Eye Witness: EL SALVADOR
vngelis | 23.01.2002 20:53
El Salvador: Maquila Paradise, Capitalist Hell
The unsuspecting visitor to El Salvador would assume they are arriving in a newly built city on arrival at the International Airport. The size of the Airport is beyond all proportion to the size of this tiny central American state, whose population numbers only 6 million. Nearly a decade has elapsed since the, end of the civil war which had rightist fighting against leftist forces (FMLN). Many of the scars of war in the buildings and streets have been erased, but not among the population. A tiny handful of families (14) control most of the economy of El Salvador but over the last decade they have been selling off their enterprises to multinational companies and becoming minority shareholders. The main product for export has been coffee and over the last decade the maquiladoras (sub-contracted factories of US multinationals) have come to gain second place in the earning of foreign currency. Most of these companies were set up during the civil war and the 'peace' period that followed. Certain questions strike the mind on entering El Salvador. How did this small country survive the anti-communist crusades of the USA? What happened to the farmers in countryside? The workers movement in the cities? The student movement? What happened to the anti-Americanism of large sections of the populations Some of these issues will be answered, some haven't as yet been determined by history.
Role of US imperialism in its "Backyard"
Like all Central American states El Salvadors economy since it entered the capitalist world market a couple of hundred years ago has been one giant coffee plantation to serve Europe, North America and Japan. A tiny oligarchic elite ran the economy and the country as a fiefdom. Much in the same manner as the oil shieks of the Middle East. They were the servants of the Spanish colonialists who were in control of the area known today as El Salvador. No basic bourgeois democratic rights were allowed, only one party was ever allowed to stand - the military - and any protest or demonstration was vehemently put down. Certain unique developments occurred in what is known as "Americas backyard". When WWII ended not wanting to lose the 'fabulous' experience the fascists had gained in destroying opposition to their rule in Germany many of the middle level bureaucrats of Hitler's structure were given US exist visas and shipped to Central America, in particular the neighbouring country of Guatemala. Most national police forces were restructured on nazi lines. The armies sent to train in the School of the Americas in the USA. The USA's rise as the dominant imperialist superpower and leader of the capitalist world led in many ways to an assimilation of the 'best' experiences of imperialist rule in Europe. They started just where Hitler basically left off, not in the USA of course, but in the rest of the American continent. What became known as the 'banana republics' was basically an experiment in social engineering: how to control the exploitation of the natural resources of these thrid world countries without any land reform and re-distribution (era 1950-1960's) and how to semi-industrialise the regions (era 1970's - 1980's) without any basic democratic rights for the city populations. When a process of overthrowing American backed military juntas in the early 1970s was occurring in Southern Europe, a process of re-inforced American military juntas was occurring in Central and Latin America, from Guatemala all the way down to Chile. The irony of the situation was that whilst basic bourgeois democratic rights were being gained in Europe the opposite effect was occurring in the Americas. Why? Imperialism as a world wide system, in particular since the Americans took the reigns operates not only a divide and rule policy on an internal level (the different national groupings which make it up) but also a divide and rule policy on a global level. If one part of the planet is in turmoil and imperialism is on the run as it was in the 1970's with the rapid departure from Vietnam, it will seek to make someone else pay, in another region where the resistance isn't as great. The workers movement south of Mexico was never as strong as the larger part of the populations lived in the countryside. What happened there was a true modern genocide. More than 300,000 were wiped out in Guatemala's war against the peasants, more than 70,000 in tiny El Salvador. How was this allowed to happen? More importantly why did the US make the Central Americans pay for their defeats in Vietnam and Asia? As a social system imperialism rests not only on the exploitation of poor peoples of the third world, but also as the worlds pimp. It operates on creating, manufacturing and generalising fear through terrorism on a mass, as well as an individual level. Without this, which is part of its intrinsic nature it would not be able to rule. 14 oligarchic families cannot really own the