian Democrat.<, the benefit 01 the doubt" and that they would sed talb with the civilians in the junta (Nell' York Times, 24 I"ebruary). On April 24 an FMLN statement announced that the guerrillas were "willing t() end thc fighting if productive conversations arc initiated with the civilian"military government. " When Christian Democratic junta head Napole(lll Duarte rejected FM IN conditions for talks-reopening the universities, freeing political prisoners, lifting the state of siege and curfew Poli t ica I-Diploma tic Commission member Fabio Cdstillo simply an nounced that the FDR would pose no preconditions for talks. In a malor two part interview with the Sandinista organ Barr/mda, Castillo, an ex-rector of the University of San Salvador, declared: .. -, he Political-Diplomatic ConlIllission has not posed prior conditions. 'hose prior conditions lor dialogue, which could cvcntually lead to negotiation. would he p
-_.. ------_... _------. ----~-.------7 from American liberals, fearful of an international struggle-especially in And the only guarantee of military "another Vietnam," a losing imperialist this region of artificial mini-states. But victory is t he mobilization of the adventure; from social democrats of the the FOR is a coalition linking several exploited masses for their own class SL reflecting the interests of European radical left groups to marginal liberal intere~t,. Their revolutionary fervor will capital in a continuation of "detente" as bourgeois politicians. In such c1ass be the most powerful weapon against opposed to Reagan's Cold War II; from collaborationist popular fronts the the better armed conscript army and Stalinist bureaucrats in Moscow and presence of capitalist elements serves to mercenary security forces. But having Havana, who fear a victory of the guarantee that the masses do not go defeated the military forces of their Salvadoran working masses as a chal beyond the limit, of capitali,m. capitalist oppressors, the workers and lenge to their own parasitic rule. These bourgeois phantom, naturally peasants would not be satisfied with a Brelhnev and Castro are so intent on lack confidence in their capacity to few reforms. The most basic demands of pursuing "peaceful coexistence" with confront imperi
AP Anti-Imperialist Contingent Draws Class Line "1,2,3, 4-Leftist Rebels, Win the War!" chanted the the march organizers, that flashed around the world as SOD-strong Anti-Imperial/ist Contingent as they swung the photo of the EI Salvador protest. onto the Arlington Mell10rial Bridge on May 3 in A sharp political line ran through the demonstrations, Washington, D.C. "5, 6, 7, 8-Nothing to Negotiate!" the first big protest marches since the Vietnam antiwar they added, in a sharp attack on the Democratic Party movement. The Anti-I mperialist Contingent challenged liberals and fake-left reformists who spread treacherous demonstrators to take a side with the leftist rebels. The illusions in a "political solution" in EI Salvador. Such a People's Antiwar Mobilization (PAM), organized by "solution" could only be a deal with the puppet Sam Marcy's Workers World Party / Youth Against Christian Democratic/ military junta or with the War and Fascism (Y A WF) made it clear where they puppeteers in Washington to cheat the Salvadoran stood by slandering the Contingent as "violent" and masses out of the victory they are suffering and dying then setting up a line of "marshals" to physically block for. The Contingent's huge red-on-white banners drove protesters from joining the Anti-Imperialist rally. These the point home: "Avenge the Blood of EI Salvador: provocateurs made it clear that theirs was a rally for Military Victory to Leftist Insurgents!" liberal imperialist "doves" and against military victory to the left-wing insurgents in EI Salvador. Sam Marcy, In the massive SO,OOO-person demonstration in by his words and deeds, has proclaimed himself a Washington, and in smaller marches in San Francisco conscious counterrevolutionary. and Seattle, the Anti-Imperialist Contingent, organized The Spartacist League fought for the victory of the by the Spartacist League and Trotskyist League of Indochinese revolution and we fight today for victory to Canada, was the reddest and just ahout the only militant the toilers in the Salvadoran civil war-by posing a clear section in the rad-lib anti-Reagan demonstrations. They class line in EI Salvador and at home. Marcy's PAM / alone took sides with the workers and peasants in the Y A WF goons are making their bid for the role played by raging Salvadoran civil war against the gang of the Socialist Workers Party in the '60s-organizers of uniformed murderers backed up by U.S. imperialism. radicalized youth for the liberal Democrats like Bella Only the Anti-Imperialist Contingent took on Reagan's. Abzug, the featured speaker at their May 3 rally. The anti-Soviet Cold War threats, proclaiming, "Defense of line hetween revolution and counterrevolution has been Cuba, USSR Begins in EI Salvador!" And it was the red drawn hy the Anti-Imperialist Contingent: Military flags and banners of the Anti-Imperialist Contingent, victory to the leftist insurgents! Smashjunta terror in EI not the pale green flags of liberal "concern" carried by Salvador-"-For workers revolution! 9 reprinted from Workers Vanguard No. 280, 8 May 1981 and Young §partacus No. 92, Summer 1981
Speeches at D.C. Anti-Imperialist Contingent Rally "Anti-Imperialism Abroad Means Class Struggle at Home"
political solution in EI Salvador. They want to leave the army and the right wing death squads intact, to kill and kill again, and that's the bitter truth. They don't want the brothers and sisters in EI Salvador to win any more than they want us to win against Ford, against General Motors, against Chrysler. Listen, brothers, the working class in Detroit is getting ground into dust. We need some class struggle at home, we need it real bad. We need sit-down strike·s against plant closings and mass layoffs. But all we get from the labor bureaucracy in this country is a bunch of "Buy American" crap. This only fuels Reagan's patriotic fever, his anti-Soviet war drive. That's his real target in EI Salvador-Cuba, Poland, the Soviet Union. But for working people: listen, and listen good! There are not 300,000 auto workers laid offin Russia! And the Klan damn well doesn't ride in Moscow! Sure, they need to get rid of their bureaucrats like Brezhnev, just like we WV Photo need to get rid of the bureaucrats in our unions, like Fraser and Kirkland. But Don Alexander WV Photo we had better know that if we don't stop Spartacist League Central Committee. Frank Hicks Reagan's anti-Soviet war drive, we're A longtime antiwar activist andfighter A spokesman for the Rouge Militant gonna be in real trouble. Because those for the rights of black people. in 1979 he Caucus. a class-struggle opposition guys will push the button. And this was one of the organizers of the Detroit group at VA W Local 600. the largest patriotic fever-watch out! Reagan's November 10 rally which stopped the local union in the country. Hicks and so-called safety net is being rewoven KKKfrom marching in the Motor City. other militants mobilized Rouge work into nothing but a· lynch rope for When "Iron Lady" Margaret ers 10 run two KKK-hooded foremen minorities in this country. Thatcher came to the United States a out of the plant in October 1979. A So brothers and sisters, we're gonna couple of months ago and had a chat month later the militants...Joined with the make some hard fights in this country, with Reagan they concluded one thing, SL to organize the November 10 anti against the Klan and the Nazis, with that they long for nothing more than to Klan rally, the first labor-centered anti labor/black mobilizations like Novem have this world rid of communism, fascist rally in decades. ber 10 in Detroit, and like ANCAN in leftism. And of course, in EI Salvador We have a side in EI Salvador. We San Francisco. We're gonna take a side that's precisely where it is beginning, must do everything in our power to in EI Salvador that calls for the workers their anti-Soviet Cold War drive. That's guarantee that the workers and peasants to come to power. Nothing less is what where the blood of the working people is of that country win, and win big! For us they need. And likewise in this country, running right now, and we're the only in the labor· movement that means we're gonna make a fight for a workers ones that want to avenge the blood ofEI fighting to hot-cargo military goods to party that will build actions like this Salvador. So that this Anti-Imperialist EI Salvador. For the UA W, that means Anti-Imperialist Contingent. So to those Contingent today-we built this contin political strikes against Reagan if he of you who broke through the Demo gent because we understand the necessi sends in the Marines. But the hacks in cratic Party lines up there: brothers and ty of taking a side in the civil war going Solidarity House in the UA W Interna sisters, time is running short. I got one on in EI Salvador. tional, they're calling for the so-called question: which side are you on? In fact, the organizers of this other 10
rally were reall~ organizing a pro tight like we did today with the class imperialist contingent, because they struggle politics that pose the only real refuse to take a side. They actually aid challenge to the warmakers and s'trike and abet in committing enormous hreakers in power hen: in the United crimes of betrayal against the worker States. and peasant masses in EI Salvador. And The liberals today are saying, "No in doing so they echo the bourgeois more Vietnams," because that\ a war liberal critics like Ted Kennedy, who that they lost, and the only thing they simply want to cut off military aid to EI think IS immoral is failure. And during Salvador and not cut off economic aid the war they said, "Bring our boys which keeps that junta alive, which home." But leftist students chanted, keeps it afloat. So for example, some of the groups represented here, like the "Two, three, many Vietnams" and the Socialist Workers Party, the Commu Spartacist l.eague raised the slogan "All nist Party and the Youth Against War Indochina Must Go Communist," and Fascism, they say let's take some of because our "bovs" were the North the military aid that's going to EI Vietnamese. And they won! They Salvador and use it for the investigation defeated imperialism on the battlefield, of the racist child killings going on in not marching hand in hand with the Atlanta. They iell black people in the -... imperialists here. And there's a lesson in North to put faith in this racist capitalist that: It takes a fight to get what you state, its cops, its court, its Congress, its Alison Spencer want. Thtl coal miners know that, the politicians. They tell us to look to that Spartacu.1 Youth Leaxue National Viet Cong knew that, and the Spartacus racist dog Reagan to fight for our rights, Committee Youth League knows that too. to fight the K Ian terrorists. I he Spartacm Youth l.eague helped But liberal pacifists think that noth And what is very important, when we to build thi~ Anti-Imperialist Contin ing is worth fighting for because they talk about the independent mobilization gent not on Iv because we don't want to don't have any alternative to offer. So of blacks and workers in this country, . be the cannon fodder for Reagan's when the U.S. pulled out of Vietnam the we're talking about a strategy that imperialist war drive but because we antiwar movement simply collapsed. actually works. So in Detroit when the take a side. Students here may feel But did the Pentagon collapse" No, it Klan threatened to march in celebration threatened by registration for the draft, didn't. And they're back today, of the Greensboro massacre, it was only but the students and youth of EI rearmed, to renew their anti-Soviet war the Spartacist League that mobilized Sa" ador face something quite different. drive. labor and blacks in this city. We I.ike the tortured corp\e of a classmate mobili/cd over 500-black auto work But the Spartacus Youth League does dumped bv the roadside, or a severed ers and black youth and soeialists-to have an alternative to offer and some head tossed into the classroom-that's stop the Klan from marching in down thing that IS worth fighting for, and what goes on there nerv day. And when town Detroit. ;\;ow of course we were tha t's a socialist future. Because capital they Join up with leftist ~orkers and facing Coleman Young's administra ism offers us a future only of un employ peasants tv struggle against a ll.S. tion, who threatened to arrest us, but we ment, of more Cirecnsboros, of cutbacks hachd military dictatorship which has had faith that the working class could be· in every SOCial service for women, sucked their blood for over fifty years, mobili/ed. We based our strategy upon minorities, the poor and the working we say, "I heir fight is our fight!" And that. So labor militants in the Ford class. A future of war and nuclear we take a side-military victory to the River Rouge plant and the Spartacist holocaust. A long time ago I'ngcls said letl-wing insurgenh' l.eague stopped the Klan from celebrat mankind faced the choice of socialism ing that massacre. On campuses across the country or barbarism, and I'll tell vou with the students have rallied around the SYL Dr. Strangeloves in p(lw~r today it's slogans. From protesting Kissinger, an posed even more starkly. You can be 1I11periaiist warmonger and criminal. in active and red with the SYL, or Ann Arbor to the ;\;ational Security radioactive and dead. So it vou want a Agency spies at Brandeis, studenb have future, join the organi/atio~ that has a $2.50 rallied to the SYL's demonstrations, world to win. Join the SYL'. denlllnstrations like this in solidarity WHAT STRATEGY with our class brothers in EI Salvador. RIll BlACK IJ8ERA1'ION? 'IroIIk,1sm (her there, the People's Antiwar Mobi V$. li/ation [PAM]. CISPES, and their SPARTACIST IIIac:Ir Natlonan,m chcerleaders on the left, they don't want you to take a side. They s~y, "Let the Bound Volume peopk of Ll Salvador decide," and what No.1 that means is they arc just dllcking the lluestlon of which side must win this Spartacist Issues 1-20 war. I here's a war going on there, and February 1964-July1971 these people really do not care who $25.00 Make checks payable/mail to: \~ins, as long as the Green Berets aren't Order from/make checks payable to: Spartacist Publishing Co. doing the killing. Well, we're interna Box 1377 GPO Spartacist Publishing New York, NY 10116 tionalists, and wedo care, and we intend Box 1377 GPO, NY, NY 10116 to do something about it. We intend to 11 reprinted/rom Workers Vanxuard ,Vo. NU, 22 It,,fay /98/
Which Side They Were On PAM Marches for Imperialist Doves
