Page 20 - Marlie Burton Roche : Landscape and Bread

allotments that did not provide sufficient food to feed them. the FMLN, emerged: Fuerzas
By 1971, 64% of the land belonged to 4% of the population. Poplulares de Liberación FPL,

Of course the landed wealthy required labour at planting time 1970; Ejercito Revolucionario
and again for harvest. But those times only added up to three del Pueblo ERP, 1971; Fuerzas

months of the year. And wages were low. The landless workers Armadas de Resistencia
on the plantations were thus sentenced to a life of grinding Nacional FARN, 1975;

poverty. Those who escaped the countryside and went to the Partido Revolucionario
cities in search of jobs did not fare any better, despite a growing de los Trabajadores

manufacturing sector, a precursor of today’s maquiladora system. Centroamericanos PRTC,
Joblessness became a national crisis. Even the betterment in 1979; Partido Comunista

economic growth in the period after World War 11 period did Salvadoreño PCS. The
not improve the lot of the vast majority of Salvadorans. The rich founders of the FMLN,

became richer but there was only increased misery for everyone finding the electoral route to
else. A social eruption was looming. change blocked by fraud and

repression, concluded that
The U.S. government’s counterinsurgency package was only an integrated political

welcomed by the Salvadoran wealthy ruling class and the U.S. and military struggle could
pretext of “containing communism” in El Salvador was used to defeat the entrenched military

justify gross violations of human rights by the armed forces. In dictatorship and oligarchic
fact, U.S. military aid became a major contributing factor to the system. With this in mind,

repression. CIA training and expertise led to the formation of the FMLN proceeded to
intelligence units that spawned paramilitary death-squad entities establish “mass fronts”,

like the Nationalist Democratic Organization ORDEN and whereby the aggrieved
future politicians of the country such as Roberto D’Aubuisson. sectors of the population

Economic refugees from the rural areas of El Salvador flooded could organize and demand
into the squalid, and already over-crowded, barrios bajos of San economic and political change

Salvador. The political Left began organizing these migrants concerning their own specific
and the working poor with the aim of raising the political needs. They also broadened

consciousness of the popular classes. A general strike against their alliances to include
low wages and working conditions was staged in 1967. This was marginalized people and the

followed the next year by a teacher’s strike called by the powerful politicized middle class. Newly
Teachers Union ANDES 21 DE JUNIO. The teacher’s strike radicalized organizations

signified that urban classes were also in readiness for political became the political and
organization and militancy. military vanguard of the mass

movement while the nucleus of
The first revolutionary organizations of what would later the future people’s army was

become the Frente Farabundo Martí para la Liberación Nacional, incorporated.

16 MARLIE BURTON-ROCHE LANDSCAPE & BREAD