majority of the land in El Salvador whilst the majority of the population starved or eked out a living permanently on the bread line, but they do. How? Basically through genocide. But when genocide becomes a ruling policy so does resistance. Resistance becomes generalised despite the wishes of those who don't want it. The fall of the hated Somoza regime in Nicaragua which is Central Americas poorest but largest state, sparked off a spirit of resistance which soon spread to El Salvador. What happened next was of truly significant dimensions. A tiny country full of mountains entered an era of war against the worlds superpower. More than 1 million people (out of a population of 6 million) were turned into refugees, many more were displaced, whole villages were razed to the ground, recreating many mini My Lai massacres (massacre in village of El Mozote, Salvador). Us imperialism by the 1980's wanted to excorcise the ghost of Vietnam, Iran, Lebanon. El Salvador proved to be the country to do it. The Nature of the Resistance in the Civil War in El Salvador When the Somoza regime fell students in El Salvador started to chant that its their leaders turn. The army in its usual 'humanitarian' fashion started to shoot people dead. What is an oligarchy if it doesn't shoot on the spot any opposition even minor ones. The fear of tinpot military dictatorships which rest solely on the use of force, is that any disturbance however minor, might spill over into a general uprising. They run the country as they run the animals on their farms, cattle as well as humans, with an iron rod. Anyone who steps out of place is targetted to be neutralised ie shot. Countless are the cases of union organisers in the 1970's who were taken out. Countless are the cases of police torture, threats, victimisation, blacklisting etc. The changes which occurred to the economy in El Salvador in the 1970's primarily due to the fact that the USA was looking for cheap labour areas around the world to set up manufacturing facilities as a way of defeating its own strong working class meant that many people moved to the cities. In these cities, Dickensian factories were set up with Dickensian labour conditions. As for rights they weren't any. When workers started to protest and organise one understood that the USA would seek its revenge in particular after the imposition of the juntas in Chile and Argentina. When a section of radicalised students, sons and daughters of a newly formed middle class, started to demand basic bourgeois democratic rights, the Salvadorian oligarchy over-reacted in a truly brutal manner. This over reaction led to an ever greater polarisation and hundreds of students and some petty shop owners went to the mountains to fight the regime. They left the cities out of fear for their lives and out of what is generally known in the region as a form of 'guevarism'. Whilst this policy had been successful in Cuba two decades previously and was also recently successful in Nicaragua, many assumed that the same would be the case in El Salvador. What went wrong? Was it a mistake to leave the cities? Did they lack the military capabilities, experience etc? Why would their struggle be different from Nicaragua?
Geo-Politics takes Centre Stage
Not every struggle has a pre-determined outcome. Not every struggle, however tenacious has a guarantee of victory. The combatants in civil wars don't know at the outset who will win and why. With the benefit of hindsight we can discern certain mistakes, but those mistakes do not belittle those who took part in the struggle, but attempt to learn form their mistakes so that they aren't repeated again. When the El Salvador civil war broke out around 1981 we had two new Presidents in the Western world: Reagan and Thatcher. Both staunchly anti-communist they wanted to rollback the defeats of the 1970's and start a re-newed offensive against peoples and continents who were resisting imperialism. El Salvador happened to erupt at an appropriate time, with the fall of Nicaragua, but due to the nationalist leadership of Ortega which didn't seek to make the revolution permanent beyond the borders of Nicaragua, imperialism gained valuable time to intervene and initially offer logistical and then full blown military support. Russia at the time intervened in Afghanistan and they were distracted from what the USA were doing in Central America. A world wide division of labour had basically ensued, the USA would 'control' its backyard and the Russians would control theirs. This changed geo-political environment meant that El Salvador would take on a new and important dimension. A defeat for imperialism in El Salvador, like had occurred in Nicaragua, could definitely not be allowed either for internal consumption or for global consumptiom. The USA had to be seen to be stamping a mouse to feel strong once more. The capitalists world superpower was about to embark on a crusade which lasted over a decade, against a peoples who fit into one third of New York city!
