_ “Guerrillas, armed and supported by
_ and through Cuba, are attempting to im-
" pose a Marxist-Leninist dictatorship on
the people of El Salvador as part of a
larger imperialistic plan’.
___ That simplistic view of events in this
_tiny Central American country comes
from U.S. president Ronald Reagan in a
| major speech presenting his Caribbean
Basin Initiative to the Organization of
American States in Washington last
_ Month.
The U.S. administration has backed
|_ his view with $100-million in aid, to prop
| Up the discredited regime, figureheaded
_ by its president, Jose Napoleon Duarte.
| This aid takes its form in U.S. military
| advisors inside the country, paying for
_ the training of Salvadorian troops on
_ U.S. army basis, it comes as helicopters,
| trucks, tanks, machine guns, flak jac-
kets, tear gas grenades and gas masks,
night vision sights and image intensifiers.
El Salvador has already paid the price
_ for this ‘‘aid’’ in 13,000 lives since 1980:
 (€stimated by the Catholic Human
Rights Commission in the country) for
| 80% of these deaths the military or fas-
Cists para-military groups are directly re-
_ Sponsible. It has paid with an economic
system of acute exploitation which sees
all the major industrial and land holdings
held by 2% of the population while the
Test are condemned to poverty.
-. The infant mortality rate in El Sal-
_ Vador is among the highest in the world,
~ 60 out of 1,000 babies die before their first
birthday. Seventy-five percent of all
children under five suffer from diseases
associated with malnutrition.
This economic brutality takes on a
special meaning for Salvadorean women.
Family life has been completely dis-

RR mac nA tePeR Kae

smeared a

| eration has caused many men to desert
_ their. families. Single mothers are the
Majority in El Salvador. Their families
are large; in rural areas it is not unusual
for women to have eight or 10 children
|] and almost one-third of women are pre-
| gnant by the time they are 15 years old.

Other social ills victimize women in
disproportionate numbers. Illiteracy
Which plagues 50% of the population, is
} ‘twice as prevalent among women as
] men. Education is sexually segregated
and prepares few women for the task of
Supporting their children.

_ Most peasant women work only two to
- three months out of the year. Their work

Tupted; repression and economic desp- ~~

on large landholdings is not recognized.
Only men or heads of households are
officially under contract, while women
and children merely work on the men’s
crews; thus only men have the right to
payment at the end of the week, only
men have the legal right to the meager
daily food allowance.

Factories, particularly those in the
Free Trade Zone (Texas Instruments,
Maidenform bras, ARIS, etc.) prefer to
hire women believing them less likely to
organize for their rights. Some factories
establish age limits, hiring only women
between 18 and 25 — the purported

“range of maximum productivity”.

For the rest there is street vending,
begging, prostitution.

And women and children are not
spared the regime’s direct repression.
Two incidents typify the killings:

On May 14, 1980 an estimated 600
peasants mostly children and the elderly
were machine-gunned to death as they
attempted to cross the Rio Sumpul,
which divides El Salvador and Hon-
duras. The slaughter was accomplished
through the cooperative efforts of the
Salvadorean and Honduran military
forces. Survivors reported that little
children were thrown in the air and used
as targets, women were raped and had
their throats cut.

Again in 1980 on July 9, thirty-one
members of the peasant family Mojica
Santos were shot to death by members of
the paramilitary organization ORDEN.
Fifteen children under ten years of age
were killed in their mothers’ arms. The
dead include an eighty-five-year old
woman and a fifteen-day old baby girl
labelled ‘‘subversive’’.

The junta has also not spared women
its’ prisons and tortures: Many women,
have been thrown in prison, often small
children are jailed along with their
mothers. In addition to the tortures suf-
fered by the men there is the added brut-
ality of rape.

Pregnant women have had knives dri-
ven into their abdomens to ‘‘ensure”
they are not concealing weapons. In its
search for guerrilla bases there is indis-
criminate bombing of rural areas without
regard for the civilian population.

Given the choice between dying or
fighting, women in their thousands have
joined the liberation forces united under
the Farabundo Marti National Libera-
tion Front (FMLN). They are forming

Mother and children huddle in refugee camp inside the Honduran border. Over 500,000
Salvadoreans, or 10% of the population have been forced to flee the repression.

their own organizations, such as the
Committee of Mothers of the Dis-
appeared, who openly challenge the
government’s silence around political
prisoners, and have brought worldwide
public attention to the torture and mur-
der it perpetrates. In 1979 the Associa-
tion of Salvadorean Women was formed
to further integrate women into the
struggle.