The workers and peasants of EI Salvador are fighting a life or death struggle against the junta, its sadistic killers and its godfathers in Washington and Wall Street. Every class-conscious worker and socialist, every defender of social justice must desire victory by the Salvadoran insurgent masses against their torturers and exploiters. Military Victory to the Leftist Rebels! This was the rallying cry of the Anti Imperialist Contingent initiated by the Spartacist League at the EI Salvador demonstration in Washington May 3. .~ We were the only militant contingent j /'toiAl WV Photo there. Our red banners of revolution, PAM rally, Washington, D.C., 3 May 1981. Marcyites (literally) built platform not the pale green flags of liberal for pro-imperialist Democratic "doves." "concern," captured the attention of the press, and the AP wire photo of the American nco-colonies, deeming it strike and the Irish nationalist prison Anti-Imperialist Contingent was picked more "realistic" to pressure the liberal ers, learn about the Russian Revolution, up by the major bourgeois papers and wing of American imperialism to bring sing "Which Side Are You On?" and the run as the picture of the demonstration. "human rights" to EI Salvador. Their "lnternationale"-c1early posed the The reformist organizers of the May 3 strategy is predicated on the illusion question: reform or revolution. So the protest understood that the red banners even here in the citadel of world Marcyites organized violence against of the Anti-Imperialist Contingent imperialism!--of a "progressive" wing the Anti-Imperialist rally. Now they are posed the "spectre of communism." For of the ruling class. Desperately search stuck with justifying it. the "People's Antiwar Mobilization" ing for such a thing, they find only the Accordingly, the Marcyite paper (PAM), dominated on the East Coast by Democratic face of the world's number couples the Anti-Imperialist Contingent the Workers World/YA WF group led one warmongering imperialism. with a Moonie counterdemonstration in by Sam Marcy, our call for military The Democratic "doves," who support of the junta's white terror as victory to the anti-imperialist fighters in disagree with anti-Soviet militarism "Two Disruptions That Fizzled" EI Salvador is a split issue. PAM only when it looks like it's losing (as in (Workers World, 8 May). At the "marshals" forcibly prevented protest Vietnam), are no less than the Republi demonstration too, the Marcyite-Ied ers from joining the Anti-Imperialist cans racist strikebreakers at home and disrupters lied to the marchers, telling rally, instead herding them to the. bitter foes of international revolution them the Anti-Imperialist rally was the "official" rally to hear liberal Democrat ary struggle. But for Sam Marcy, right-wing counterdemonstration. But ic politicians like Bella Abzug, Paul wedded to the popular-front strategy of nobody believed it. Everyone knew our O'Dwyer and John Conyers (who didn't collaboration with the "peace-loving" rally was against the Democrats and for show but sent a telegram) call for more servants of imperialism, they are the red revolution. That's why the "mar butter /less guns and a cagier policy in only game in town, and their tender shals" had to forcibly prevent people the "best interests" of American sensibilities had to be protected. So the from joining us, as is openly admitted in imperialism. PAM "marshals" had to herd people Workers World, which quotes a "PAM Gooning for the Democrats, PAM/ past the Anti-Imperialist rally and its coordinator": "PAM guides prevented Y A WF made it explicit that their chants of "Take a Side-Victory to the this from happening by forming a followers were marching against mili Leftist Insurgents in EI Salvador!" and barrier between the disrupters and the tary victory for the Salvadoran leftists. "Remember Bay of Pigs! Remember antiwar protesters .... " Why is Sam Marcy in such a hurry to Vietnam! Democratic Party, we know By way of political cover, Workers draw a hard line against revolution in EI which side you're on!" For the Anti World supplies the following: Salvador? Because he and his fellow Imperialist rally-where people could "Their call for 'military victory' to the reformists are hostile to a perspective of hear a socialist perspective for EI left-wing insurgents is a cover ior their hostility to the Salvadoran liberation mobilizing the working class for power Salvador, where they could express forces. Thus in a newspaper distributed in the U.S. and in America's Latin their solidarity with the U.S. miners' at tlte demonstration they demanded 12
that 'the workers and peasants of EI thing, but it's okay for ostensible leftists Salvador must hreak with the FDR'." to do so. Evidently ashamed to say What? We call for victory to the straight out that he stands for a coalition Salvadoran liberation forces in this civil government between the FOR and the war because we are hostile to the blood-drenched ruling junta, he appeals Salvadoran liberation forces? Those to liberal guilt in the name of national unfamiliar with classical Stalinist "log sovereignty: ic" will find this a little hard to "U nder anv and all circumstances, it is understand. the right oj' the oppressed country to set the conditiom and the specific immedi Because we stand in solidarity with ate ohjective, for which it is the heroic Salvadoran workers, peas struggling .... ants and leftist intellectuals, we oppose 'The oppressed and the oppressed alone their popular-frontist leaders of the have the right to determine whether to FOR, who are using the blood shed by fight for lull withdrawal under the circumstances. how and hy what means the insurgent masses to intensify pres ib. to arrive at a political settlement, if that WV Photo sure for a "political solution." What this i, de,irahle. and what conditions should Bella bellows. would mean is a replay of the made-in he emhraced in any agreement." USA "human rights" junta of October militarilv. to defeat the U.S. on the The right of self-determination means hattlefield. The United States 'In this 1979, which included among its minis one thing and one thing only: the right case is operating in what it considers its ters the first president of the subsequent of a nation to an independent state. EI own hack yard and the people who arc ly formed FOR, Alvarez Cordova (who Salvador is engulfed in a civil war. Thus talking ahout a political solution are was killed by a rightist death squad) and the call for "self-determination" is an talking ahout a hloodhath in Central its present head, Guillermo U ngo. Yet America-alld I'o/l'd helll'r know it." irrelevant piece of rhetoric dredged up At bottom the Marcyites' appeal is to this "reform" junta, among its very first to cover Marcv's tailism: first identify nationalism and liberal guilt. "We acts, massacr~d workers who took over the Ilimsy, contradictory FDR with the Americans can't tell other peoples what the factories. All the talk of a "peaceful will of the Salvadoran nation and then to do" is the line of argument. Well, the solution" in EI Salvador simply means pronounce any opposition to its policies Spartacist League is not "we Ameri more death and destruction for the a violation of self-determination. If working masses. cans." We are Marxist internationalists! some gang of bourgeois nationalists set The German socialists Marx and Engels In EI Salvador, a military victory for up an American military base in their the insurgency, destroying the existing rallied the European workers movement country. would Marcy support this in in support for a military victory of the capitalist armed forces, would lead to a the name of self-determination? situation of dual power, opening the North in the American Civil·War-·and Marcy appeals to the precedent of while sharply opposing Lincoln's poli possibility for workers revolution de Vietnam, arguing that it was correct to spite and against the flimsy FOR cies on many occasions. That is our support the 1973 "peace" settlement tradition. We are part of an internation popular front, whose program is a there. The Spartacist League pointed "reformed" capitalist government. At al class, the world proletariat. And we out then that this treaty would settle support the victory of in EI the very least, rebel military victory our class nothing, and indeed it took two more Salvador! would allow the masses a taste of years of bitter' fighting until the Viet vengeance against the brutal killers who namese workers and peasants won the Teddy Kennedy's New have ruled the country with fire and victory on the battlefield. But calls for a Waterboys death for decades. On the other hand, "negotiated settlement" or "political defeat at the hands of the U.S. puppet solution" in EI Salvador arc far more With the May 3 demonstration, the junta would mean the destruction of the dangerous. As an SI. spokesman noted Marcyites make their bid for the role workers movement and the left and an at the May J Anti-Imperialist rally: played by the Socialist Workers Party immense strengthening of imperialist ..... there\ Olle crucial difference. (SWP) in the Vietnam antiwar counterrevolution throughout the hecause in Vietnam the Soviet Union movement-organizers of radicalized region. against its will wa, lorced to deliver youth for the liberal Democrats. The some arrm and they had the ahility. SWP was too worried about winning its Marcy: "Self-Determination" Is current court st'lit against the FBI (by the Right to Betray getting the government to acknowledge the SWP is too tame to warrant secret As they seek to become brokers for police surveillance and "dirty tricks") to the Democratic "doves," the WWP/ compete for the mantle of "best builder" YAWF organizers of PAM have been on May 3, especially after having tried feeling the heat both from liberals and to demonstrate its respectability by social democrats to their right and from joining with DSOC to red-bait the the SL-organized Anti-Imperialist Con march as "violence"-prone. (This didn't tingent to the left. Shortly before the stop the S W P's Militant after the fact May 3 march, Marcy himself wrote a from hailing the demo as the "Biggest pathetic apologia for counterrevolu Antiwar March Since Vietnam"!) The tionary betrayal in EI Salvador, titled SWP's abstention left the Marcyites a "On Negotiated Settlement and the clear shot at becoming, along with the Right of Self-Determination" (Workers Communist Party and its numberless World. 17 April). He attempts to argue vVorkers vVorld front groups, the aspiring brokers for a that when the liberal imperialists argue Sam Marcy, self-proclaimed counter new bloc between anti-Reagan youth for a "political solution" this is a bad revolutionist. and the Democrats. 13
The Marcyites have come a long way forward point of "Soviet expansion imperialism lost there. Speaking for the down even from their origins as a pro ism." Haig threatens Cuba with military resurgent hawks, Richard Nixon de Stalinist split from Trotskyism in 1958. action if it doesn't stop arming the clared in a Seattle television interview During the Vietnam era, the Marcyites Salvadoran insurgents. Yet the Marcy that EI Salvador "is not another were among the most raucous cheer ites eagerly seek a blood line between Vietnam. It is not going to be a place leaders for all manner of Stalinists and themselves and our slogan, "Defense of where we're going to fail." This is the Ilip petty-bourgeois nationalists. While Cuba, USSR Begins in EI Salvador." side of the imperialist defeatism which slavishly tailing Vietnamese Stalinism The rightward shift in the bourgeois PAM appeals to. The Anti-Imperialist and its popular-frontist strategy, the political climate finds internal rellection Contingent, in contrast, stood with the Marcyites on occasion criticized the in the Marcy group, which now aspires working masses of Central America and official antiwar movement led by the simply to the social-democratic role appealed to their class brothers and SWP and Communist Party (the which earned the SWP the just con sisters in the U.S. "Mobe" and the "New Mobe") from the tempt of many tens of thousands of The Spartacist League fought for the left: subjectively anti-imperialist youth dur victory of the Indochinese revolution " ... American troops have intervened ing the Vietnam War. and we fight today for victory to the again and again in dozens of countries The rightward shift of liberalism and toilers in the Salvadoran civil war-by to establish corrupt regimes that serve its left apologists is palpable in the EI posing a clear class line in EI Salvador the interests of U.S. corporations .... Salvador protest milieu. Che Guevara's and at home. The choice is between "The Mobe leaders know all this, but are so anxious to have the support of the call for "two, three, many Vietnams" preaching faith in the Democratic wing doves of the ruling class that they refuse used to be a standard chant among New of the capitalist warmongers or building to alert the American people to the Left radicals. Everyone understood that a massive anti-imperialist movement dangers that lie beyond the Vietnam the heroic resistance of the Vietnamese with a perspective of workers power in war.. was draining U.S. imperialism of its Latin America and here. We know "Anyone genuinely opposed to war must. in the long run, oppose imperial strength. But today the liberal slogan of which side we're on. And we know ism and fight for the destruction of its "no more Vietnams" is pervasive. which side Sam Marcy's on, too. He foundation, monopoly capitalism." Ironically one of the clearest statements stands for "anti-Reaganism" under the - Workers World, I J November of this shift.to the right comes from the hegemony of Carter / Kennedy's Demo , 1969 academic Castroites of the North cratic Party. We stand for class solidari For years Y A WF trained its members American Congress on Latin America, ty and class struggle. The reformist to tail every kind of "Third World" which actually begins a fund appeal, charlatans oppose the defeat of the nationalism and Stalinism. But to get "Help save the people of the U.S., and blood-soaked Salvadoran junta, in the Teddy or some other mainstream liberal the peoples of Latin America, from the interests of appealing to the pro Democrat onto the speakers' stand, tragedy of two, three, many Vietnams"! imperialist "doves" who above all fear Y A WF will have to shed even nominal PAM pushes the same line. In the spectre of revolution. That is what anti-imperialism. If you want Teddy, endorsing the May 3 PAM rally, a makes a Sam Marcy, by his words and you can't have the PLO, just for Detroit city council resolution warned by his deeds, a self-proclaimed coun instance: at the "multi-issue" May 3 against "entering into another no-win terrevolutionist on El Salvador. rally ther e was no demand about Viet Nam-type internal conllict." The We demand: Military victory to the Zionism. To be successful brokers key here is "no-win." Liberals fear leftist insurgents! Smash junta terror in toward the liberal establishment, Marcy "another Vietnam" only because U.S. EI Salvador-For workers revolution!. will have to wean his membership away from any re~idual attachment to nation al liberation struggles and especially from even Iipservice to the defense of SPARTACIST LEAGUE LOCAL DIRECTORY the Soviet Union against imperialism. National Office Champaign Houston With May 3 this process has more than Box 1377. GPO cia SYL Box 26474 New York. NY 10116 PO. Box 2009 Houston, TX 77207 begun. (212) 732-7860 Champaign. IL 61820 Los Angeles Once the Marcyites liked to posture Amherst (217) 384-7793 Box 29574 cia SYL Los FelIZ Station as hard-guy defenders of the U~SR Chicago POBox 176 Los Angeles, CA 90029 Box 6441. Main PO against U.S. imperialism. Under the Amherst. MA 01004 (213) 662-1564 Chicago. IL 60680 (413) 546-9906 theoretical rubric of the "global class (312) 427-0003 Madison war" they slavishly supported the Ann Arbor c/o SYL Kremlin's foreign policy, especially its cia SYL Cleveland Box 2074 POBox 8364 Box 6765 Madl~on. >IV I 5370' most counterrevolutionary aspects Ann Arbor. MI 48107 Cleveland. OH 44101 (608) 255-2342 (what precipitated their split from (313) 662-2339 (216) 621-5138 New York Trotskyism was their support· to Berkeley/Oakland Box 444 POBox 32552 Detroit Canal Street Station Khrushchev's crushing of the 1956 Oakland. CA 94604 Box 32717 New York. NY 10013 Hungarian Revolution). But now that (415) 835-1535 DetrOIt. MI 48232 (212) 267-1025 the U. S. imperialists are making EI Boston (313) 868-9095 San Francisco Salvador the front line of "Cold War Box 840. Central Station Box 5712 Cambridge. MA 02139 San FranCISco CA 94101 11," these "global class warriors" are (617) 492-3928 (415) 863-6963 found in the bourgeois liberal camp. They organized the May 3 demo on the TROTSKYIST LEAGUE OF CANADA liberal line that the Central American Toronto Vancouver upheavals have no bearing on the "East Box 7198. Station A Box 26. Station A Toronto, Ontario M5>IV 1 X8 Vancouver. B C V6C 2L8 West conllict." (416) 593-4138 (604) 681-2422 Reagan declares EI Salvador the 14
reprintedfromljlorkers ~q~lg11ard. /'v'o. 279. 24 April 1981