What Did US imperialism Achieve and What did it Lose
The actual cost of the war was so immense that US imperialism through Iran gate and the Contras in Honduras basically instituted a policy of selling drugs in order to finance their reactionary offensives. So bankrupt is their system that they had to finance everything through the production, distribution and selling of drugs like cocaine and heroine using military transport facilities for the purpose as after all everyone knows the military never search their own shipments. In this they weren't even original as the British Empire in its opium wars had done it a century and a half ago. By turning 20% of El Salvador's population into refugees who eventually found their way to the USA, the Americans disrupted the social fabric of society blowing up all the old traditional relationships. Those between the city and the countryside, between the farmers and the oligarchs, between the workers and the bosses, between families. They basically exposed the Salvadorian oligarchy into puppets on a string who needed to rely on US support to fight a brutal civil war into its own country. They basically showed to large sections of the population that the oligarchy would stoop to any level, commit any crimes however brutal (creation of paramilitary death squads who used to leave cards after butchering people which said things like, Have a Good Day, Death Squad Visit) to destroy the resistance. Whilst gaining more than a $1 million dollars a day in official US support through the 1980's the Salvadorian army wasn't able to crush the resistance of the FMLN. In fact in 1989 during an offensive in the capital city the FMLN captured important positions and only because the Salvadorian army used the latest aircraft from the USA and started bombing civilian areas in the capital city did it truly expose the nature of the regime. Frightened a social revolution would erupt, that workers would start to take up arms and link with the FMLN they stopped and started to negotiate a 'peaceful settlement'. Militarily the regime despite all the logistical, technological and financial support didn't break the resistance to the dictatorship. The FMLN wasn't technically defeated on the battleground, it was politically disarmed. Coming during the period of transition in Eastern Europe and the so-called 'collapse of communism', it started to enter into negotiations with the regime to seek a joint way out of the impasse. Coalitionism became the order of the day. US imperialism by being forced to basically buy out El Salvador and co-opt the FMLN into an official opposition basically conceded to basic bourgeois democracy, which obviously is based on a different social environment than Europe. A 'democracy' where 80% of the population lives in shacks with no running water, no electricity, cholera outbreaks and hunger. One now is allowed to be a member of the FMLN and voice an opinion without the fear of the death squads visiting you at night. This in no way implies that this no longer occurs, but that the death squads have provisionally gone underground, after all part of the agreements in 'peace' is the fact that a section of the police force is made up from the FMLN. The oligarchy was basically forced to open up and appear democratic...
Maquiladoras - Capitalist Hell
During the civil war which affected the countryside more than it did the cities, the Americans pushed for the creation of maquiladoras in El Salvador. Factories where workers have no rights whatsoever, in particular the right to organise unions. During this period they were able to push this through as the war ensured constant curfews, absolute freedom for the death squads to terrorise the population and a general climate of fear. Having a job in a maquila instead of dying in the countryside because of the constant troop movements and chaos was how the population was coerced into these giant slave institutions, which are basically the USA's answer to Hitlers Auschwitz. So on the one hand the contradiction of the developments in El Salvador of political gains, whilst at the same time of economic losses are difficult to explain. How can the situation be better politically than the mid-1980's but worse economically. This is partly to do with the historical period, the onset of a world capitalist crisis in the 1980's which makes the possibility of a stable bourgeois capitalist regime extremely unstable. Every time there is a strike tanks can appear on the streets as they did recently with a hospital strike or a state of emergency to be declared. El Salvador is now even more dependent on the USA than before the civil war started and class peace has essentially been bought. The Yanks accepted more than a million Salvadorians who send money back every month to their families or relatives at the same time as extending US investments in the region at the expense of the local producers.
Why the Victory of the USA is Pyrrhic
The Americans 'won' the civil war by buying out the opposition. By creating a whole section of maquiladora labour they have essentially semi-industrialised the country. By having 20% of the population live in the USA they have bought some breathing space. But at what cost? The lack of political resistance of the FMLN to capitalism in El Salvador is a transitional phenomena. Society cannot continue to exist in a political vacuum without parties representing the interests of the poor who still remain Salvadors largest political constituency. This lack of political representation has meant that crime rates have started to soar. The crisis of the countryside which was essentially what the 1980's was about, has become the crisis of the cities. A general climate of chaos exists which to a certain extent benefits the ruling class. No longer is it the 'communist devils of the FMLN' but 'armed thugs' who go on looting and killing sprees. Everyone has a common interest in stamping out 'crime', but they never say which crime? The crime of a society which keeps 80% of its population in poverty, the crime of ostentatious wealth on the side of mountains which the poor look up to and see from their ghettoes, the crime of overfilled supermarkets whilst people are going hungry. The fact that capitalist El Salvador now requires the FMLN to do the dirty work of saving it, whereas before it relied solely on the right isn't a historic victory of US imperialism but underlies its historical weakness in concentrating so much energy and political support to a bankrupt central american oligarchy which needs to be swept into the dustbin of history. If anything, the recent history of El Salvador proves that next time round, the enemy will be just US companies directly as the middle men, the Salvadorian oligarchy have become emperors with no clothes.
