Fidel! by Sheldon B. Liss

Author:Sheldon B. Liss [Liss, Sheldon B.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, Latin America, General
ISBN: 9780813386782
Google: RdV8AAAAMAAJ
Publisher: Avalon Publishing
Published: 1994-02-28T03:00:28+00:00

El Salvador

On many occasions Castro has stated that Latin America, aside from Cuba, has received better treatment from the United States as a result of the Cuban Revolution. Immediately after Fidel assumed power, the United States undertook projects such as the aforementioned Alliance for Progress. These programs helped the Latin American republics to a very limited extent.

The economic, social, and political reforms of the 1960s and the move toward industrialization in countries such as El Salvador led to urbanization, increased trade union activity, and greater political awareness on the part of the urban proletariat. Demands for, and the implementation of, reforms increased foreign debts, leading more Salvadorans to claim that capitalism ruined their country. The example of Cuba, which proved that Revolution can bring dramatic social and economic changes rapidly, spawned new revolutionary movements such as El Salvador’s Farabundo Marti National Liberation Movement (FMLN) and the Democratic Revolutionary Front (FDR). The United States, seeing its support for capitalist reforms backfire to a degree, reacted in two ways. First, it decided that the funds it formerly appropriated for such programs as the Alliance for Progress were being wasted and stolen by corrupt Latin American bureaucracies and also, inadvertently, that they stimulated nationalist and trade union activity by progressive Latinos. Thus, the Nixon administration, convinced that its foreign aid programs were too costly financially and ideologically, dropped any pretense at altruism vis-à-vis Latin America and reverted to the avaricious “dollar diplomacy” policies that had prevailed prior to World War II. Second, the United States, determined not to permit “another Cuba,” embarked upon a national security course of using military force to combat whatever it declared “communism.” Castro’s contention, at least with respect to El Salvador, that the rest of Latin America benefited by the Cuban Revolution was true to the extent that heightened political consciousness had provoked political and guerrilla action. But it also led to government repression in El Salvador. Fidel denies that El Salvador’s guerrillas followed the Cuban model. To him, the Central American state was far more backward than Cuba had been in 1959. First it had to be liberated, then developed economically, before it could proceed to build socialism.156

Castro goes on to say that El Salvador serves as a perfect example of the U.S. policy of encouraging peace among the powerful nations, such as the USSR (when it existed), and simultaneously waging war against small states with progressive movements like the FMLN-FDR. Washington fosters low-intensity conflicts in Central America to support the status quo and wear down the leftist opposition.157 The United States during the Carter administration claimed that the FMLN was dedicated to establishing a Marxist, totalitarian government, and thus Washington armed, trained, and advised the Salvadoran army, hoping to solve militarily what were essentially social, political, and economic problems. Fidel declares that these problems cannot be rectified while the United States seeks military answers158 and develops techniques to destroy revolutionary movements that use irregular warfare.

Fidel acknowledges that the Cuban Revolution stimulated the popular movement in El Salvador to combat dictatorship, the oligarchy, and U.

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