Militant L.A. Phone Workers Say: u.s. Hands Off EI Salvador! Campaignilll!; lor lI{JcominR deleRate to strike to stop U.S, military interven member. The FDR leaders are angling elections to this .IUIIII1It'r·S cOfJvention ol tion. The CW A must break with the for a "political solution"--a deal with the Communications Workers o/Amer CIA's labor front in South America, the the junta and its U.S. masters that iea (CWA), the class-struRRle Militanl AU·LD. Our local must immediately would leave the corporations and Action Caucus (tIA C) is centerinR its cease its financial contributions to landed estates intact and social condi campaign on ['-5'. and C W A involve "Operation South America". tions for the workers and peasants menl in 1-:1 Salvador. the MAC candi Only a military victory of the left unchanged. dates in the Lm Angeles area-Barhara wing insurgents can prevent a blood Britton, Manuel f)eIRadi//o and Barry bath. But real victory for the workers Down With Reagan's Anti-Soviet Janus-issued a lea/7et on April 12 and peasants can only be won through War Drive which noted the MA C's planned partici independent struggle in their own pation in the Anti-Imperialist COnlin interest, A real victory means the Reagan's war drive begins in El gent at the demonstration at the establishment of workers and peasants Salvador. But that is not where it will SalI'(Jdoran consulate on April 18. The governments In EI Salvador and ena. His real targets are Cuba and the MAC slogans in the demo \i'ere: .. U. S. throughout Central America Soviet Union. He hates the Soviet Imperialism-Hands Oil EI Salvador,' governments that nationalize without Union and Cuba for the same reason he Militarr VictOr)' to the fRlt- WinR compensation the coffee plantations, hates the unions. Both stand in the way Insurgents.' f)own with ReaRan's Anti the corporations and the estates. This of corporate profit. The USS R is no ~()\'iet War Drive.' AFI.-CIO Break means that the workers and peasants workers' paradise. Russian workers I\'ith the A IFf.!).' Borco{( A// Militarr must break from the Democratic Revo have numerous scores to settle with the Goods to 1-:1 Salvador.'" The lea/7et is lutionary Front (FDR) led by so-called likes of Brezhnev, just as we have some excerpted heloll'. "friends of the people" like landlord scores to settle with the bureaucratic 'Alvare7 and Ungo, the former junta misleaders of our unions. But we are better off with a misled union than no union at all. Soviet workers are better The U,S. means bloody business in EI UAW Militants: off having kicked out their capitalists Salvador. Every single union hall was and organized a planned economy that bombed and destroyed. Whole villages Victory to the provides economic necessities . .Just as have been burned to the ground, 12,000 we defend our unions against govern mostly workers and peasants were ment and company attacks we are for slaughtered last year alone. Operating Brothers in defending Soviet and Cuban workers under the cover of the CW A-supported and their planned economy against American Institute For Free Labor EI Salvador! profit-hungry Reagan, Development (AIFLD),s "land reform," '1 he 10110\\ IIlg motion was put The war drive means mainly black the CIA transplanted the Phoenix forward today b~ the Rouge Militant and Latino youth fighting and dying in pacification program from Vietnam to Caucus at the llAW I.oeal 600 the jungles of Central America to boost EI Salvador. Mallltenance and Construction Unit the profits of the big corporations. It's The war in EI Salvador is a civil war. (Skilled I raue,) meeting: not the Russians who are closing our This war pits the workers and impover The Maintenann' and ('on factories, letting our cities rot and ished peasants against the coffee barons, strul'lion l'nit of l'A W I.ocal 6()() eliminating efTA programs, food the landlords, the right-wing death endorses the anti-im(Jeriali .. t contin stamps and unemployment insurance. squads, the military junta, and the U.S. gent in the Ma) J man'h on Washing It's not the Russians who are closing government. The American labor move ton. We stand opposed to all l.S. schools and hospitals while going after ment has a stake in this fight. We in the militar) and l'conomil' aid to the our unions with a vengance. Our enemy Militant Action Caucus call for military murderous junta in 1-:1 Sahador, and is at home, victory to the left-wing insurgents. And to Reagan ... anti-So, iet \\ar drin. We in the MAC are fighting for a new we call on American labor to take all In the civil war between the leftist leadership in the CW A-a leadership necessary action to help our class insurgents and the U.S.-supported that will stand up to Reagan/ Haig's brothers and sisters win. The I L WU junta, we are for the victory of our thermonuclear lunacy, Labor must showed the way when they resolved not working-class brothers and sisters break from the parties of big business, to handle military cargo bound for EI who are under the heel of one of the the RepUblicans and Democrats. To rid Salvador. But the military boycott has longest continuous military dictator this society of war, racism and fascist to be made real on the docks and ships in Central America. terror requires a workers party-a party extended to teamsters and seamen. And -submitted by Rouge Militant Caucus, that will bring the working class to if war-cra7Y Reagan sends in the lAW Local 600, 21 April 1981 power and establish a workers' govern Marines, labor had better be prepared ment and a planned economy .•
II ~I' I \' 15 reprinted/rom Workers VanKuard No. 286. 31 Jui!' 1981 Longshore Militants Say: "For Military Victory to the Salvadoran Leftists !'~ During the 24th hiennial convention sary action to help our class hrothers ot' the International Lon!(shoremen's and sisters in EI Sal'vador to win; and and Warehousemen's Union (IL WU), WHEREAS: LABOR: held in Honolulu April 27-May 2, The International's policy to hoycott Howard Keylor ot'the Militant Caucus military cargo bound for EI Salvador BOYCOTT (a class-struggle opposition in the is a first step toward international union) presented the following minority labor soldarity. But the military MILITAKY report on EI Salvador. hoycott has to be made real on the WHEREAS: waterfront and extended to Team CAR(TO Reagan's foreign policy is gearing up sters and Seamen. If war-crazy for World War III with the Soviet Reagan sends in the Marines the TO Union. The steps along this road to ILWU and all labor must he prepared nuclear holocaust are clear-first EI to strike to stop U.S. intervention; . EL SALVADOR! I Salvador, then Nicaragua, Cuba, and Poland and finally the USSR; and WHEREAS: WHEREAS: Real victory for the workers and LONGSHORE MAN I The conf1ict in EI Salvador is a civil peasants can only be won through ~.. ~.~ war. On one side are the workers and independent struggle in their own impoverished peasants. On the other class interests. This means the esta side are the landlords, coffee barons, blishment of workers' and peasants' the right-wing death squads, the governments in EI Salvador and military junta, and the U.S. govern throughout Central America to ex ment. Every single union hall has propriate the coffee plantations, the been bombed and destroyed and the corporations and the estates without killing goes on; and compensation; and WHEREAS: WHEREAS: The ILWU and the rest of the The ability to carry out this independ WV Photo American labor movement has a ent class struggle means breaking At 23 January 1982 Bay Area EI stake in this fight and must take sides politically with the so-called progress Salvador demo. with the workers and peasants. Only a ive capitalists who are angling for a leave the corporations and landed military victory of the left-wing negotiated "political solution" that estates intact and social conditions insurgents can prevent a blood bath. will maintain capitalism in EI Salva American labor must take all neces- dor. Such a' deal with the junta would for workers and peasants unchanged. For Salvadoran workers the only choice is victory or death; THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED: That the ILWU: I. Call for military victory to the left wing insurgents in EI Salvador; 2. Call upon the American labor San Francisco, movement to hot-cargo all military 21 November goods destined for EI Salvador and 1981: other Central American dictators; Class-struggle 3. Urge our class brothers and sisters militants want i in EI Salvador to politically break their class with the capitalists and to struggle for brothers and a workers' and peasants' government; sisters to win the warTrl 4. Demand an end to all U.S. military EI Salvador. and economic aid to the Salvadoran o junta; .r:o 5. Demands U.S./OAS/Latin Ameri 0.. can capitalists-all hands off EI >. ~ Salvador and Nicaragua!. 16 reprinted from Workers Vanguard No. 282, 5 June 1981
The First Communist-Led Uprising in the Americas EI Salvador 1932: La Matanza On .Ianuary 22 of last year the streets tural workers and peasants nonetheless Trotskyism. of San Salvador echoed with the sound frightened the ruling landlord The Communist I nternational's con of 200,000 protesters marching in the capitalists nearly to death. nections with Central America were biggest demonstration that the small For those who today preach a extremely tenuous. And Marti was not Central American country of EI Salva "political solution" in EI Salvador, 1932 the sort to submit to the "Stalintern" dor has ever seen. Virtually the entire also has lessons. It was not in the revolt bureaucracy. "In those days [circa 1925- working class and poor population of itself that 30,000 died. That was the 27] Marti wore a red star on his lapel the capital came in answer to a call punishment meted out by a terrified with a picture of Leon 'I rotsky on it. At issued by a newly-formed leftist alliance bourgeoisie ajier it had been assured its this time. of course, Trotsky was in for a show of strength against the victory. If the Salvadoran oligarchs and disgrace, but not yet anathema .... it military junta. their military butchers survive this would he wrong to think of this They also came to commemorate challenge to their rule, they will once temperamental and pas~ionate Salva another .Ianuary 22, nearly half a again take their revenge. Only military dorean as a Stalinist" (I homas An century earlier, when the Indians and victory of the leftist rebels can prevent it. derson, Afalan::a: EI Sall'{u/o,s Com peasants of EI Salvador rose up in the Only socialist revolution can ensure that muni.11 Rel'oll of 1932), An in first Communist-led insurrection in the it never happens again. ternationalist, Marti was thrown out Americas. The 1932 revolt was crushed, of Guatemala in 1925 for helping to with some 30,000 workers and peasants, Farabundo Marti and 1932 found the Central American Socialist most of them Indian farm laborers, Party: In 192X he was arrested in New The roots of the 1932 revolt are found butchered in the weeks that followed. York during a police raid on the CP's in the spread of agricultural capitalism Two-and-a-half percent of EI Salvador's Anti-Imperialist l.eague. in EI Salvador, enmeshing the c'ountry population disappeared practically Marti fought in 192X-29 \\ith Augusto in the world market, and in the collapse overnight. lJ nions ceased to exist. The Sandino in Nicaragua, serving as San of that market in 1929 with the capitalist revolutionary movement was destroyed dino\ personal secretary IT1 the l.iheral depression. The development of the for years to come. This was /a matanza, general's guerrilla war against the U.S. gr,'at coffee estates threw thousands of the massacre. Marines occupying Nicaragua. He then Indians off their ancestral lands, de hroke with Sandino, saying, "His The bloodbath introduced 50 years of stroying the communal agricultural virtually unbroken military dictatorship banner was only the banner of inde system which had sustained them for pendence, the banner of emancipation, in EI Salvador. Today the spectre of centuries. But in the formation of a mass 1932 still haunts the Salvadoran ruling and he did not pursue goals of social of agricultural wage workers and rehellion. I declare this categorically class in the civil war raging through the oppressed peasant c%nos, the coffee country. And the response of the coffee hecause more than once communist barons formed a dangerous class enemy. ideas have been attrihuted to General barons and the junta colonels is the When the depression hit and the coffee same as it was back then: 22 .Ianuary Sandino" (Mauricio de la Selva, HEI price plummeted, the Indian peasants Salvador: Tres Dccadas de Lucha." 1980 left 100 workers, peasants and found themselves literally starving for urban slum dwellers dead, massacred by Cuadcrnos Americal/os. .lanuary lack of land or work. It was a situation Fehruary 1962). the regime's military and paramilitary ripe for rebellion. killers. For the military right "another The leaders for that rebellion would "Struggle Against the National '32" means a "peace of 100,000 dead." be found in the ranks of the newly Bourgeoisie!" But /a matanza is not just a tragic founded Salvadoran Communist Party The political crisis of Salvadoran memory for the Salvadoran left: they (PCS) and the nascent labor movement capitalism created hy the coffee crash have taken the name of the leader of the dominated by the Communist-led Re led Salvadoran president Pio Romero, 1932 uprIsmg, Agustin Farabundo gional Federation of Salvadoran Work whose government had been violently Marti, for their banner today. Despite ers (FRTS). Inspired by the Russian repressing the growing FRTS and the terrible vengeance exacted by the Revolution, a small group of radicals Socorro Rojo, to call an election for ruling class, 1932 also showed the founded a Central American commu president in 1931, open to all candi tremendous power of the working nist movement in 1925 and by 1930 the dates. In thi~ unprecedented proceed masses, who rose up practically un PCS was functioning within the coun ing, Arturo Araujo, a liheral would-be armed and virtually leaderless, yet try. Its most effective leader was reformer, won. But times were not seized a good deal of the country before Farabundo Marti, officially the general favorable for reform and Araujo's the machine guns began their murder secretary of the Salvadoran chapter of government hegan to hloodily repress a ous work. lJ nder conditions far less Socorro Rojo, International Red Aid, massive wave of rural strikes on the favorable than those which exist today, the Communist-built workers defense coffee .flncas of the western highlands. with a tiny working class and a weak league led in the U.S. in its early years by The National Guard attacked student revolutionary movcment, the agricul- .lames P. Cannon, founder of American demonstrations. Meanwhile, the Com- 17
desperate attempt to overthrow the Martinez regime. The Indian peasants, led by Communist-allied caciques (local·tribal leaders), were in an insurrectionary fervor. Many army officers and troops were known to be sympathetic to the Communists. After intense debate Marti agreed with other PCS comrades that the time for an uprising was then or never. A surviving Communist leader, Miguel Marmol, relates that Marti accepted the idea "that the duty of the Party was to occupy its post as the vanguard at the head of the masses, in order to avoid the great, imminent danger, dishonorable for us, of an insurrection that would be uncon .f -~ NACLA trolled, spontaneous or provoked by fII~nG.~ LS1A ~ AL4S lit y 1~rfL J; \}&;]i( 1IUC;L~ governmental action, in which the masses would be alone and without MARTI, LUNA YZAPATA combat leadership" (Roque Dalton, Miguel Mannol: los suces(}s de 1932 en EI Salvador). Matanza .lust about everything that could have gone wrong did go wrong. There werc no guns, no real military plans. Marti and other leaders were arrested on the eve of the planned revolt, which was In 1932 EI then put off for a second time. Finally it Salvador's white became such common knowledge that terror sent 30,000 the date for it was published in San to their graves; Salvador newspapers. PCS comrades newspapers and sympathi7ers in thc army wcrc announced the executions of the disarmed, arrested or killed, while those leaders of the troops who did revolt prematurely on insurgency. the 19th were easily crushed. Support Below: Nicaragua's outside of the western highlands and a Sandino (left) with few cities was spotty at best. At the last Farabundo Marti. minute a portion of thc leadership got NACl.A cold feet and tried to call off the rising, munist organilcrs were finding a ready but would there be a leadership capablc only. to be overruled by a majority audience for their revolutionary of capitalizing on thcm? The weak nesses which, however, tried unsuccessfully to messagc. According to one PCS of the PCS were shown when a convert the call for insurrection into a manifcsto: Communist-innuenced student paper, call for a general strike. "I he Communist Partv calls all the El'Irella R(}ia. published by Marti's poor workers and p~asants of EI In the end "zero hour" arrived at disciples Alfonso Luna and Mario midnight on the 22nd and the peasants Salvador to hloody struggle agaimt the Zapata. greeted the Martinez coup, national hourgeoisie. who arc uncondi ro~e up and marched out to a heroic but lionally allied to Yankee Imperial saying that "the blundcrs of Araujo doomed rebellion. Curiously, all of the ists.. Down with the imperialist imposed on the military the moral northern portion of Central America oppressor and his national dogs' ))llwn obligation of overthrowing him." was rocked that very night by the with the fascist government of Arturo Illusions in the military would soon ArauJo'" simultaneous eruption of four major be tragically demolished. Hoping to volcanos, including EI Salvador's Izalco Araujo jailed Marti. who became a stave off the intensifying repression, the crater. Thomas P. Anderson, the Amer popular hero. winning his freedom by a Communists sought to negotiate with ican historian of la matanza, writes in hunger strike accompanied by mass Martine7. They were fobbed off on the his valuable and interesting account that dcmomtrations for his release. But the defense minister, who refused to nego as the molten lava flowed down the Communists' prospects were threatened tiate, tclling them: "You have machetes; slopes of Izalco, whcn. in December 193 I. a right-wing we have machine guns." Rumors began "in' the glow of the burning mountain, a military coup brought General Maxi to ny that Martinez was planning to more ominous development was oh miliano Hernandel. Martinel to power. liquidate thc leftist threat militarily. served. Bands of Indians armed with Time seemed to be running out for the After municipal elections were held in machetes were making their way out of still weak and under-led PCS. The early January in which the Communists the ravines and tangled hills down into the towns of the area .... objective conditions for a Communist were robbed of victory at the polls, the "The revolt was no mere jocqlll'fie, no Icd revolution wcre clearly apparent- party leaders decided to gamble on a suddt'n impUlse on the part of Indian 18