August 2000
vngelis
The unsuspecting visitor to El Salvador would assume they are arriving in a newly built city on arrival at the International Airport. The size of the Airport is beyond all proportion to the size of this tiny central American state, whose population numbers only 6 million. Nearly a decade has elapsed since the, end of the civil war which had rightist fighting against leftist forces (FMLN). Many of the scars of war in the buildings and streets have been erased, but not among the population. A tiny handful of families (14) control most of the economy of El Salvador but over the last decade they have been selling off their enterprises to multinational companies and becoming minority shareholders. The main product for export has been coffee and over the last decade the maquiladoras (sub-contracted factories of US multinationals) have come to gain second place in the earning of foreign currency. Most of these companies were set up during the civil war and the 'peace' period that followed. Certain questions strike the mind on entering El Salvador. How did this small country survive the anti-communist crusades of the USA? What happened to the farmers in countryside? The workers movement in the cities? The student movement? What happened to the anti-Americanism of large sections of the populations Some of these issues will be answered, some haven't as yet been determined by history.
Role of US imperialism in its "Backyard"
Like all Central American states El Salvadors economy since it entered the capitalist world market a couple of hundred years ago has been one giant coffee plantation to serve Europe, North America and Japan. A tiny oligarchic elite ran the economy and the country as a fiefdom. Much in the same manner as the oil shieks of the Middle East. They were the servants of the Spanish colonialists who were in control of the area known today as El Salvador. No basic bourgeois democratic rights were allowed, only one party was ever allowed to stand - the military - and any protest or demonstration was vehemently put down. Certain unique developments occurred in what is known as "Americas backyard". When WWII ended not wanting to lose the 'fabulous' experience the fascists had gained in destroying opposition to their rule in Germany many of the middle level bureaucrats of Hitler's structure were given US exist visas and shipped to Central America, in particular the neighbouring country of Guatemala. Most national police forces were restructured on nazi lines. The armies sent to train in the School of the Americas in the USA. The USA's rise as the dominant imperialist superpower and leader of the capitalist world led in many ways to an assimilation of the 'best' experiences of imperialist rule in Europe. They started just where Hitler basically left off, not in the USA of course, but in the rest of the American continent. What became known as the 'banana republics' was basically an experiment in social engineering: how to control the exploitation of the natural resources of these thrid world countries without any land reform and re-distribution (era 1950-1960's) and how to semi-industrialise the regions (era 1970's - 1980's) without any basic democratic rights for the city populations. When a process of overthrowing American backed military juntas in the early 1970s was occurring in Southern Europe, a process of re-inforced American military juntas was occurring in Central and Latin America, from Guatemala all the way down to Chile. The irony of the situation was that whilst basic bourgeois democratic rights were being gained in Europe the opposite effect was occurring in the Americas. Why? Imperialism as a world wide system, in particular since the Americans took the reigns operates not only a divide and rule policy on an internal level (the different national groupings which make it up) but also a divide and rule policy on a global level. If one part of the planet is in turmoil and imperialism is on the run as it was in the 1970's with the rapid departure from Vietnam, it will seek to make someone else pay, in another region where the resistance isn't as great. The workers movement south of Mexico was never as strong as the larger part of the populations lived in the countryside. What happened there was a true modern genocide. More than 300,000 were wiped out in Guatemala's war against the peasants, more than 70,000 in tiny El Salvador. How was this allowed to happen? More importantly why did the US make the Central Americans pay for their defeats in Vietnam and Asia? As a social system imperialism rests not only on the exploitation of poor peoples of the third world, but also as the worlds pimp. It operates on creating, manufacturing and generalising fear through terrorism on a mass, as well as an individual level. Without this, which is part of its intrinsic nature it would not be able to rule. 14 oligarchic families cannot really own the majority of the land in El Salvador whilst