More than 150 people attended the San Francisco 30th anniversary celebration of the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN) of El Salvador. The S.F. event was one of many such commemorations held in El Salvador, the United States and other countries around the world.
A solidarity message was read at the event by Richard Becker on behalf of the Party for Socialism and Liberation. Salvador Cordon, Northern California Coordinator of the FMLN, described the PSL and the ANSWER Coalition as “our closest allies,” and presented each with certificates of recognition.
The program for the evening was a mix of speeches and cultural presentations, a Salvadoran dinner, and a dance. The event was emceed by Haydee Martinez and the main speech—tracing the history of the struggle in El Salvador—was by Cordon.
Cordon described how the FMLN was formed by five political-military organizations at a time of both massive popular uprising and brutal repression by the Salvadoran military who carried out a campaign of mass terror that drove the mass movement underground. For 11 years the FMLN waged guerrilla war and would have achieved victory if not for U.S. military intervention on a gigantic scale in a country of just 6 million people.
Cordon pointed out that it was this intervention that prolonged the war, exhausting much of the population. At the same time, the Salvadoran military could not achieve victory; a stalemate developed. That factor and the fall of the socialist camp between 1989 and 1991, prevented the triumph of the Salvadoran Revolution.
In 1992 a peace accord was signed, and the FMLN transformed itself into a political party. Last year the candidate it supported, Mauricio Funes, won the presidency and the FLMN holds several of the social ministries in the current government.