Women play a major role in the libera-
tion forces armies as well. About 40% of
the Revolutionary Council, the leading
body of the People’s Liberation Army is
made up of women.

What becomes painfully obvious to
any observer of the Salvadorean situation
is that theirs is not a battle of ideologies,
it is a battle for survival.

In the civil war the only financing from
abroad is the U.S. administration's back-
ing of the dictatorship. The FNLM uses
its own methods to supply its forces. Ana
Guadalupe Martinez, of the seven
member Revolutionary Democratic
Front explained how the FNLM arms its
guerrillas in an interview in the West
German weekly Der Speigel last Feb-
ruary:

“It is no secret that the political-
military opposition in El Salvador kid-
napped rich Salvadorans and represen-
tatives of transnational corporations to
make money. We earned more than
$50-million (this way) and have used this

money to buy arms on the black market
in Latin America.”

Most Of the arms are of U.S., Belgium
and Israeli manufacture. As for U-S.
claims that there are Nicaraguan and
Cuban troops fighting inside E] Salvador
Martinez replied:

‘*The U.S. ambassador claims the
Salvadorean regime has killed 5S0men who
carried Nicaraguan and Cuban identi-
fications. But at no time were these
men’s bodies or their identification
shown If there was any proof
that Nicaraguans and Cubans are fighting
for us, we should be able to see it. But
there is no proof, because such support
does not exist.””

For Martinez and the thousands of
other Salvadorean women to join the
guerrilla movement means to take up
arms and kill. This has not been an
independent choice. Their decision has
been prompted by the need to change a
corrupt and brutal social system which
has allowed them and their children to
starve or be gunned down.

To a greater or lesser degree it is the
choice facing all women in the capitalist
world, the struggle for equality cannot be
divorced from the struggle for funda-
mental social change.

Material in this article was provided by —
the Committee of Solidarity with the
People of El Salvador, 582 College St.,
Toronto. ;

Eurges Trudeau: ‘Stop U.S. arms to junta’

They reported that 63 per cent

VAL BJARNASON

| “Op propping up the military
“nta in El Salvador.’

“TORONTO — UE Secretary-

Treasurer Val Bjarnason, in a
strongly worded telegram to Ex-

ternal Affairs Minister Mark
McGuigan, called on him ‘‘to ex-
press a truly independent Cana-
dian point of view by calling on
the U.S. government to stop

propping up the military junta in
EI Salvador.”

He said his union fully sup-
ported the ‘findings of the Cana-
dian Parliamentary committee
representing three parties which
unanimously called on (him) to
oppose the scheduled March elec-
tions as a sham and deception.”

Bjarnason said, the
35,000 innocent peasants and
workers who have been
slaughtered by the junta’s military
and paramilitary forces are surely

gory enough proof that no E] Sal-
vador citizen who dared stand for
election against the junta would
live to cast a vote.””

‘He stated that ‘‘Leaders of El
Salvador trade union movement
(C.U.S.) touring Canada told us
this week all electrical union lead-
ers there have been imprisoned
for over a year and some of them
have disappeared.”

Secretary-Treasurer Bjarna-
son urged the Canadian govern-
ment to speak out for an end to
U.S. arms and intervention in El
Salvador, to oppose the proposed
sham elections and to appeal to
the junta to free all political and
trade union prisoners.

Commenting further on his
meeting with the El Salvador
trade unionists, Bjarnason said

they gave a most detailed outline

of the tragic situation in their tiny —

country of five million.

They explained how they had
never knowngdemocracy, had al-
ways been oppressed and impo-
verished. But now, the over-
whelming majority of the people
had banded together to put an end
to the rule of the ‘‘fourteen fami-
lies who owned most of the land
and who, together with the U.S.

multinationals, owned most busi--

nesses and ;controlled the

government.”

One of the greatest problems,
they said, was to get the truth of
the situation to the people of the
world, because most of the stories
they had seen were completely.
distorted in favor of the military
dictatorship.

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—MARCH 12, 1982—Page 9

of the population was unem-
ployed or underemployed, and
over 50 per cent were illiterate.

All efforts to establish democ-
racy by peaceful means having
failed, they said, the people finally
were forced to resort to armed
struggle.

They stated that the junta was
now on the defensive and expres-
sed the greatest confidence that
— provided they were left alone
and the Americans did not keep
sending in arms or did not send in
American armed forces — the
people would defeat the hated
junta.

Their mission to Canada was to
tell the facts about their struggle
and to appeal for moral, politiccal
and financial support.

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