('alll/wlinos, " it has the distinction of government had already murdered all Today as in 1932 there are those who being the first l.atin American rnolu the Communist officers and soldiers in are quick to label revolutionary com tionary movement in \\ hich men \\ ho thl' hourgcois army, had captured or munists, Trotskyists, as "ultraleftists," WCIT ,Ivowed international communisI', liquidated, or was ahout to liquidate, played a major part." most oj the memhers of the leader This is now being done in Marti's name! --,I homas P. Anderson, ship oj the party and the mass The man whose party called for "bloody ,\1atan::a: 1-.'/ Sa/wlll"',1 organi/at ion .. ," struggle against the national bourgeoi COllllllunis! Ri'I'I!/! 01/1)3:; Dalton. ,\flxue/ Mlirlllo/ sie" has been taken as a symbol by the At first the rebels swept all before The early '.IDs did indeed witness leftist guerrilla leaders of the Farabundo them, seiling towns, looting shops and supreme examples of ultraleftist betray Marti National Liberation Front avenging themselves on a handful of als by the Stalinists, most tragically in (FMLN) who, however, base their largely deserving bourgeois victims, In Germany, where the Communists fol popular-front strategy precisely on an all, outside of army casualties, only a lowing Moscow's "Third Period" line, alliance with the "national" or "patriot couple of dO/en lives were lost in the fought the Socialists, not the Nazis, as ic" capitalists. Today they call for a revolt itself. But when the machine guns the "main danger," thus paving the way negotiated deal with the military de began to speak, the sharpest machetes for Hitler. But the 1932 Salvadoran scendants of Martinel the butcher. were no answer. U.S. and British revolt was not an ultraleft putsch. Marti, we suspect, would have found warships waited off the coast, offering Rather. in the tradition of German what Workers Vanguard wrote just im perialist intervention. M artine7 re Communist leader Eugen Levine and before the FMLN's January general fused. It was not necessary, he said in a the short-lived Bavarian soviet republic offensive more to his taste: tekgram: "Up to today, the fourth day of 1919, a weak party unable to manage "Hut the Salvadoran masses have no of operations, 4,HOO COl11l11unish have a difficult and isolated revolutionary choice-passivity has not stopped the been li4uidated." escalating massacre. And if the working situation placed itself at the head of a 7hefl the puniti,e massacre began. In masses rise up in an all-round insurrec doomed uprising rather than betrav the tion, from the coffee-growing hills of the white terror that followed, hundreds masse, who looked to it for leader~hip. the west to the San Salvador slums and Were forced to dig their OWI1 graves and factories, thev can defeat the white were then shot and buried. Thousands The Sal\adoran poet Roque Dalton, terror.. Military victory to the leftist were left unburied-so many that for a member until his death of the People's insurgents'" weeks no ol1e in the region dared cat RC\olutionary Army, wrote a poem -WV No. 271, 2 January pork, either for fear that the hogs h,ld called "Ultralefts" in response to the Half a century after the heroic 1932 fed on the bodies or that the meat itself Stalinist-reformist line. It includes the uprising and the horrifiC malanza, EI was suspect. Peasant rebels Were tossed following stann: Salvador is once again in the grip of revolt. The forces of the left today are in the air and caught on raised bayonets. "her}thing wcnt very well The leaders were rounded up and until there appeared that ultraleftist stronger organilationally and militarily hanged or shot. Marti's final words called htrahundo Marti than were the young Communists of before the firing s4uad were "l.ong l.iVt: \\ ho headed an ultraleftiq Salvadoran 1932. But as long as their leaders pursue l ('ollllllunist Party the International Red Aid " Other the dangerous chimera of a "political In \\hich a mass of ultraleftis!"' were settlement" with the blood-soaked junta leaders shouted "l.ong Live the Com milltani!> munist I nternationaII", even "Long Live among them h:liclano Ama Timoteo terrorists they are politically stymied. Stalin I" I.llc Chico S[II1ChCl What is necessary is for the leftist rebels Vlcentc 'I ad eo Alfonso I.una and to win the civil war. for a communist "Ultraleftism" Maf'lo Zapata. (Trotskyist) vanguard to lead a proletar I hey couldn't be ultraleftish through to The Com intern's res pO lise to the the end ian revolution in EI Salvador which revolt was not nearly as laudatory, hecause they didn't have the means could spark eruptions by the worker and however. The Stalinists and nationalists and were assassinated to the numher of peasant masses throughout Central thirty thousand," America .• who today claim to speak 111 Marti's name may not even realize it, but the response of the Stalini/ed Comintern to the Salvadoran revolt was to Ilirn ils A SpartaCist P8Jh hack on it, denouncing the PCS for "ultraleftism." "One of the chief leSSOn!> of the Salvadoran uprising is the great Order Now! danger of putschist and 'left' sectarian I enclose $ ____ for ~~copy(ies) of tendencies against which we must wage "Solldarnosc: Polish Company Union the most energetic struggle" (intert/a for CIA and Bankers" at $1.00 each, liona/ Press Corre.lj)(mdence, 17 March 1932). This backstabbing, anti Name -----... ------.------1 revolutionary verdict was bitterly con tested by surviving PCS leader Miguel Address Marmo!' Speaking years later to leftist City poet R04ue Dalton, he remarked: "I don't believe that \\e should he State ._~_~Zip ~~ __ .__ ~~"'I labeled petty-bourgcoi,atl\entufists for having donc it. ... 1 beliC\e that (lur Phone errors were rightist and not leftist. ... Make checks payable/mail to due to vacillati(lIls'and delavs, due to Spartacist Publishing Co, gross violatiOn> of the most 'elemental Box 1377 GPO, New York, NY 10116 conspiratorial security mea,ures. the insurrection \\as begun .. when the 19 reprintedfrom ~Vorkers Vanguard No. 276. 13 /IIarch 1981 ._-----_.- --- Front Line EI Salvador Smash Junta Terror!
Defeat U.S. Imperialism! Defend Cuba, USSR!
We print helow the editedfirst half of a speech hr Jan Norden. editor of Workers Vanguard and memher of the Spartacist League Central Committee. recently delivered in Boston and New York under the title. "For Workers Revolution in Central America." An expanded version or the second halt: focusing on Nicaragua. appeared in WV No. 277, 27 March 1981.
It'~ high noon in Central America. The whole isthmus IS red-hot, huhhling Junta victims like the volcanic chain that forms its in EI Salvador hack hone. A string of hanana repuh Cathedral, Iics, puppet dictatorships and oligar March 1980. chic tyrannies have shot their wad, and there is an historic day of reckoning approaching. There is a general crisis of bourgeois rule in the region, ~uch as it has been practiced over the last half century. And in this explosive situation a new administration has moved into the White House which is determined to send a bloody message to the Kremlin. I he message consists of II uey helicop ters. lOS millimeter balOokas, PT patrol Chauvel/Sygma boats and U.S. "military advisers." The ,orne bloodthirsty butchers in its back guess they have to call them white ~upposed blood is to be that of the \ard. When Teddy Roosevelt was riding paper~ because their real purpose is to Central American masses. Reagan has roughshod over these little state lets, throw mud in the eyes of the public, so challenged Castro and 13re7hnev to a American imperialism was mainly they don't sec what\ going on. So the shoot-out over FI Salvador, and Central concerned with consolidating its region first thing you ha\e to do is to debunk America is now the focal point of the al hegemony. The Spanish-American the imperialist lies. To recall President Cold War-the point at which all the War and dollar diplomacy were central Reagan's words ora few weeks ago: who energy of imperialism's anti-Soviet war ly aimed at turning the Monroe Doc i~ it that goes around the world lymg, drive is concentrated on the tinder of trine into reality. Building the Panama cheating and stealing') Well, we have a popular outrage and the flames begin to Canal enabled the U.S. for the first time candidate for that. It's the United leap up. to possess a two-ocean navy. It was part State~. And this is really attempt To meet this challenge the left. hoth in of the carving up of the colonial world :\'umber 2. Number I was back in I.atin America and in the imperialist by imperialism in preparation for World January when they had "definitive centers. has to face head-on the basic War I. The issue half a century ago, the proof" that Nicaragua was the "real question, to take a stand in theconfron last time that Central America was big source" arming the Salvadoran rebels. tat ion between rapacious imperialism news, was essentially regional. This time And the proof was a couple of rowhoats and the degenerated/deformed workers the stakes arc far higher. on the Bay of Fonseca. The wood, they states of the Soviet bloc. It won't do to So in the la~t couple weeks we have said, was a kind that's not found appeal to liberal "concern" over geno been treated to this outcry over Soviet normally in EI Salvador, and this was cide. I n the first place, this is not just arms in EI Salvador. I have here the the proof of Nicaraguan aggression. It's another case of the U.S. hacking up State Department's "White Paper." I obviously ridiculous, but this was the 20
Bonner/NY Times Salvadoran rebels on the offensive. basis on which they cut off $15 million in not adequate protection for the masses the rcgion or anything of the sort. The aid to Nicaragua, and $5 million in facing bloodthirsty dictators. And then only solution that they have in mind for "lethal" military aid was resumed to EI the Soviet ambassador to the U.S. gets the Central American left is a "final Salvador. Well, that flopped pretty up and says, "We're innocent." Unfortu solution." Reagan's spoiling for a fight; bad-the correspondents rushed down nately he was telling the truth. If he did he wants the blood to flow in rivers. And there and eouldn't find any evidence of lie, cheat and steal in order to further the since the most powerful imperial power arms or anything. So now we have cause of world revolution, we'd feel a lot of this epoch wills it, the Mood H'ill/lul'.'. supposed reports by the head of the EI better. But it's not so. Ihat is a fact. So why all this talk about Salvador Communist Party. a political solution') The Latin Ameri Now what we are seeing here is the N ow the unofficial vOICes of can popUlist regimes, like Mexico, and attempt by the leading capitalist world American imperialism have even more European social democrats arc talking power to reassert a claim to global fantastical things to say. There was a about it. It's so much pipe-dreaming. hegemony after being badly mauled in terrific one in the February 2nd edition And they'd better take that Detente Indochina. The unraveling of the of Business Week. They said: .Gold out of their hookahs, hecause this various dictatorships in the region is "The recent arri\al of North Koreans is serious business. But the same sort of intimately connected to the relative [to aid the Salvadoran guerrillas, they dangerous utopianism is coming from weakness of U.S. imperialism following said] was dis(ovcred when four of them the intended victims, from the Sandinis were killed in a traffic accident in Vietnam. Then came Jimmy Carter's ta leadership in Nicaragua and spokes Nicaragua in ea~ly January. Huenos "human rights" crusade, which in Latin Airc, has abo identified larger numbers men for the Salvadoran left. They America was essentially a passing phase of Montoncros, Argentina's left-wing should draw some conclusions from the of bourgeois hypocrisy. But as we guerrillas. It has bcen reported that LJ. S.' brush-off. Reagan stands hy his Amcrican-made 105 howitlers, cap pointed out from Day One, its real hutcher.l. tured bv the North Vietnamese in 1975, direction was against the Soviet Union. The Salvadoran junta is not going to ha\e been landed by a Lebanese ship In other words it was imperialist moral chartered by the Palestine Liberation get a "human rights" slap on the hand rearmament, in preparation for war. Organi/ation to bring them up from this time. And the reason is that what's Saigon." And it wasn't just going to be Cold War, posed here is a class battle on an it would be hot war. And Reagan has Whew' So my first reaction is to ask, international scale. And therefore the deereed that this is where the hot war "Where is Carlos in all this'!!" And what only answers which make any sense are starts. So Central America is a substi about the Baader-Meinhof gang?! But class answers-the program and per tute for the Persian Gulf or Berlin or as proletarian revolutionaries we have spective of proletarian revolution. somewhere else. Poland, for example. more to say than just exposing inven That's why we say what at first struck a That's the place that's uppermost in tions. The reality is that there is lot of people on the left as "off the wall," Washington's mind. And by "drawing unfortunately no effective Soviet aid that "Defense of Cl'ba and the Soviet the line against Communism" in EI going to the insurgents in EI Salvador. LJ nion Begins in EI Salvador!" And, Salvador, what they are really preparing Because if there were, we wouldn't have comrades, the events of the last week for is to "roll back," in Foster Dulles had 12,000 people who died at the hands have emphatically confirmed that warn phraseology, the historic gains of the of right-wing death squads and the ing. For example, one liQeral Congress Russian proletarian revolution. junta's army in the last year. That is the man complained it was a return to proof. Hopefully there are some arms Secondly, as we wrote in the last issue "gunboat diplomacy"-he's so right. from Cuba and the Soviet Union there. of Workers Vanguard, the U.S, rulers Spanish radio reported last Tuesday But the fact of the matter is that there is are not seeking to achieve "stability" in that there are presently more than 40
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American ships in the Caribbean trying liberals talking now about "Let the daughter of SOTlle I R A terrorist who to stop arms shipments to Nicaragua Salvadoran People Decide," where will emigrate~ to Central Aml'l'ica twcau,c and EI Salvador's leftists. Reagan they and coalitions built on those nothing\ happening in Irel~H1d. and answers the liberal concern about politics stand then'? You can't escape the you've got to throw bomb, somewhere getting embroiled in a "new Vietnam" class question. So they lead a rnolution. all tho'ie saying he intends to deal with the So Reagan has chosen EI Salvador beautiful girb wearIng bClndolll'l's. problem at its "source," which he claims and Central America as the axis around George Hamilton martyred
