Page 22 - Marlie Burton Roche : Landscape and Bread

goal was never aimed towards implementation of any real change, the rural populations organize

either politically or socially, but to maintaining the oligarchic themselves into functioning

system. Napoleón Duarte became the president-of-choice of the communities and facilitating
U.S. government. But in order to gain power, Duarte had to enter the development of popular
into collusion with the established coalition of the Salvadoran schools, basic medical clinics,

military and the United States government, and by so doing, he and communal agricultural

lost the support of the Christian Democrat’s traditional base, the practices.
popular democratic movement. Simultaneously, as a centralist-
reformist, he engendered hatred and distrust in the far right. The FMLN combated a

For the duration of the next decade Duarte’s government in El deluge of campaigns by the

Salvador was nothing more than a simulacrum of democracy, Salvadoran military. These
a front for the U.S. counterinsurgency project of ‘low intensity were massive ‘scorched earth’
conflict’. campaigns that contrived

to decimate the capacity

The Farabúndo Martí Front for National Liberation FMLN for sustenance. Crops,
was founded in October of 1980 as a coalition of five factions: domesticated animals, and
FPL/ERP/FARN/PRTC/PCS. A month later, in November, the water sources were destroyed

entire command of the Democratic Revolutionary Front FDR, in the zones of conflict, in

the revolutionary political wing, was arrested and assassinated an attempt to “drain the
in San Salvador. The, by now, extensive revolutionary mass water” (the population) and
movement was decollated and untold numbers of the membership “catch the fish” (the guerrilla)

were forced into exile. An estimated 50,000 people were as advocated in standard

assassinated by the army, the security forces, and the death counterinsurgency manuals.
squads in 1980 and 1981, including Archbishop Monseñor Oscar Thousands upon thousands
Romero. Many peasants, workers, students, and professionals of refugees poured into

who had incorporated into the struggle and who did not go into neighbouring countries in

exile, joined the people’s army. The insurgency units grew into Central America. Many found
an impressive force. The FMLN created zones of control in the their way to Mexico, the
mountains in the northern and eastern provinces of the country. United States, and Canada.

Here they gained the support of a well-organized and very But the revolutionary armed

motivated campasino population, as these were the areas where forces continued to operate
the people’s ancestors had had to toil in a state of feudal bondage and began to “liberate” the
on coffee, cotton, and sugar plantations. These peasants were zones of control by attacking

also relatives or direct descendents of the victims of the 1932 and effectively disassembling

genocide. The FMLN became their army and their only hope for many of the government’s
a future of peace with justice. While the FMLN was a fighting immobile locations.
force, much of the daily work of the combatants involved helping

18 MARLIE BURTON-ROCHE LANDSCAPE & BREAD