Promoting Democracy. Manal A. Jamal
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also El Salvador’s national poet, advocated a more moderate line, insisting that the party adopt political as well as military strategies. The hardliners in the ERP charged Dalton with treason, tried him in absentia, and condemned him to death. In May 1975, extremists in the ERP killed Dalton. Due to these tactical disagreements and the murder of Dalton25 by Joaquín Villalobos and his faction, Dalton’s followers left the ERP and established the Resistencia Nacional (National Resistance, RN) in May 1975. Villaloboso and his followers retained the ERP label.26 In 1976, regional activists founded the Trotskyist Partido Revolucionario de los Trabajadores Centroamericanos (Revolutionary Party of Central American Workers, PRTC) in Costa Rica. The PRTC’s conception was more regional in scope, though it maintained separate national units.27 Popular mobilization by the political-military organizations began in the mid-1970s, and became a central component of their work.
The dearth of political openings, mounting repression, and the deterioration of socioeconomic conditions propelled people to affiliate with the emerging revolutionary organizations in ever-increasing numbers. By the 1970s, the majority rural population did not have access to land or employment opportunities. The military and oligarchy continued to prosper, as the majority of the population was further impoverished. The mechanization of agriculture after World War II, and the introduction of export crops such as cotton and sugar cane put further pressure on cultivable land and reduced employment opportunities for Salvadoran campesinos. The military, as defender of the interests of the oligarchy, left little room for democratic participation. The ruling parties, supported by the oligarchy, prevented reformist political parties such as the Christian Democrats and the Social Democrats from electoral victory and access to the government in the 1972 and 1977 elections. The military regime exiled political leaders, and persecuted and dismantled their grassroots organizations.28 José Napoleón Duarte, one of the leaders of the PDC and the presidential candidate of the National Opposition Union, won the 1972 election; subsequently, the ruling regime captured Duarte and deported him to Guatemala. Center and more radical opposition groups became more radicalized and began to advocate armed revolutionary struggle as the only solution to end repression in the country. The fraudulent elections of 1977 further exacerbated the conflict, convincing the opposition that they should employ more forceful means.29
The year 1979 was a turning point. A group of reform-minded military men overthrew the regime and installed a joint civilian-military junta composed of center-left opposition leaders. The conservative wing of the military persisted in its wave of terror, as internal disputes developed among the junta members. The PCS turned into a political-military organization in 1979 following the 1977 Plaza Libertad massacre30 and the events surrounding the coup in 1979; it too came to the conclusion that the situation required armed struggle.31 After the 1979 junta, the more left-leaning contingents of the PDC broke away and established the Movimiento Popular Social Cristiano (Popular Social Christian Movement, MPCS).32 By the end of 1980, over 15,000 had been killed.
Among the political-military organizations, the RN—at that point only a tendency in the ERP and not yet an independent organization—was the first to initiate popular movement mobilization. In 1974, the RN began working with the campesinos of Suchitoto, and quietly helped establish the Frente de Acción Popular Unificada (United Popular Action Front, FAPU) with Christian community activists. By 1979, each of the political-military organizations had founded its own umbrella organization with a number of affiliated popular, grassroots-based organizations.33 Each political-military organization also established a “wartime chain of command” and controlled a given territory, with its mass-based organizations and other affiliated NGOs.34 In January 1980, the political military organizations created an umbrella structure, Coordinadora Revolucionaria de las Masas (Revolutionary Coordinating Council of the Masses), which unified all their affiliated popular organizations. Then in October of 1980, the five political-military organizations united and formed the FMLN.
In 1980, the Coordinadora Revolucionaria de las Masas and the Frente Democrático Salvadoreño (Salvadoran Democratic Front), a more leftist branch of the Christian Democrats and two small Social Democratic parties, came together, forming the Frente Democrático Revolutionario (Revolutionary Democratic Front, FDR), one of the most organized opposition coalitions in El Salvador’s history.35 This coalition also included the Movimiento Nacional Revolucionario (National Revolutionary Movement, MNR), the Movimiento Popular Social Cristiano (Popular Social Christian Movement, MPCS), and a coalition of professional and technical small business organizations, the National University, six unions and union federations, and a student association, with the Universidad Centroamericana “José Simeón Cañas” (José Simeón Cañas, Central American University, UCA), and the Catholic Church as observers. The FDR became the official umbrella organization of all leftist and center-leftist forces in the country.
In January 1981, the FMLN launched the “general offensive” that marked the official beginning of the civil war. Four days later, the FMLN and the FDR joined forces and created the Political Diplomatic Commission, the body that would represent these organizations in the international arena. In 1981, right-wing constituencies who wanted to ensure their own socioeconomic standing in El Salvador and to guarantee the neoliberal, free market development of the country founded ARENA. Exacerbating the country’s polarization, by late 1981, the thrice-reconstituted junta had moved to the right-of-center, headed by José Napoleón Duarte.
The US-backed Salvadoran establishment tried to defeat the FDR-FMLN coalition through different means. The PDC tried to resolve the conflict with the help of US-sponsored programs and reform, and the armed forces with the help of US military support aimed to destroy the FMLN.36 As the international community called for peace negotiations to resolve the conflict, the United States and Duarte insisted on presidential and legislative elections to lend legitimacy to Duarte’s government. Duarte managed to win the 1984 presidential elections and to stay in power until 1989, after which the more right-wing ARENA came to power. The election of Duarte, however, provided activists with new opportunities to reestablish associations and organizations dismantled by military repression in the late 1970s and early 1980s. By 1989, the armed forces and the FMLN had reached a military stalemate.
With the heightening of the Salvadoran Civil War in the early 1980s,37 most of these mass organizations were forced underground or into exile, or became clandestine.38 After 1984, the government began to decrease its repression and legalized associational activity, and as a result, those organizations repressed in the early 1980s reemerged with new names and with different leaders but still politically affiliated. With the help of European private aid agencies, both secular and church-related grassroots leaders founded a few hundred popular organizations that organized workers, peasants, students, displaced persons, and women, and delivered health, education, housing, and other services. These institutions effectively laid the foundation for rebuilding civil society after the end of the Civil War. As the Salvadoran Civil War drew to a close in 1989, over 400 mass-based popular organizations existed in the country.39 Meanwhile, pro-government groups also established worker and campesino organizations supported by US aid programs. NGOs also became polarized, mirroring the polarization between the government and the opposition political organizations.
Laying Foundations for Mass Movement Mobilization
In both the Palestinian territories and El Salvador, the political organizations played a pivotal role in establishing mass-based organizations. These mass-based organizations supported different communities and laid the groundwork for civil society. The establishment of these organizations was not a simple response to challenging circumstances, but more accurately a complex process involving constantly evolving dynamics of oppression, adaptation, and resistance. Three phases characterized associational life in both contexts. Starting in the 1920s and 1930s, there was a proliferation of charity organizations in both cases, and especially unions in El Salvador. In the 1960s through the early 1980s, there was a steady increase in mass-based organizations whose objectives were more political. And then in the mid to late 1980s, many of these organizations began to professionalize their operations and became increasingly reliant on foreign funding. These mass-based organizations, especially in the Palestinian territories, were more or less autonomous and capable of functioning without the directives of a party. This point would have important implications for the extent to which these formations could shape the nature of the future emergent civil society. The divergent trajectories that emerged and