...__ ...... _...... _._-.. _-_. IIII."'_.'_"_""•• ' •••"'_I.'II.III.IIIIIIII~ 11111111111: iii. ~ I 1111 I .. I 24 and then there's the national bank (Mammon blesses EI Benefactor), and finally the defense ministry (the guns bles~ EI Benefactor). Anyway, so the crowd pulls into the central plaza, they turn right around the cathedral and start going past the national bank and presidential palaec. Two hundred thou sand people and what does the govern ment do" It puts sharpshooters on the roofs, and they gun down the erowd. They killed 200 people and wounded another 300. Now that is playing with fire-it's not in the Dale Carnegie rules for tinpot Latin American dictators. But' there's a reason for it. The Salvadoran bourgeoisie knows that its situation has been precarious for a long time, and that's why there has not been any real attempt by dissident bourgeois elements to challenge military rule for five decades. And so this kind of shameless massacre is also taken for granted-it's necessary from their class point of view. EI Salvador workers stage 24-hour strike against junta terror, March 1980. There are all sorts of other examples. The assassination of Archbishop Ro happens to all the other "social reform a version of this in EI Salvador with the mero, for example. You're not supposed ers," even when they're eonnected to the ~o-called reform junta that was put in by to shoot archbishops either. especially CIA, like the land reform guys they Carter 111 October 1979. rhey had liberal when he has friends here. He was a good bumped off in the San Salvador Hilton army officers, liberal civilians; the friend of Father Drinan. the Congress coffee shop. Communist Party supplied a labor man from Massachusetts; but then the So what is the response to that') As minister. and there were two hard-line pope kicked out Father Drinan. so I colonel>. So what happens? The liberals Marxists, communists, we say that it's guess they figure it's alright to kill the all get shunted aside, one after another, necessary to organi7e the oppressed and archbishop. Now Archbishop Romero in what's called a "creeping coup." and the exploited around that socia I force got very upset with President Romero the military hawks unleash the worst which has the etass interest to do away (no relation) when the army started bloodbath in decades. Oh yes. and you with the system that leads to such shooting off his priests several years ha\e a "land reform" that is brought to sadistic killers. But unfortunately the ago. And when the "human rights" junta you by thc same pcople who brought Salvadoran left has been influenced by put in by Washington about a year and a yoU "pacification" in Vlctnam. This decades of nationalist and Stalinist half ago did the same thing, pretty soon land reform consish or handing out reformist ideology so that its efforts he began sounding like a Maoist. All parcels to the membcrs of a fascist have mainly been directed at papering from the scriptures of eourse-you organi/ation called ORIn:\". which has over the very deep abyss between the know. Epistle of Paul. Chapter I, Verse links to the military and is used to spy on classes there. That's what their whole 13, "God says don't kill. so if they kill it's the peasants. And the rest of the people popular-frontism policy is about. In the right to rebel." Well, the day after he who used to be there, the agricultural name of "democratic unity" they get the said that he was shot down in the middle laborers. etc., all get thrown out, sent up of saying m:}ss. Incidentally, the hit men workers and peasants committed to respecting the private property of the into the hills where they are labeled arc supposed to have been Cuban guerrillas and then shot down by the gusanos trained by the CIA-so if you capitalists, the "integrity" of the armed forces, the "serene guidance" of the army. It's called "Reform by Death" in want to talk about exporting terrorism, [I Salvador. that's a prctty good example. church, and so forth. So you tack on a handful of dissident Christian Demo So today they have another version of And then there were the heads of the crats and a couple of limp-wristed this class-collaborationist coalition, the opposition popular-front coalition. the Social Democrats-actually bourgeois Revolutionary Democratic Front. At FDR, the Revolutionary Democratic liberals masquerading as social first it was headed by the landowner Front. Their top leader, his name was democrats-all in order to keep the Alvare7 and now by the "social demo Alvarez C6rdova. was a scion of one of masses in check. Then supposedly you crat" lingo, both of whom were mem the 14 Families. And you don't normally won't frighten off the "progressive bers of the original"human rights junta" shoot down members of the oligarchy. bourgeoisie" and maybe you can strike a of October 1979. Lately the FDR has Or the Catholic missionary women: you deal with Washington. . also been angling for an agreement with shouldn't shoot nuns, it's not accepted, Colonel Majano, who was also a remember Stanleyville and all that. And So they get a popular-front coalition member of that junta but has now been Carter's ambassador Robert White with a few liberals and priests and arrested. It's a n~ore left-wing coalition, after the November election, all of reformists. And the masses, who.are more like Allende's UP perhaps. But Reagan's advisers were calling him a overjoyed at the ouster of the previous what does it stand for" What about the "social reformer" and he accused them gang of murderers, initially give them land question, for example. The junta of trying to get him killed. That's what their support. N ow they've already had has a "land reform"--what does the left 25
say to that? N ow Bolsheviks call for Alan Riding, a very perceptive reporter significant sectors of the Salvadoran agrarian revolution, not land reform. for the New York Times, was writing bourgeoisie are not willing to be part of The peasants are not going to fight for about this recently. There's a very small a left coalition. But the point is that it's pieces of paper that say "title to land" on group in EI Salvador called the National the constant effort to try to get such a them, so that they keep on paying 50 Revolutionary Movement, the MNR, a deal which has held them back from percent of the harvest, only now it's not bunch of liberals headed by Guillermo mobilizing the masses in a truly revolu sharecropping but paying off the land U ngo, who is a vice president of the tionary insurrectionary direction. For bank. History shows that the only time Socialist International. Thus they're example, in the recent final/ general the peasants really believe that anything connected with the Social Democratic offensive they never intended to carry has changed is when they rise up in a Party of Germany, which sends them D out a countrywide uprising. Action in revolutionary insurrection and burn marks and acts in some respects for the the cities was always supposed to be down the hacienda or manor house, and interests of West German capital. So auxiliary, and not because they are some hurn the land records. That's what Riding remarked that the actual number kind 01 Maoist "prolonged people's happened in france in 171\9 or Russia in of social democrats in EI Salvador could war" guerrillas. 1917, or also in the defeated peasant probably fit into one Volkswagen. What What they were after was to get a revolution in Mexico in Morelos. they're angling for is for Helmut piece of territory where they could set up The reason is quite obvious. In Schmidt and Willy Brandt to pull their their alternative FDR government, and addition to the "title" in the peasant's chestnuts out of the fire, and in return then the Helmut Schmidts and Lopez hand there is another piece of paper, they promise to be good boys, pay all the Portillos could recognize it and if they right" It's in the national archives in the imperialist debts and so on. But what do were lucky maybe it would come up capital. And when the wave of reform you suppose Schmidt and Brandt are before the UN or the OAS. In other passes, the landowners are going to going to do when Reagan's gunboats words, the military action was con return from Miami. Then it's going to be start coming down the coast? Not a hell ceived fundamentally as a pressure their piece of paper against the peasant's of a lot. tactic on the international bourgeoisie. piece of paper. And guess what-their So the question of popular-frontism However, such a strategy is hopeless piece of paper has more guns behind it. runs through all aspects of the situation under the circumstances of Reagan rule. So the peasants are rightly skeptical in EI Salvador, including the recent And in any case even if it did come to about these various reforms. Whereas if failed offensive. This was billed as the power, what it would mean is eventually they are mohilized around a program of "final offensive," and Time magazine that the workers and peasants would be land to the tiller and led by the social quoted one guerrilla leader saying it was cheated out of a victory for which they force that has the power to impose that the "final, final offensive. Finally!" Now had shed a lot of blood. And everything against the hourgeoisie, namely by the it sounds like a joke, and partly it's for would all end up back in the hands of the working class, they can be a tremendous military tactical reasons, but behind all ruling class. So while the bulk of the left auxiliary force and even the bulk of the the stop-and-go offensives and retreats tries to mask the class division, the numhers supporting proletarian revolu in EI Salvador there is a political Trotskyists say that it is necessary to tion. But not if you have a popular front. program. Now it appears to be the mobilize the working class, with the Senor Alvarez is in the coalition; he case-and it's hard to tell beca use of the support of the peasants, to overthrow holds thousands of hectares of land and blackout in the imperialist press-that this very tiny bourgeoisie, which how represents a social class. there was little response to the call for ever has the backing of imperialism. Furthermore, it's not that there are insurrection. And certainly that was the And in the new Cold War context, the some bad landowners over there and case with the general strike. A leader of tasks posed by tiny EI Salvador are on a some good ind ustrialists over here, and the left-wing insurgents, whose coalition global scale.• those people are for social reaction is called the Farabundo Marti National while these people are for social pro Liberation Front, or FMLN, Ana $1.00 gress. They're all the same people. I n the Guadelupe Martinez said that "The typical Latin American oligarchic fami masses felt that they lacked the support ly the oldest son inherits the estate, a to massively carry out the strike, and for younger hrother becomes a colonel in the political-military organizations, it the army, a third son goes into bour was too weak to have been able to grow geois politics and numher four goes into over into an insurrection .... The strike the church. If they have five sons, the call at this point in time was a political last one is a revolutionary. Oh, and the error." one who gets the Coca-Cola franchise, I But this is not the first time such an forgot about him. So there's a division error has occurred. The general strike of labor, they all come from the same last August was also a failure, and for family. In EI Salvador they're named similar reasons. In that case they were Romero or Alvarez, and in Nicaragua trying to negotiate with various bour they're all Chamorros, but they're not geois forces to broaden their popular gomg to carry out an agrarian front. And on the eve of the strike the revolution. bus owners pulled out. Shortly after the I nternationally it's the same thing. So strike one of the more "moderate" recently the Second I nternational has groups, the FARN, ,left the military been mucking around in the U.S.' body of this multi-faceted left-wing Make checkS payable/mail to: backyard, recognizing all sorts of liberal coalition, the DRU, in the hopes of Spartaclst Publishing Co. Box 1377, GPO and popUlist parties as memhers of their making a deal with Colonel Majano. New York, NY 10116 social-democratic international. Now 'Now the deal did not come off, because 26 reprinted/rom Workers VanKuard No. 276, 13 A/arch 1981 Trotskyists Said: "All Indochina Must Go Communist!" EI Salvador: New Vietnam?
At the S'par/an'st 1,,'aKue jimml in hard po~iti()ns. And what this leads to fundamcntal social transformation, Nell' York on Fehruary 28, a memher in the protest movements in the United the cxpropriation of the bourgeoisie, otthe audience noted, .. There's heen a States over EI Salvador and Vietnam is and the duty of all Trotskyists and lot o(ralk in the /JourKeois press ahuUl a ~imilar sort of thing. So a comrade class-conscious proletarians IS, to ReaKan sayinK there is not going to be over here spoke ahout (,ISPES, the support that militarily. another Vietnam, and amonK a lot ot Committee in Solidarity with the So we said you've got to take a side, so-called leliists or not wan/inK to People of EI Salvador. They call for and the slogan for which we were most hring hack Vietnam. Would you "Let the People of EI Salvador notorious in thc Vietnam antiwar comment on hOIl' rou think the Decide," and "Self-Determination for movement was, "All Indochina Must situation in Central America differs the Salvadoran People," and "No Go Communist'" We took a class side trom Vietnam and ... the idea that Intervention." ;\;ow yOU listen to those there. Today we are for the military 'we're Koing to rerun Vietnam and the things and you say, ,,'How can anybody victory of the left-wing insurgents in EI antiwar fIl()\'efllent." Comrade Norden he against that." I mean, shouldn't the Salvador. But we also say of the replied: Salvadoran people be allowed to situation in Nicaragua that it is decide') On the Vietnam question, there are necessary to go heyond their program and expropriate the bourgeoisie, that important differences that have to be Well, raising these things which seem there is no middle road. The whole of stressed. As I mentioned, the coalition like what "all men of good will" could the Central American isthmus must in EI Salvador is a hourgeois popular support, really is hourgeois liberal erupt in a volcano of workers revolu front. Now, like in Spain, we call for ism. Because, for example, CISPES tion, in order to set the whole conti the military victory of the popular and the people who support it like the ncnt afire. And it's doubly important front forces against the right-wing re Communist Party and the Socialist in this case. I'll tell you why. actionaries, hecause if the junta wins Workers Party, are supporting a bill, In Vietnam what the SWP against the left-wing rebels it will lead H R I SOl). which calls for no military 'connected up with was hourgeois to the obliteration of the working class aid to the junta. "No military aid to the defeatism. And one thing about and all active elements in it. As an junta" means that they accept econom hourgeois defeatism, you never get it example, in Spain 100,000 proletari ic aid to the Junta, which is what's unless the bourgeoisie is getting ans were killed alier Franco won. So keeping that junta running. That place defeated. Now in Vietnam they had from the point of view of the working is hankrupt--their economy's been Soviet aid. It came through North class, even though hoth forces are shot to hell for months. But they put Vietnam. But in the present circum hourgeois, that's a qualitative differ forward this program which essential stances it is quite true that Fidel Castro ence, and so we call for the military ly approves of economic aid, because has bcen counseling "moderation," victory of one side. liherals don't oppose that. They just and a "political scttlement" and all of don't want to give guns to bad In the case of Vietnam it's a little bit these things. Obviously they're getting hutchers. or something of the sort. different. The South Vietnamese their arms somewhere, although the And thus they have policies that are National Liberation Front and the main supplier, unfortunately, is the literally enahling the junta to stay North Vietnamese hehind them had a U.S. Defense Department. Because alive. popular-front program and even had most of those guns they seem to have something that looked like a popular And their overall program is for captured from the Salvadoran govern front. But in fact all they had in this "self-determination." That came up at ment forces. But even though they may popular front were a couple of Bud the heginning of the Vietnam War, givc some arms, fundamentally they're dhist monks and an architect. The I e too. They said, "No foreign troops in stan ing them of arms, just like Stalin ality was that on the one hand you had Vietnam." Right') "Self-determination starved the Spanish workers and the North Vietnamese deformed work for the South Vietnamese." Well, what peasants in the 1l)30s of arms. And it's ers state going up against American did that mean') That meant no North hel!ause of their overall political imperialism, and you had this NLF in Vietnamese troops in Vietnam. But we program. the South that was connected essen were/()r North Vietnamese troops in So at the glohallevel, in terms of the tially to the North Vietnamese. So in South Vietnam. And in the last days of confrontation with the Soviet Union terms of the class forces concerned the war we said, "Viet Cong On to and Cuha; at the level of the internal here, the nature of the civil war was Saigon!" Now, at the same time we politics of EI Salvador and Nicaragua; different. said, look, these are the representatives and at the level of the struggle in the What you find with many left of a deformed workers state; if they get United States, this kind of popular groups is that they try to cut the in they are going to suppress workers frontist program, class collahoration, corners so they don't have to take the democracy. But they will carry out a is a program for defeat. 26 reprinted/rom Workers VanKuard No. 276, 13 A/arch 1981 Trotskyists Said: "All Indochina Must Go Communist!" EI Salvador: New Vietnam?
