EL SALVADOR—On September 19, the government launched a plan to deploy units of the army to “strategic” points to combat crime in San Salvador. The university is one of these and it’s the place that has generated the most tension.
No wonder. Thousands of students have been disappeared, tortured or killed historically by the repressive forces of the State, including the army. At present, the army and the police continue harassing, abusing and criminalizing the youth.
This new scenario has generated a sharper discussion among friends and members of the party about the role of soldiers in the revolutionary movement and the need to organize them.
On September 25, more than 120 university students took to the streets to protest against the militarization, the attempt to privatize the university and against the criminalization of poverty. This protest opened a space in which we could discuss this topic still more.
Those who are against the militarization argue that instead of spending money on the military, the money must be used to improve education and that the presence of the soldiers means harassment and violence against the youth.
Military spending is indispensable for capitalist states. It is necessary for them to defend the interests of the ruling class. If our goal is to eliminate violence with the destruction of capitalism, we need to mobilize the masses for communism.
In the midst of the protest, I asked a friend, “What do they mean when they say that the army must be eliminated?”
He answered, “It’s not a question that it won’t exist anymore; it’s a question of rebuilding it, to make a new one.”
And he’s right, but how will we achieve it? Precisely by organizing inside the bourgeois armies. The revolutionary movement has succeeded in influencing the actions of an army through direct armed confrontation and by organizing its soldiers.
The examples of the Bolsheviks and the Russian soldiers remain relevant, but we only have to go back a few decades in El Salvador to realize that these lessons are vital for us also. In the General Offensive of 1981, in the barracks in Santa Ana, a group of soldiers and a captain rebelled in support of the guerrilla offensive. The masses, seeing the uprising in the barracks, flung themselves into the street with more determination. That city had the most insurrectional activity in the whole country during this time. Those soldiers are not much different from the soldiers we see today in the street. The possibility of winning them to communist ideas is still there.
As the march entered the university, it was met by a group of soldiers and a humvee. I took the opportunity to approach a soldier who was away from the group.
“What do you think about this?” I asked him.
“I don’t understand them. We are here to protect them, not to harass them. Why are they doing this? We are only following orders,” he answered me.
I tried to explain to him that I personally didn’t understand some of the actions but that the majority of students understand that the problem is with those who give them orders, not them.
“Look, if you leave classes and you meet a gang member in the street, don’t you feel safer if we are there?” asked the soldier.
“It’s clear that things are messed up, but you all can also ask yourselves why there is so much violence,” I said.
The conversation ended. Breaking with this fear of talking with the soldiers has been just one step. Even though the conversation didn’t flow as hoped, the willingness of the soldiers to talk shows that there is a way to take communist ideas to them, including in the current conditions in the country.
Soldiers, men and women workers, students, farmworkers, we have more things in common with each other than with the ruling class. The capitalists try to make the soldiers see the youth and students as a threat. To be able to combat these ideas we need to work politically with them and with the party’s base. Bringing Red Flag and the ICWP military pamphlet to them will be key to this work. The members and friends of the party have to be conscious of the need for this work. The mentality of the soldiers won’t change over night, much less when the rulers try to separate them from the rest of the working class. Every party member must strengthen their commitment to the communist project. Things keep changing and we must be ready to do this work.
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