Ex-combatant communities: the FMLN’s voto duro

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One voting bloc that doesn't want El Salvador's FMLN party to become political pragmatists is the ex-combatant community that spent much of the war in exile.

This group--the party's base--is known as the "voto duro" (or hard vote), and they received appropriated land from the government after the 1992 peace accords. For its members, a victory by the FMLN would help heal wounds inflicted by government repression, burned villages, and murdered family members. It would also mandate a path toward socialism.

The community of Ciudad Romero--in the Bajo Lempa region of Usulután province, where the Rio Lempa empties into the Pacific Ocean -- was born from the war's ashes. It was named after El Salvador's martyred Archbishop Oscar Romero, who was murdered by a military assassin on March 24, 1980, for condemning the government's repression of the peasantry.

"Romero denounced everything we wanted to denounce but couldn't," says José Nohé Reyes Granados, 30, who is writing a book about his community's journey. "He was the voice for those without a voice. ... When they killed him, we realized that talking was futile. They killed the archbishop ... who could speak now? The only path was armed resistance."

Two months later, the military attacked the village where Reyes and his family lived in La Union -- a province in eastern El Salvador -- because many in the community were suspected of being active in the guerrilla movement. Some 600 villagers fled across the Lempa River to neighboring Honduras -- under the cover of night because an equally repressive Honduran military was guarding the border.

The Organization of American States learned of the refugees' plight and gave them food and shelter for six months in Honduras, until the Panamanian government agreed to shelter them--under the condition that the Salvadorans would help clear roads through the thick jungle, from Panama City to the Atlantic Ocean.

But when Panama's leftist President Omar Torrijos was assassinated a year later, the Salvadorans found themselves politically isolated. They built a village deep in the jungle that they named Ciudad Romero, or Romero City. There, community members built homes and a church, in which they painted a mural of their beloved archbishop. They were able to pick up a radio signal from the FMLN rebels, which allowed them to follow events back home, as they lived in exile for a decade.

In November 1989, the FMLN launched a successful offensive in both San Salvador and in the countryside, proving to the military regime that it had the popular support to continue its resistance indefinitely. The offensive, coupled with the military's massacre of six Jesuit priests at the University of Central America, forced the government to negotiate with the FMLN.

The refugees took down the church wall, piece-by-piece, and returned to El Salvador with the mural in tow. The government granted land in Bajo Lempa to the approximately 220 families that represented Ciudad Romero, and there they arrived in March 1991 to build another community from scratch.

Approximately 1,000 people live today in Ciudad Romero, which operates under the umbrella of the Associaci -- n Mangle, a nonprofit rural development organization that works with 70 communities to facilitate public projects, such as building homes or protecting the nearby endangered mangrove forests. The association also operates Radio Mangle, a radio station in nearby San Nicolas that broadcasts music, news and cultural programming.

Other communities in the Associacion Mangle share similarly dramatic war stories. The residents of San Hilario and Amando Lopez were originally from Morazán and La Union, provinces in eastern El Salvador where the guerrilla was based, because of their remoteness and access to the Honduran and Nicaraguan borders. Most joined the rebels or were active in the resistance. Like Ciudad Romero, many had to leave the country when the military arrived in their villages.

San Hilario resident Arnoldo Ort'z, who joined the guerrilla at age 14 in 1980, never thought he'd survive the war--and see the other side. "The transition from armed conflict to peace has been difficult because I grew up with the war," he says. "We arrived from a process where we didn't know much about civilian life. We had no idea about houses, land or economics.

"What we learned during the war was to live together like brothers. As combatants, we shared everything to survive... whether it was a tortilla, a cookie or a cigar."

Mariela Luciña Hernandez, 45, of Amando Lopez--a community named after one of the Jesuit priests the military murdered in 1989--was a doctor with the rebels. The military captured and tortured her in 1981, and she later escaped to Nicaragua.

Today, Hernandez directs an association of community women and works with war veterans. She says the most important thing she and her compañeros learned during that time is how to organize and work together.

"We work to organize on a local level for the party, to advance the cause through the community, through Radio Mangle," she says. "If we can plant corn, and harvest all the seeds we plant, the FMLN can buy them and feed the people. The country has to change, bit by bit."

In a striking turn of the political tide, Ciudad Romero's neighbors in Nuevo Amanecer now join them in wearing the red shirts of the FMLN. The military granted land to ex-soldiers, who named their community Nuevo Amanecer ("a new dawn"), and they have remained faithful to the ARENA-government, until little by little, Reyes says, they realized that ARENA was doing little to help their community. For 20 years, they've struggled with limited water access and agricultural projects.

Enemies during the war, Ciudad Romero and Nuevo Amanecer are now allies, and they represent the base of the FMLN.

http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/4067/el_salvadors_new_left