At the S'par/an'st 1,,'aKue jimml in hard po~iti()ns. And what this leads to fundamental social transformation, Nell' York on Fehruary 28, a memher in the protest movements in the United the expropriation of the bourgeoisie, otthe audience noted, .. There's heen a States over EI Salvador and Vietnam is and the duty of all Trotskyists and lot o(ralk in the /JourKeois press ahuUl a ~imilar sort of thing. So a comrade class-conscious proletarians IS, to ReaKan sayinK there is not going to be over here spoke ahout CI S PES, the support that militarily. another Vietnam, and amonK a lot ot Committee in Solidarity with the So we said you've got to take a side, so-called leliists or not wan/inK to People of EI Salvador. They call for and the slogan for which we were most hring hack Vietnam. Would you "Let the People of EI Salvador notorious in the Vietnam antiwar comment on hOIl' rou think the Decide," and "Self-Determination for movement was, "All Indochina Must situation in Central America differs the Salvadoran People," and "No Go Communist'" We took a class side trom Vietnam and ... the idea that Intervention." ;\;ow yOU listen to those there. Today we are for the military 'we're Koing to rerun Vietnam and the things and you say, ,,'How can anybody victory of the left-wing insurgents in EI antiwar fIl()\'efllent." Comrade Norden he against that." I mean, shouldn't the Salvador. But we also say of the replied: Salvadoran people be allowed to situation in Nicaragua that it is decide') On the Vietnam question, there are necessary to go heyond their program and expropriate the bourgeoisie, that important differences that have to be Well, raising these things which seem there is no middle road. The whole of stressed. As I mentioned, the coalition like what "all men of good will" could the Central American isthmus must in EI Salvador is a hourgeois popular support, really is hourgeois liberal erupt in a volcano of workers revolu front. Now, like in Spain, we call for ism. Because, for example, CISPES tion, in order to set the whole conti the military victory of the popular and the people who support it like the nent afire. And it's doubly important front forces against the right-wing re Communist Party and the Socialist in this case. I'll tell you why. actionaries, hecause if the junta wins Workers Party, are supporting a bill, In Vietnam what the SWP against the left-wing rebels it will lead H R I SOl). which calls for no military 'connected up with was hourgeois to the obliteration of the working class aid to the junta. "No military aid to the defeatism. And one thing about and all active elements in it. As an junta" means that they accept econom hourgeois defeatism, you never get it example, in Spain 100,000 proletari ic aid to the Junta, which is what's unless the bourgeoisie is getting ans were killed alier Franco won. So keeping that junta running. That place defeated. Now in Vietnam they had from the point of view of the working is hankrupt--their economy's been Soviet aid. It came through North class, even though hoth forces are shot to hell for months. But they put Vietnam. But in the present circum hourgeois, that's a qualitative differ forward this program which essential stances it is quite true that Fidel Castro ence, and so we call for the military ly approves of economic aid, because has been counseling "moderation," victory of one side. liherals don't oppose that. They just and a "political settlement" and all of don't want to give guns to bad In the case of Vietnam it's a little bit these things. Obviously they're getting hutchers. or something of the sort. different. The South Vietnamese their arms somewhere, although the And thus they have policics that are National Liberation Front and the main supplier, unfortunately, is the literally enahling the junta to stay North Vietnamese hehind them had a U.S. Defense Department. Because alive. popular-front program and even had most of those guns they seem to have something that looked like a popular And their overall program is for captured from the Salvadoran govern front. But in fact all they had in this "sclf-determination." That came up at ment forces. But even though they may popular front were a couple of Bud the heginning of the Vietnam War, give some arms, fundamentally they're dhist monks and an architect. The I e too. They said, "No foreign troops in stan ing them of arms, just like Stalin ality was that on the one hand you had Vietnam." Right') "Self-determination starved the Spanish workers and the North Vietnamese deformed work for the South Vietnamese." Well, what peasants in the 1l)30s of arms. And it's ers state going up against American did that mean') That meant no North hel!ause of their overall political imperialism, and you had this NLF in Vietnamese troops in Vietnam. But we program. the South that was connected essen were/()r North Vietnamese troops in So at the glohallevel, in terms of the tially to the North Vietnamese. So in South Vietnam. And in the last days of confrontation with the Soviet Union terms of the class forces concerned the war we said, "Viet Cong On to and Cuha; at the level of the internal here, the nature of the civil war was Saigon!" Now, at the same time we politics of EI Salvador and Nicaragua; different. said, look, these are the representatives and at the level of the struggle in the What you find with many left of a deformed workers state; if they get United States, this kind of popular groups is that they try to cut the in they are going to suppress workers frontist program, class collahoration, corners so they don't have to take the democracy. But they will carry out a is a program for defeat.
" 28
~,a;lll' I, tnle 01 the hourgeois govern the rebels in EI Salvador as a key part of international level, but even more so mell t , ,.ll I at,ll America a~ well. hi~ Cold War policies of attacking the within the United States. Guatemala: WelL such a front doesn't Soviet Union, and we say that while we WV: As a Trotskyist organil.ation, we l1a\(' 1<' han' an org;Inic structure, Hut have very different politics than Mos fight not simply at the level of general II,. ! hill" I hal l'\ en if in the fina I analysis cow, we also have to defend the social propaganda, but also in the unions, thest, l'ul,llltrie!> ma~ have common conquests there, and also in the case of against U.S. threats of blockading IlIteIT."'1.\ with the l:nlted States, they Cuba. So we would like to know what is Cuba. We have called on the labor can pia\' all important mle in holding your response to Reagan's attack. movement, particu[arly maritime and hal'" 'illpl'Ilalislll in Latill America. For Guatemala: In the first place, we feel dock workers, to boycott military cargo l";llllpk, it the II,S, intervenes in FI that Reagan's main objective is to take to EI Salvador, and support efforts by \;ll\ad(lr It II ill affect all Central the world back to the Cold War, and cla~s-struggle militants to put this into Alllcric,l., and tor Mcxiul it wouldn't he that endangers world peace. The at pract icc. We have also raised the call for at .III pi<:"';11l1 tu ha\(.: /\\'() horders with tempt to raise the conflict in EI Salvador an "Anti-Imperia[ist Contingent" in the tlll'l S .. particlilarly with one horderso into an East-West conflict aims at May 3 E[ Salvador demonstration, with cl()~,c t(l it, oil licit].... presenting a defeat of our revolutionary our main slogan being, "Military Victo WV: Rl'agan has made FI Salvador the forces through military intervention as a ry to the Leftist Insurgents in El IOClI\ t'l hi, ('old War against the Soviet military defeat inflicted on the Soviet Salvador." In the coming weeks this will hltle, usillg accusations that arms are Union. Thereby they hope to regain the be the major concentration of the work' coming I rOln ('uha or the Soviet I! nion, respect and confidence of their interna of the Spartacist League/U.S., and we and threatening to throw a cordon tional capitalist allies. So we think it is would be interested to know your views .wlli/illr!' around CUh;l. We think it's important to raise the banner of nOlJ on what are the tasks facing,revolution nCCl',Sdr\' to give an an!>wer to this intervention, and defense of the Nicara aries in the United States. impel i;tilst attack, hecause it is the axis guan Revolution, as well as defense of Guatemala: Fundamentally, their 01 Reagan's policies. hH our part we've the Carter-Torrijos Panama Canal forces should be focused on turning said rqwatedly that the Sahadoran treaty, which is a fir~t step toward self these big demonstrations into demon imurgcnh h;l\e the right to get arms determination for the Panamanian strations in support of EI Salvador. In wl1erl'\t.:1 they can, particularly. if they people, We think that this is the time to Mexico and elsewhere we have called can get thcm. frurtl the Soviet hloc. Thus make the American people understand for turning May Day into demonstra Wl' hall' rai.',ed the demand: "The the negative aspects which Reagan's tions of solidarity with the Salvadoran defensc of ('uoa and the USSR begins in policies can have for them. It's vitally workers in their struggle against imperi 1'1 SahaLiorl" That is, Reagan attacks important to respond to Reagan at the alism. At this moment we feel that it is important to concentrate efforts on preventing a massive intervention in EI Salvador. This could have different variations, depending on the character of the political forces involved. Without a doubt, revolutionary forces should demonstrate not just for non intervention, but in support of us. But we won't be able to win other forces to this position, and they shOUld demon strate against intervention, It is crucial that April and May should be months filled with large-scale actions, because these can be decisive in the development of the war. Acevedo: And to use these demonstra tions so that they receive international coverage, especially in Europe and L-atin America, so that they see that solidarity is increasing in the United States. Especially to announce and propagandile the boycott of the dock workers in San Francisco, which has already had a big impact and which could be publicized even more, to show that in the U.S. protests against inter vention are mushrooming like those over Vietnam. WV: There shouldn't be illusions as to the extent at this point. It's a lot lower than Vietnam at the high point. There is a lot of unrest among young people. And sections of the Democratic Party are worried. But as we have pointed out, New York City, 20 February 1982, you have to remember what the Demo- 29 cratic Party is-the imperialist party tion of mediation. '1 his does nol mean it's an integral part of the struggle of which tHought us the Hay of Pigs and that within the country our fighters are revolutionaries and proletarians in all the (iulf 01 I onkin. They aren't "peace going to put down their arms. Never. count ric" as FI Salvador has become loving" in any sense--they're warmon Our soldiers arc attacking, arms in the focal point of the Cold War. It is the gering to the core. but just have a hand. and arc dcfending the principles obligation of all those who call them difierent policy of how to do it. which we support at the international selves Marxists to fight to the hilt We \\ ould like to ask a final4uestion: level. against American imperiaIL,m. to.l'lIla.l'h there's been a lot of talk about a WV: Ju~t to end. we'd like to stress that it. so that it suffers a defeat on the scale "politic;d solution" in Fl Salvador; for us the 4ue,tioJ1 of I-l Salvador is not of the rout it experienced in Vietnam. above 011 the Socialist I nternational and simply a question of solidarity. Rather, This is our policy. Thank you .• liberals in the U.S. arc talking about ~------. thi,. We've said that obviously any reprinted/rom Workers Vanguard No. 282,5 June 1981 struggle has it political outcome-when you march into the presidential palace, that's a political solution too. Hut what Leftist Guerrillas Say: they're talking about is the possibility oj an agreement between sectors of the military junta and sectors of the '·DR. We have warned that this is a trap for Win the War the workers and peasants, that it's necessary to fight for military victory and also workers revolution throughout in EI Salvador! Central America. So we would like to know what is the policy of the FM I.N/ SAN FRANCISCO-Alex Drehs He recounted how he asked some FDR concerning a "political solution''') Icr, a reporter for the San Diego peasants about the junta's "land Acevedo: Yes, they have tried to divide Union and special correspondent for reform." A peasant took him to the the H)R in the hopes ofsplittinguffthe ABC News is one of the few North top of a hill and showed him clouds democratic sectors from the revolution American bourgeois journalists, if of smoke rising in the dist.ance: ary sectors. Hut thi~ policy has failed. not the only one, to have gone to an "That's the land reform-the govern Our policy at this time is that in order to area under the control of left-wing ment and ORDEN burning our win a military vidory inside the country rehels in FI Salvador to get their fields." A guerrilla told Drehsler that it is necessary to inflict a political defeat story. A serie~ based on his ohserva the Salvadoran revolution would be on imperialism at the international tions "behind the lines" of the more radical than the Nicaraguan level. And thus we have proclaimcd to guerrilla struggle was syndicated in revolution, which is "middle-class." several leading U.S. newspapers last thc world the eharacteri,tics oj our During the discussion, the March. On May 14, Drehsler gave a revolution. and our call for delllocracy SAINTES chairman's blatant refusal forum in Herkeley, "EI Salvador: A and freedom. But in order to defeat to recognile Spartacist speakers led First Hand Account," where the imperialism on a W(Hld ,cdc it is one to send up a written 4uestion to Spartacus Youth League drew a neccssary to expose it-, warnl ______...... IIIIII.IIIIJIIIIH111111111I11111111 -_. __ .-_.------32 reprintedfrom Workers Vanf{uard No. 285, 17 Ju~l' 1981 Chicago SL Campaign Exposes Stalinist Exclusion CP Nailed for Calling Cops on 'Revolutionaries CHICAGO-As protest against U.S. On May 30 in Chicago a lash-up of Since the bureaucratic degeneration involvement in EI Salvador has become liberals and much of the reformist left, of the CP in the late 1920s, the Stalinist the cutting edge for opposition to led by the Communist Party. called reformists have acted as provocateurs Reagan's war-drive austerity, various upon the racist cops to exclude the against Trotskyists (and anyone else reformist left groups are scrambling for Spartacist Leaguej Spartacus Youth who fights for workers revolution), a fight-the-right, anti-Reagan coalition League. The SL/SYL had mobilized a while flinging mud to cover their own with "progressive" Democrats. And as a ISO-strong Anti-Imperialist Contingent crimes. But this time the Big Lie is not direct consequence the reformists have to march in a demonstration sponsored going down so well. Too many people gone into a frenzy of anti-communist by the "May 30 Coalition." But even saw the CP do its dirty work; too many slander a!1d physical goon attacks before the march began, CP supporters have their own axe to grind against the against the Spartacist League. They set us up by bringing in the police to Stalinists' strongarm tactics. An SL resort to this petty gangsterism because keep out our contingent. The Stalinists initiated protest statement has been our call for "Military Victory to Leftist and their fellow travelers (the Mao-to signed by, among other, the Chi Insurgents in El Salvador" is the Brezhnev popular fronters of the cago Communist Workers Party obvious, necessary and only revolution "Trend" and the Citizens Party for no (CWP), Red Rose Collective leader Bill ary policy. and they cannot politically nuke capitalism) organized marshals to Pelz, and independent members of the defend their own refusal to raise this. form a human chain with the police and Madison. Wisconsin Committee in They do it because our slogan "Defense block our entry. As a result of this Solidarity with the People of EI Salva of Cuba and USSR Begins in EI disgusting bloc of cops and finks, the dor (CIS PES). Iowa CP member Mike Salvador" raises the urgent central Anti-Imperialist Contingent was kept Messina demanded that this vile cop question which they must duck in order up to 75 feet behind the march by an exclusion be repudiated at the next to court the Democratic Party liberals. armed cordon of police. At the closing central committee meeting (see "Letter So now they run to the armed thugs of rally we were isolated across the street to the Communist Party," WVNo. 283, the capitalist state to "get" the reds. by a wall of cossacks on horseback. 19 June). And the Revolutionary WV Photo Chicago, 30 May 1981: Stalinists call capitalist cops to cordon off Anti-Imperialist Contingent. 