the majority of the population starved or eked out a living permanently on the bread line, but they do. How? Basically through genocide. But when genocide becomes a ruling policy so does resistance. Resistance becomes generalised despite the wishes of those who don't want it. The fall of the hated Somoza regime in Nicaragua which is Central Americas poorest but largest state, sparked off a spirit of resistance which soon spread to El Salvador. What happened next was of truly significant dimensions. A tiny country full of mountains entered an era of war against the worlds superpower. More than 1 million people (out of a population of 6 million) were turned into refugees, many more were displaced, whole villages were razed to the ground, recreating many mini My Lai massacres (massacre in village of El Mozote, Salvador). Us imperialism by the 1980's wanted to excorcise the ghost of Vietnam, Iran, Lebanon. El Salvador proved to be the country to do it. The Nature of the Resistance in the Civil War in El Salvador When the Somoza regime fell students in El Salvador started to chant that its their leaders turn. The army in its usual 'humanitarian' fashion started to shoot people dead. What is an oligarchy if it doesn't shoot on the spot any opposition even minor ones. The fear of tinpot military dictatorships which rest solely on the use of force, is that any disturbance however minor, might spill over into a general uprising. They run the country as they run the animals on their farms, cattle as well as humans, with an iron rod. Anyone who steps out of place is targetted to be neutralised ie shot. Countless are the cases of union organisers in the 1970's who were taken out. Countless are the cases of police torture, threats, victimisation, blacklisting etc. The changes which occurred to the economy in El Salvador in the 1970's primarily due to the fact that the USA was looking for cheap labour areas around the world to set up manufacturing facilities as a way of defeating its own strong working class meant that many people moved to the cities. In these cities, Dickensian factories were set up with Dickensian labour conditions. As for rights they weren't any. When workers started to protest and organise one understood that the USA would seek its revenge in particular after the imposition of the juntas in Chile and Argentina. When a section of radicalised students, sons and daughters of a newly formed middle class, started to demand basic bourgeois democratic rights, the Salvadorian oligarchy over-reacted in a truly brutal manner. This over reaction led to an ever greater polarisation and hundreds of students and some petty shop owners went to the mountains to fight the regime. They left the cities out of fear for their lives and out of what is generally known in the region as a form of 'guevarism'. Whilst this policy had been successful in Cuba two decades previously and was also recently successful in Nicaragua, many assumed that the same would be the case in El Salvador. What went wrong? Was it a mistake to leave the cities? Did they lack the military capabilities, experience etc? Why would their struggle be different from Nicaragua?
Geo-Politics takes Centre Stage
Not every struggle has a pre-determined outcome. Not every struggle, however tenacious has a guarantee of victory. The combatants in civil wars don't know at the outset who will win and why. With the benefit of hindsight we can discern certain mistakes, but those mistakes do not belittle those who took part in the struggle, but attempt to learn form their mistakes so that they aren't repeated again. When the El Salvador civil war broke out around 1981 we had two new Presidents in the Western world: Reagan and Thatcher. Both staunchly anti-communist they wanted to rollback the defeats of the 1970's and start a re-newed offensive against peoples and continents who were resisting imperialism. El Salvador happened to erupt at an appropriate time, with the fall of Nicaragua, but due to the nationalist leadership of Ortega which didn't seek to make the revolution permanent beyond the borders of Nicaragua, imperialism gained valuable time to intervene and initially offer logistical and then full blown military support. Russia at the time intervened in Afghanistan and they were distracted from what the USA were doing in Central America. A world wide division of labour had basically ensued, the USA would 'control' its backyard and the Russians would control theirs. This changed geo-political environment meant that El Salvador would take on a new and important dimension. A defeat for imperialism in El Salvador, like had occurred in Nicaragua, could definitely not be allowed either for internal consumption or for global consumptiom. The USA had to be seen to be stamping a mouse to feel strong once more. The capitalists world superpower was about to embark on a crusade which lasted over a decade, against a peoples who fit into one third of New York city!
