The pictures on this page show what a civil war is like.
For fifty years the people of El Salvador have suffered the brutal tyranny of a right-wing dictatorship. Now, inspired by the example of the Nicaraguan people, they are fighting back.
But the El Salvador ruling class is not willing to give up its coffee, cotton and sugar plantations without a fight. They, like every other ruling class, will use any means at their disposal to protect their privileges and their profits.
But the workers and peasants of El Salvador are no longer prepared to live in squalor, brually treated by the regime, while the ruling class lives in luxury.
On 22 January they protested against repression by calling a general strike. Thousands of people supported the action and stayed away from work, or travelled into the capital, San Salvador, to march through the streets.
There were reprisals because the action was so successful. That day and the next peasants and workers were shot down, or brutally mutilated with vicious machete knives, by the army, police and right-wing para-military groups.
Virtually every day there is street fighting or repression. On 12 February LP28, one of the three major left groups in El Salvador, stormed the headquarters of the Christian Democrat Party to protest at its involvement in the government of the ruling junta. The army took back the building and six LP28 members were killed.
On 17 March the Revolutionary Coordination, the joint front of the three main far left groups and the Communist Party, called a 24-hour strike against US intervention in the country. The army is supplied with tanks, guns and bombs by the United States. It used them to massacre workers in factories and peasants in the countryside on 17 March Carter, the champion of self-determination and non-intervention in Afghanistan, sent over military advisors especially for the occasion.
El Salvador shows that Carter's claptrap about human rights in Afghanistan is motivated simply by opposition to the Soviet Union — and it won't do his election chances any harm either.
But the masses in El Salvador are prepared to take on US imperialism along with their own ruling junta if that is what's necessary. They continue to strike and protest despite the most savage reprisals.
Socialist Challenge is proud to publish these pictures of a courageous people and urges every socialist to build solidarity with the El Salvador revolution. The El Salvador Solidarity Campaign can be contacted c/o NSC, 20 Compton Terrace, London N1 or tel: 01-487 4397.
Socialist Challenge 17 April 1980 Posa
THIS BAHRO, The East German Marxist, critique of the Russian invasion occupation of Afghanistan published as a contribution to the debate within the labour moverent. RUDOLPH and hands NATO leaders against and this invasion, the Soviet are acting as unrestrained accomplices of world reaction. They have assumed a role which we did not
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by Mexican photographer José Lavanderos