33 reprinted from Workers Vanguard No. 283, 19 June 1981 Letter to the Communist Party Tim Yeager and if I had heen in Chicago I would a union conference, and one sponsored Communist Party of lo\\oa have heen found under that hannel'. by the Party at that. At that time. I P.O. Hox 531 BU!, even if I did not ,upport thc SI 's raised a protest within the Party, and Clinton. Iowa slogans, I would still ,upport their was assured that the blunder of Fred X June IYX I right to express themselvcs \\ithout Gahoury was an isolated instance that police oppression. and when that would not be repeated, and that a Dear comrade: oppression is instigated by the Com written apology would be forthcom I just received a copy of the June 5th munist Party. then I helieve we have a ing. A month short of a year has gone is~ue of WORKERS VANGUARD. major scandal on our hands. I am hy and there has been no apology, and Ihe Vanguard is the paper of the writing this letter to express 1l1~ the incident is repeated, this time on Spartacist League. On page 12 there is outrage and to protest the action of the the streets of Chicago. a story, a copy of which I will send Party in the strongest terms I can. As a member of the Party, I request along to you, under the headline AT You know what this reminds me of'! that you raise a protest at the next CHICAGO EL SALVADOR PRO The TUAD conference in Gary, meeting of the Central Committee of ITSI /STALINISTS SET COPS ON Indiana last year. At that time, too, the the Communist Party USA. Actions of AI\T1-IMPERIAI.JST CONTlN police were called hy leaders of our this nature must be condemned in the (iLNI. The story is about a May 30th party to stop the SI. from passing out strongest possihle terms, and those demonstration, in Chicago, at which literature and raising a resolution responsihle should he held account the S L's anti-imperialist contingent endorsing the Keith Anwar picket line able for their actions. wa, excluded by the police who were defense case. At that time I stood with Military Victory to the Left-Wing acting on instructions from the Com the SL. as did the memhers of Cirain Insurgents of EI Salvador! munist Party organi/ers of the march. Millers Local 6. We were so disgusted '1 he SL marched under the banners by that Stalinist nonsense that we Michael L. Messina "Military Victory to the Leftist Insur walked out of the conference. It was Marshalltown, Iowa gents", and "Defense of Cuba and the our feeling that if we wanted to fight cc: Gus Hall lJSSR begins in FI Salvador". As a police, all we had to do was go down to Workers Vanguard Communist I support these slogan" our own picket line, we didn't need it at Comrade G.D. Socialist League (RS L) issued a state organilC the marshals for the march. the CP. The CP gave the go-ahead, but ment condemning the cop exclusion, as When I heard Sylvia Kushner (known the whole operation stinks of the FBI. did Earl Silbar, a well-known independ CP associate) tell the police to separate The cops aren't known for drawing fine ent close to the Trend. the 'Sparts' '50 feet' from the rest of the distinctions between the genuine com Once the dirty work was done, the CP march I was outraged. Not 5 days earlier munists of the Spartacist League and started denying it had brought the cops a final marshals meeting voted and the left-liberal "Coalition." The stage in. But we have the goods on Sylvia agreed not to have the police or was set for a bloodbath! We heard one Kushner, the CP fink who called the government intervene in the exclusion cop say to another, "If this was another cops. Before the march began, police or security of said march. Particularly country, they'd all be dead." No leftist asked Les Friedman, a leader of the the police would not exclude the demonstrator was safe that day, and the Jewish organization Chutzpah and Spartacists .. ,. I condemn the actions of responsibility for that lies squarely with steering committee member of the Anti Sylvia Kushner" (from affidavit by Rael the CP and its camp followers. Klan Coalition, "What group of revo Garcia, 'une 25). The "Trend," which Reformists who seek to keep "their" lutionaries should we keep out?" When eagerly gooned for the CP on May 3D, demonstrations "respectable" for Dem Friedman saw that the Spartacists were followed up with slander stories that the ocratic Party "doves" figure they being excluded by a line of cops and SL had "attacked" the New World cannot afford to have their supporters Coalition marshals, he complained to Resource Center on May 29. This is a exposed to a revolutionary program for leading CP supporter Jack Spiegel, who lie. RSL supporter Doug Clark, who EI Salvador. They cannot tolerate the first claimed ignorance and later began was present at the meeting, has testi slogans defending the Soviet Union, fied that: "The scuffle was initiated by cop-baiting the SL. When a Puerto which would scare away the Teddy the NWRC squad. The SL attacked no Rican nationalist group, the FLN, was Kennedys. That's why they call the cops one." stopped by the police from joining the on communists while calling for a demo, Friedman protested to the cops, Communist Party: we have nailed "political solution" with elements of the who answered: "Not until Sylvia Kush you with the truth. You are the murderous junta in EI Salvador. To sell ner says it's okay to let them in" (from disrupters who bring the capitalist this line they hide behind the skirts of affidavit by Les Friedman). police into the workers movement and the Salvadoran FOR, the popular front resort to despicable practices of slander with bourgeois politicians (most of them Rael Garcia of the CWP directly and bureaucratic exclusion. And there ex-junta members). Behind the talk of witnessed Kushner's treacherous ac could well have been a blood line in "negotiated settlement" the real purpose tions. He writes: "I was a marshal the Chicago May 30. The Red Squad didn't is to preserve capitalist rule, which day of May 30th and also helped caIl out the troops merely as a favor to would be severely shaken by a leftist •______~ ••,____ .. ,I'IIIIIIIII I I I Ilrllllllllllllllll" I'I 34 victory in the civil war. And they look to Salvadoran leftists) as an imperialist still afford to regard them as part of the the imperialists to broker such a deal. plot. (This theme has become so left. We welcome your comments on this The Anti-Imperialist Contingent coun common that it's a wonder they don't subject." tered this dangerous illusion with the claim the Anti-I mperialist Contingent You want comments'? Okay. To begin chant: "Remember Bay of Pigs, remem arrived in Washington in a sealed train with, this is a vicious apology for thug ber Vietnam--Dcmocratic Party, we paid for by the German general staff.) attacks and cop exclusion. And you are know which side you're on!" Along with easily disproved lies-like watching from very far to the right as the For the last month the Chicago left the claim that the cops only moved in whole reformist swamp-from the CP has been in an uproar over the cop when the S L prepared to join the march to the Marcyites and renegades from exclusion. Even the People's Antiwar (they were there from the word go)-it Mao-tries to cement a bloc with a wing Mobililation, controlled by Workers contains valuable admissions. First, it of the Democratic Party. Can you World Party/Youth Against War and never denies that the Coalition called in "afford" political debate with the Fascism (WWPjYAWF), was pitched thc police and tries to argue that the SL Trotskyist SL? Apparently not, for this into turmoil over the events of May 30. brought it on itself by refusing to follow same gang (and don't forget the WWP/YAWFjPAM are among the the "planned order of marching, which "peaceful-legal" social democrats of the most frantic of the reformists seeking to placed them at the rear." So our "crime" Socialist Workers Party) has repeatedly slander, physically exclude and attack IS refusing to go to the back of the bus. resorted to violence in a vain attempt to the SL. At the PAM-sponsored May 3 The leaflet also tacitly admits that it was silence the Spartacists. Now you "unite" Pentagon march they built a platform the NWRC which initiated the confron with the repressive forces of the capital for imperialist liberals while linking tation at the June 29 film showing by ist state against the revolutionaries arms to prevent marchers from joining trying to "move them [the SL] toward (forgetting who will be next on the cops' an anti-imperialist rally initiated by the the door" for trying to win people to the hit list), justifying this betrayal with SL. Outside a talk by WWP guru Sam Anti-Imperialist Contingent. slander. May 3, May 30, June 6-it's the Marcy in :\ew York City June 6, With the usual cloying nastiness of same story, but this time the reformist Spartacist supporters had to administer Stalinists trying to sound like Quakers, finks and goons did their dirty work in a a les ..,on in workers democracy to a the NWRC leaflet asserts: 'The truth is particularly blatant, stupid manner trelllied Marcyite goon squad which that behind the slogan of 'military and got caught. attacked an SL demo with ten-foot victory' lies the real SL position of Given the way this gang has been \\ood planks and broken bottles (sec pulitical opposition to the forces Which going-tailing the tail of the Democrats, "Y A WI' Goons Beaten Attading SI. can alone bring that victory-whether it who are tailing Reagan-they're already Demo," WI' :\0. 2X3, 19 June). is the FOR in EI Salvador, the MPLA in politically a good way out of the Hut In Chilago. the Marcyites arc Angola, or the NLF in Vietnam." Why workers movement. It would indeed be feeling the heat from some of their stop there'! What about Mao in China better if they would at least defend some loalitlon partnt:rs. A few days after the and Stalin in Russia? Our political of the rights of the revolutionary left. May 30 demomtration, Chicago PAM victory was a rather good proletarian But in the present context we are passed a motion a!{ainst the police revolution in Russia in 1917, led by expecting a hard time from the exclusion. The WWPers who run PAM Lenin and Trotsky. But then there was a government-which tries to write off all now refuse to produle this motion, and politically limited counterrevolution socialists as agents of "Soviet when at a subsequent PAM internal under Stalin giving rise to a hideously terrorism"-and they've made it clear meeting the SI. statement of protest was deformed nationalist regime, suppress whose cheering squad they're on. These read, MarcYltes leaped to their feet ing any germ of workers democracy. treacherous reformists-for-a-political shrieking to "table" the discussion. The same bureaucratic regime was solution in the midst of a raging civil war (Obviously their anti-exclusion motion reproduced in the China of Mao and his in EI Salvador have all the backbone of is a worthless sop.) Then at a June 21 heirs. That is your political victory. But an uncooked egg yolk. It's a far cry from publil PAM meeting, the contradiction we defend these states against imperial the tens of thousands in the late '60s who hetween WWP/Y AWF's fear of revolu ist attack-where do you stand? You called for a military .victory to the Viet tionary politils and their need to placate oppose calling for military victory to Congo But in all the Kremlin's "detente" bloc partners exploded. A Spartacist Salvadoran leftists and for defense of fantasies and the excuses for Peking's sales team was first told it could set up a Cuba and the USSR! counterrevolutionary alliance with U.S. literature table along with other organi The heart of this classic smear job is to imperialism (Angola, Vietnam, Af zations in the hall; when they returned cop-bait on political grounds: "We see a ghanistan and now U.S. arms to China), three minutes later with more literature, political line which consists mostly of this is long forgotten. the door had been locked. Through the opposing everything from the 'Ieft'-an The Spartacist League is the only left glass you could see a CWP supporter easy line for an infiltrat()[ to parrot." tendency which openly supports a attempting to open 'the door while You see, left equals right in the best 1984 victory on the battlefield for the heroic Marcyites blocked his way and the rest Stalinist tradition. Then a pious note: insurgents in EI Salvador. For us, of the motley coalition bickered in the "We hope the SL is not developing proletarian internationalism is more background. along the lines of the former National than a slogan. It means fighting every The latest shot in the Stalinists' war of Caucus of l.abor Committees"-a where for the cause of the exploited and lies is a leaflet being passed around by repetition of the Marcyite "neo-fascist" the oppressed-not some kind of the NWRC aimed at setting up the SL insinuation, a technique straight from treacherous "unity" with the class for exclusion and repression by the Stalin in the '30s when the Trotskyists enemy. The line is drawn in EI capitalist state. The Trend's slander were accused of being agents of Hitler Salvador-which side are you on? sheet hegins with an elaborate attempt and the Mikado and then murdered. Down with the junta-workers to to portray the AI' wirephoto of the May And the ominous end: "We will be power! Military victory to the Salva 3 Pentagon march (centering on SL close/r watching the conduct of the SL doran leftists! Defense of Cuba/USSR banners lalling for military victory to in the next period, to see whether we can begins in El Salvador!. 35 reprinted from Workers Vanguard No. 294. 4 December 1981 SL: "Defense of Cuba, USSR Begins in EI Salvador!" Reformists Call Cops on Reds Small demonstrations were held across the country over the weekend of November 21 to protest Reagan/ Haig's threats of blockade and other military action against Cuba and Nicaragua. But as defense of Cuba and Nicaragua is now placed at center stage of world pOlitics by the war threats of U.S. imperialism, the reformists and popular frontists are doing everything they can to avoid siding openly with "the enemy." The various sponsoring coalitions even refused to call for "Hands Off Cuba" and called on the cops to exclude the revolutionaries, so concerned were the opportunists to keep their movement "Ready for Teddy" Kennedy and the other imperialist "doves." At EI Salvador demonstrations last spring they violently opposed our demand "Military Victory to Leftist Insurgents," even attempting to physi cally block protesters at the May 3 march on the Pentagon from attending an Anti-Imperialist rally sponsored by the Spartacist League (SL). Against our call that "Defense of Cuba and USSR Begins in EI Salvador" they screamed "provocation." And after their anti communist exclusions failed, they ap peal to the guns and the clubs of the imperialist state to do their dirty work. They did it in Chicago May 30 and again in New York November 21. WV Photo 21 November 1981, NYC: Reformists use cops to exclude SL contingent, Last week's "Stop U.S. intervention" which called for defense of Cuba, USSR against imperialist war threats. demonstrations were a pathetic re sponse to the war threats emanating Times Square assembly point, CP/SWP /lag and the FML;\ banner of the from Washington. This was in part due goons ineffectually tried to block us and Salvadoran insurgents, chanting "No to the squabbling and maneuvers of force the SI. to the other side of the Cold War Blockade, Worker~ Bring their reformist sponsors. The Socialist street. When this didn't work represen Down Reagan/ Haig!" "Our Political Workers Party (SWP) after boycotting tatives of the Antonio Maceo Brigade Solution-Workers Revolution'" and May 3 figured it would steal a march by asked us to take down our banner, "Junta Butchers on the Run, Leftist initiating the November 21 demos. But "Defense of Cuba and USSR Begins in Rebels ;\Ieed Russian Guns'" While the the Communist Party (CP), Workers EI Salvador," but backed away when 600 or so demonstrators stood around World and various EI Salvador solidari met with a flat refusal. Thereupon listening to desultory ~peeches, Sparta ty committees countered by refusing to "Emergency Campaign" spokesmen cist salesmen and supporters permeated mobilile. The only thing they could called the cops to keep out the commu the crowd, making donns of contacts agree on is keeping out the reds. nists. When the SL protested, the police and drawing them into animated diseus Thus in New York the organizers of went back to the "Emergency Cam ~ions around the Sl. literature tahle. the "Emergency Campaign Against paign" spokesmen who onee again Many protesters were upset at the cop U.S. Intervention in Central America appealed to the armed thugs of the class exclusion and a number of pcople and the Caribbean" called in the police enemy to cordon 0/1' the revolutionaries. cro~~cd the police barricades to join us, to keep the Trotskyist politics of the SL But at the rally site, the 70-strong including some high school students out of their liberal peace crawl. As the SI. contingent marched in with our from Hrooklyn and a group of college Spartacist contingent arrived at the red flags flying, alongside the Cuban students from Queens. 36 I n San Francisco some 000 denllln straton, picketed and marched under a steady rain. At one point "monitors" dispatched a half dC)fen Stalini!