What Did US imperialism Achieve and What did it Lose
The actual cost of the war was so immense that US imperialism through Iran gate and the Contras in Honduras basically instituted a policy of selling drugs in order to finance their reactionary offensives. So bankrupt is their system that they had to finance everything through the production, distribution and selling of drugs like cocaine and heroine using military transport facilities for the purpose as after all everyone knows the military never search their own shipments. In this they weren't even original as the British Empire in its opium wars had done it a century and a half ago. By turning 20% of El Salvador's population into refugees who eventually found their way to the USA, the Americans disrupted the social fabric of society blowing up all the old traditional relationships. Those between the city and the countryside, between the farmers and the oligarchs, between the workers and the bosses, between families. They basically exposed the Salvadorian oligarchy into puppets on a string who needed to rely on US support to fight a brutal civil war into its own country. They basically showed to large sections of the population that the oligarchy would stoop to any level, commit any crimes however brutal (creation of paramilitary death squads who used to leave cards after butchering people which said things like, Have a Good Day, Death Squad Visit) to destroy the resistance. Whilst gaining more than a $1 million dollars a day in official US support through the 1980's the Salvadorian army wasn't able to crush the resistance of the FMLN. In fact in 1989 during an offensive in the capital city the FMLN captured important positions and only because the Salvadorian army used the latest aircraft from the USA and started bombing civilian areas in the capital city did it truly expose the nature of the regime. Frightened a social revolution would erupt, that workers would start to take up arms and link with the FMLN they stopped and started to negotiate a 'peaceful settlement'. Militarily the regime despite all the logistical, technological and financial support didn't break the resistance to the dictatorship. The FMLN wasn't technically defeated on the battleground, it was politically disarmed. Coming during the period of transition in Eastern Europe and the so-called 'collapse of communism', it started to enter into negotiations with the regime to seek a joint way out of the impasse. Coalitionism became the order of the day. US imperialism by being forced to basically buy out El Salvador and co-opt the FMLN into an official opposition basically conceded to basic bourgeois democracy, which obviously is based on a different social environment than Europe. A 'democracy' where 80% of the population lives in shacks with no running water, no electricity, cholera outbreaks and hunger. One now is allowed to be a member of the FMLN and voice an opinion without the fear of the death squads visiting you at night. This in no way implies that this no longer occurs, but that the death squads have provisionally gone underground, after all part of the agreements in 'peace' is the fact that a section of the police force is made up from the FMLN. The oligarchy was basically forced to open up and appear democratic...
Maquiladoras - Capitalist Hell
During the civil war which affected the countryside more than it did the cities, the Americans pushed for the creation of maquiladoras in El Salvador. Factories where workers have no rights whatsoever, in particular the right to organise unions. During this period they were able to push this through as the war ensured constant curfews, absolute freedom for the death squads to terrorise the population and a general climate of fear. Having a job in a maquila instead of dying in the countryside because of the constant troop movements and chaos was how the population was coerced into these giant slave institutions, which are basically the USA's answer to Hitlers Auschwitz. So on the one hand the contradiction of the developments in El Salvador of political gains, whilst at the same time of economic losses are difficult to explain. How can the situation be better politically than the mid-1980's but worse economically. This is partly to do with the historical period, the onset of a world capitalist crisis in the 1980's which makes the possibility of a stable bourgeois capitalist regime extremely unstable. Every time there is a strike tanks can appear on the streets as they did recently with a hospital strike or a state of emergency to be declared. El Salvador is now even more dependent on the USA than before the civil war started and class peace has essentially been bought. The Yanks accepted more than a million Salvadorians who send money back every month to their families or relatives at the same time as extending US investments in the region at the expense of the local producers.
Why the Victory of the USA is Pyrrhic
The Americans 'won' the civil war by buying out the opposition. By creating a whole section of maquiladora labour they have essentially semi-industrialised the country. By having 20% of the population live in the USA they have bought some breathing space. But at what cost? The lack of political resistance of the FMLN to capitalism in El Salvador is a transitional phenomena. Society cannot continue to exist in a political vacuum without parties representing the interests of the poor who still remain Salvadors largest political constituency. This lack of political representation has meant that crime rates have started to soar. The crisis of the countryside which was essentially what the 1980's was about, has become the crisis of the cities. A general climate of chaos exists which to a certain extent benefits the ruling class. No longer is it the 'communist devils of the FMLN' but 'armed thugs' who go on looting and killing sprees. Everyone has a common interest in stamping out 'crime', but they never say which crime? The crime of a society which keeps 80% of its population in poverty, the crime of ostentatious wealth on the side of mountains which the poor look up to and see from their ghettoes, the crime of overfilled supermarkets whilst people are going hungry. The fact that capitalist El Salvador now requires the FMLN to do the dirty work of saving it, whereas before it relied solely on the right isn't a historic victory of US imperialism but underlies its historical weakness in concentrating so much energy and political support to a bankrupt central american oligarchy which needs to be swept into the dustbin of history. If anything, the recent history of El Salvador proves that next time round, the enemy will be just US companies directly as the middle men, the Salvadorian oligarchy have become emperors with no clothes.
August 2000
vngelis
vngelis
e-mail:
vngelis@yahoo.com