>t and Fedayeen supporters to lock arms in an attempt to separate off the SL contin gent and its banner "For Workers Revolution Throughout Central Ameri ca! Hands Off Nicaragua! No Block Reformists ades!" To no avail. In Chicago a spirited turned to the 50-strong Spartacist contingent con cops to exclude trasted sharply with the miserable the communists turnout of the official coalitilln. Even of the Spartacist though we made up one half 01 the entire League on 21 demo, the llrgani/ers refused a speaker November 1981. to the SI.. ~ut as the rally broke up, an But our SL spokesman took the podium. calling revolutionary for defense of the gains 01 the Cuban slogans were not and Soviet revolutions and for workers silenced. and peasants governments to expropri ate the bourgeoisie throughout Central America. subminimaP In any case the SWP hasn't Spartacist League. But it will not work. As the reformist tlops call the cops, even managed a hypocritical objection We alone have told the plain truth, and they only show their treacherous colors. in its press to the use of the cops. How fought Reagan/ Haig's anti-Soviet war Bringing in the class enemy against a different it would be if something drive instead of trying to pretend it workers organization is gross provoca genuinely unauthorized had occurred. doesn't exist. Everybody knows there tion, particularly at a Latin American Imagine. for instance, that an SWP can be no deal with the butcher demonstration where the police could built demo had been the occasion for Duarte-in EI Salvador the leftist rebels go after undocumented Latins. Now of some adventurist types to throw bricks must win or they will die. And today the course the SWP would like to slide out through UN windows. Does anybody imperialists are openly saying that while of taking responsibility for blocking doubt the SWP's Militant would have their Cold War sights are trained on EI with the cops-the racist enemies of all rushcd into print with a condemnation'? Salvador and Nicaragua, they are workers-against the revolutionaries. The SWP and all its bloc partners stand targetting the "source": the deformed/ No doubt the SWP is scurrying around condemned by their deeds and by their degenerated workers states of Cuba and looking for others to blame it on. What silence. the Soviet Union. N ow more than ever: others? The SWP's own front groups? For the past year the reformists have Military Victory to Salvadoran Leftists! The Communist Party, whose mobiliza tried in vain to seal off the movement Defense of Cuba and USSR Begins in EI tion for this demo was obviously from the revolutionary politics of the Salvador! • PUBLICATIONS OF THE INTERNATIONAL SPARTACIST TENDENCY Workers Vanguard Spartacist Britain Biweekly organ of the Spartacist League.'u.S. MarXist monthly' newspaper of the Spartacist League! Britain $5/24 issues (1 year) I nternational rates: £:2.00/10 Issues $20/24 issues-Airmail $5/24 issues-Seamail Spartacist Publications Spartacist Publishing Co PO Box 185. London WC1H 8JE, England Box 1377 GPO, NY, NY 10116, USA Spartacist Canada Le Bolchevik Newspaper of the TrotskYist League of Canada Publication mensuelle de la Llgue trotskyste de France $2/10 issues 1 an (9 numeros) 30 F Hors Europe 40 F (avion: 60 F) Box 6867, Station A, Toronto, Ontario M5W 1X8, Etranger: mandat poste international Canada BP 135-10, 75463 Paris Cedex 10. France Spartakist Australasian Spartacist Herausgegeben von der Trotzkistischen Liga Monthly organ of the Spartacist League of Australia Deutschlands and New Zealand Jahresabonnement 8,50 OM $3/11 issues (1 year) in Australia and seam ail Auslandsluftpostabonnement 10. OM (1 Jahr) elsewhere Postiach 1 6747 $10/11 issues-Airmail 6000 Frankfurt/Main 1, West Germany Spartacist Publications, Pschk. Ffm 119 88-601 GPO Box 3473, Verlag Avantgarde Sydney, NSW, 2001, Australia 37 reprinted from Young ~Rartacus No. 90. April 198 J CISPES Sabotages Asylum for Salvadoran Refugees No Deportations! Chanting "Stop the Deportations to El Salvador" and "Asylum for Refugees from Junta Terror," 75 demonstrators picketed and rallied on March 23 in front of the Immigration and Naturali lation Service (I NS) office in downtown Los Angeles. This militant united-front protest. initiated by the Spartacist League/ Spartacus Youth League, con demned the IJ'liS for its mass deporta tions of Salvadorans who, have fled the bloody repression of the U.S.-backed junta in EI Salvador. During the past year. it i, estimated that over 12,000 refugees have been hand-delivered to the Junta and its death s4uads. I he March 23 demonstration, the lirst protest called on this crucial denwcratic issue, garnered a wide range of endorsements and received consider able media coverage, Included among the picketers were representatives of the Young Spartacus Photo .-cminist Women's Health Center, the in Solidarity with the People of EI Sal newsletter under the title. "Things to Militant Action Caucus in the Commu vador (CISPES). Phil Russo, director build for and tCl go to!" Faced with this nicatiom Workers of America (CWA) of organilation for the Western states' mounting support for the demonstra and members of the L.AValleyCommu region of the International Ladies tion within its ranks. the CISPES nity College chapter of the Committee Garment Workers Union (ILGWU), leadership resorted to a campaign of expressed his opposition to INS raids outright sabotage. Their mailing list was into L.A.'s garment district by backing systematically called and told that the the rally. The International Longshore demonstration had been canceled. To men's and Warehousemen's Union their credit. many individuals expressed (ILWU) district council also supported shock and anger at this sabotage the demonstration, but neither of these operation and intend to protest it at the unions mobilized their forces to attend. next citywide CIS PES meeting. Conspicuous by its opposition to the Speakers at the rally stressed the protest was the citywide CISPES. context in which the deportations are When the SL/SYL first approached taking place. Spartacist spokesman ClSPES to join the united front, they Jose Silva pointed out, "The attacks on responded with a categorical "No!" and democratic rights at home. the massive suggested that the SL/SYL "get out of cutbacks in social programs and the the movement"! Such a response by the growth of the fascists are an integral people who mouth concern over the part of Reagan's war drive which is plight of the Salvadoran masses is ultimately aimed at the USSR." Barry criminal and a despicable betrayal of the Janus. Militant Action Caucus candi hundreds of refugees who are being date for the CW A national convention, deported each week, underlined the importance of El Salva However, many members of CIS PES dor to the U.S. working class. "As a were outraged by the sectarianism of its candidate to the CWA national conven leadership. UCLA CISPES endorsed tion. we run on a platform calling for Young Spartacus Photo Los Angeles, 14 January 1982: SYL the protest, while students from Clare military victory to the left-wing forces. led protest drove INS recruiters off mont College. Pasadena City College, If they don't win the workers' blood will L.A. Community College campus. Ri\erside and L.A. Valley Community flow. Labor in this country must help CISPES abstained, showing a film College took leaflets and encouraged them win. The present I L WU boycott of instead. But the bulk of the audience their members to attend. Nonsectarian military goods to EI Salvador must be left with the SYL to protest "La members of CIS PES managed to list the made real and extended to the Team Migra." demonstration in the regular CIS PES sters and seamen!". 11~llll ""-' 38 new U.S.-supplied weapons come in, the become worse in the last 20 years: the Fact Sheet ... army gives the old arms and ammuni official unemployment figure rose from (continued from {Jaf{l' 40) tion to ORDEN, the rightist terror 10 percent in 1960 to 25 percent in 1979, organi/ation (Washinf{ton Post, 15 while in the countryside half the both began cooperating with Guatema April). popUlation is out of work eight months la, also under military dictatorship, to • ORDEN's death squads "were out of the year. From 1961 to 1975, the crush the Salvadoran rebels in "Opera conceived, like the Peace Corps, as a percentage of peasants without land tion Sandwich." brain-child of the Kennedy-Johnson rose from II percent to 40 percent. In • Now Reagan is sending more Huey era." Their leader. Major Roberto the mid-'70s the average urban wage was helicopters, M-16 rifles, M-79 grenade D'Aubuisson, was trained in torture $4.00 a day. Eighty percent of the launchers, plus Green Beret "advisers" techniques by U.S. specialists run by the popUlation live below the subsistence and milliom more in military and Agency for International Development level. Ninety percent of the population economic aid to the junta. In February (Harper's, March 1981). earn less than $100 a year. Seventy-five $10.4 million in military aid was rushed percent of the children suffer from • The so-called "Land Reform" is to EI Salvador. Reagan plans to send at malnutrition (Le called "Reform by Death" in EI Salva Mandl' Diplomatique, least $34.6 million in military aid in April 19~O; NACtA March/ dor. It's really a counterinsurgency Report, fiscal 19K I. Economic aid from the U.S. April 1980 and January/February program, designed for the CIA-front i~ to total about $144 million while the 1981). American Institute for Free Labor International Monetary Fund is adding Development by Roy Prosterman, an • The savagery of the oligarchy in approximately $100 million to bolster repressing the struggles of the working architect of the mass-murder Phoenix the Junta (.Vell York Times, I March people was shown in "La Matanza" program in Vietnam. "Reform" means and 14 March; Oakland Trihune. 18 The Massacre-of 1932. When the .... April). Israel has provided jet fighters driving the peasants off the land and turning it over to ORDEN members. predominantly Indian coffee workers in and other' weaponry. Argentina, U ru western EI Salvador joined urban gua) and Chile provide crucial military workers in a Communist-led insurrec training support. A History of Poverty and tion, the government of General Her Massacres • The t'.S, Immigration and Natu minde7 Martinez crushed the revolt in ralization Service is running an airlift to • The rulers of EI Salvador continue blood. Thirty thousand were killed-4 death, Every week they send back to be the "14 Families" and their U.S. percent of the entire popUlation, or one hund reds of Salvadoran refugees to be overlords. Two percent of the popula person out of every 25. killed by the death squads. Many do not tion owns 60 percent of the land • The ruling class has declared war to survive the trip from the San Salvador (NACLA Report, July/August 1980). the death on the workers and peasants airport into the city. In fiscal 1980, Oligarchic families like the H ills and the who fight for a better life. If the nearly 12,000 Salvadorans were sent Alvarel own huge coffee plantations, landlords and capitalists win, they will back to face the junta's assassins (New amassing enormous fortunes while carry out a bloodbath on the scale of York Times, 2 March). The SL/SYL paying their workers only a few dollars a 1932. Their slogan today: a "peace of was the first organization in the United day. U.S. corporations like Folger's, 100,000 dead." States to hold a demonstration calling Esso, Dow and Ralston Purina control Popular Front Disarms the for a halt to the deportations. key industries, while U.S, -clothing 'Masses • Washington pretends the junta is a manufacturers ship apparel parts to be "center reform government" opposed to assembled in EI Salvador and re • For the workers and peasants, the the right-wing death squads as well as to imported to the United States. choice is revolution or death. To stop the leftist insurgents. This is a lie. The • For the masses of workers and the reign of terror they must smash the death squads are run by the military. As peasants, starvation is the rule, Life has capitalist armed forces. To give land to the peasants they must seile the estates and coffee plantations. To provide a Incluye: decent life for themselves the workers • EI Wall Street Journal adora must expropriate industry and establish al sindicato patronal polaco a planned economy as part of a socialist • iAlto a la contrarrevoluci6n de Solidarnosl:! federation of Central America. Only a • EI "socialismo de mercado" es antisocialista workers and peasants government can .Obreros polacos en movimiento carry out these burning tasks . • Los disidentes del papa • Trotsky's theory of permanent US$1 revolution teaches that the capitalists in the backward capitalist countries are so bound to imperialism and so afraid of the masses they brutally exploit that Spartacist they will not. even establish elementary edici6n democratic rights. That is why EI en espanol Salvador has suffered five decades, half a century, of military rule. The urgent US$O,75 demands of the working people in underdeveloped countries can be met glros/cheques a' Spartacist Publishing Co. only when the working class seizes Box 1377 GPO New York NY 10116 EE.UU. power and establishes its own class rule. The workers and peasants must win the class war! 39 • But the opposition Revolutionary • A "political solution" is called for and expense of direct 1I S. militar~ Democratic Front (FOR) is based on by various liberals and the Socialist involvement. '1 hcy would prcler a CIA class collaboration, not on class International. The FDR has declared organi/ed and -supervised "Reform b~ struggle. The FOR is a coalition itself "opcn to political solutions which Death." In the 1930s, the government, between leftist guerrillas, the Commu do not betray the interests of our of the liS., '·rance. England and the nist Party and tiny bourgeois parties like pcoplc" (March 1915 I Declaration of Soviet Union proclaimed non the MNR (National Revolutionary FDR Politico-Military Commission) intervcntion" in Spain as they watched Movement) and the MPSC (Popular and has called for "dialogue with thc Franco defeat the RepUblic and smash Social Christian Movement, a dissident U.S. governmcnt" (Dcclaration of 7 the workers movement. splinter of the Christian Democracy). February 1981). But any "political • I.ibt·ral .. and reformists \\ ho sa} While the capitalist parties have virtual solution" with elements of the junta or ":\0 more Vietnams" arc opposed to ly no popular support, they embody the other bourgcois forces must be against revolution. fhey do not want the U.S. principle of private property, ensuring the interests of the workers and peasants imperialists to lose. An opinion piece that the struggle will be confined to the bccause it will not smash the bloody titled "Peace in EI Salvador" by Pierre bounds of capitalism. officer corps and the capitalist system it Schori, a leader of the Swedi-;l1 Social • The platform of the FOR calls for a defends. The army would be free to Democratic Party and the party's government of "the working class, the prcpare futurc massacres. The only liaison with the Second International. peasantry, and the advanced middle "solution" to the civil war is: says, "It would indeed be an irony of fate layers, ... small and medium-siled in if the Reagan administration embarked dustrialists, merchants, artisans and Military Victory to the Left-Wing upon a policy that would lead to a farmers .... Also involved will be honest Insurgents! situation that would fulfill 'Chc' (;ueY reprinted/rom YOUIlK !)'partacus No. 92, .s'wnmer 1981 I~I.. Sl'I.. '~'I)()ll 141,(~rl' SIII~I~rl' • A chi! war is raging in EI Salvador. The workers and poor peasants, slum dwellers and agricultural laborers are on one side. On the other side are the landowners. the coffee barons and factory owners, the military and the right-~ing death squads, led by the U.S.-backed junta. • The junta and its right-wing death squads have killed more than 18,000 people since October 1979. Torture, rape, decapitation are the fate of suspected "subversives." I n one recent massacre in a San Salvador slum, uniformed soldiers dragged more than 20 people out of their homes and shot them. Associated Press reported that the street ran with their blood (Oakland Trihune, 8 April). • Central America is the front line in Reagan's anti-Soviet Cold War. EI Salvador has been chosen as a "win nable" example 01 Washington's drive to "stop the expansion of Communism throughout the world," said top Reagan aide Edwin Meese (Nell' York Times, I March). Reagan and Haig are capable of launching a thermonuclear World PhillppotiSygma War III to achieve their counterrevolu Pipes blurted out Washington's real Report, July/August 1(80). The new tionary goals. policy when he said the Soviets face a military junta installed by the U.S. • Cuba is threatened with increased choice of "changing their Communist talked of "human rights" but its troops sanctiom, and administration spokes system in the direetlon of the West or soon launched even more brutal repres men hlllt darkly of throwing a "cordon g'oing to war' There is no alternative" sion than under the hated Romero. sanitaire" around the island. General (New York Times, 24 March). The gains • The ('arter administration Haig warns that "a military option of the October Revolution of 1917 arc immediately embraced the junta, send should not be excluded." The State the ultimate target. ing "riot-control" instructors and equip Department blares that EI Salvador is ment and $300,000 for training Salva "a textbook case of indirect armed "Human Rights" Coup doran troops in U.S. military schools aggresslOll by Communist powers • The curn'nt Sahadoran junta on top of the $5.7 million already re through Cuba." More than 40 U.S. toppled bloody military ruler General programmed for EI Salvador in April warships were sent for "exereises" in the Carlos Romero on October 15. 1979. 1980. Carter's ambassador, Robert Caribbean. Meanwhile. U.S. aid to The eoup was preceded by a visit from White, acted as a proconsul, issuing j Sandinista :\ icaragua has been termi Carter's speeial envoy William Bowdler, orders to the military junta and its nated. Somllnlist exiles train for an who urged Romero to resign. Bowdler, Christian Democratic puppet front Invasion. a counterinsurgeney expert since 1956, man, Napoleon Duarte. Meanwhile • Reagan's aim is to topple the was in eharge of the State Department's Washington patched things up between "dominos" irom EI Salvador to Nicara Cuba desk from 1961 to 1964 and helped the rival armies of Honduras and EI gua to Cuba to Poland and the USSR. plan the eapture and murder of Che Salvador. Financed by the U.S. they :\ational Security Council aide Richard Guevara in Bolivia in 1967 (SA CIA continued on paRe 38 "Revolution or Death I"~