Women's Lives in El Salvador
This article is based on an interview with Miriam Galdemez of the Revolutionary Democratic Front of El Salvador, prepared by Jenny Vaughan and Jane Mcintosh and appearing in Spare Rib No. 106 (May 1981). Available from Spare Rib, 27 Clerkenwell Close. London EC 1R OAT, United Kingdom. Price 50 p. (US$1.00).
For women in the countryside the day starts very, very early.
By the time she finishes the children and her husband will be up. If the children are old enough she'll send them off to get some water, but if not she has to go herself. Water is
one of our biggest problems, because only about 30 per cent of people in the countryside have access to safe drinking water so they're always getting sick. Diseases from bad drinking water are one of the biggest killers in El Salvador.
Once she's got the water the family breakfast on tortillas and coffee, then, if its harvest time, everybody goes off to work on big plantations picking the crops. Children usually start work at about 10 or 11 years of age, often they start even earlier, because harvesting means money and every family needs as much as it can get.
If there's no work in the plantation, and often there isn't, because they only need people for a few months of the year, there's still plenty of work for her to do ! She looks after the animals; goes down to the river to wash the clothes; collects firewood for cooking; looks after the family's few crops; cooks the dinner; maybe she weaves to make cloth/ or sews clothes, things like that. Sometimes she'll go and see friends and chat or help with the labour, sometimes..."
Miriam smiled, but her eyes clouded with pain.
"Sometimes women have to give birth on their own. I remember once, when I was still quite young, I was walking along the river bank, when I saw a woman cutting her umbilical cord herself. She'd given birth then and there i Just as she finished her kids came tumbling back. Well, I went home with her and, do you know, ske cooked the dinner and sent the kids to play before she lay down !
Sounds incredible doesn't it I But you see. El Salvador's got hardly any hospitals or doctors and most of them are in the capital and cost a fortune. There was a census in 1971 which said that there were three doctors and 17 hospital beds for every 10.000 people. You can imagine how many women die in childbirth and how high the infant mortality rate is as a result. Women have an average of six to eight children but often have twice as many pregnancies.
But that's not all you know. The women we've been talking about are what we call minifundistas. That means they live with their family on a little piece of land called minifundio, which is what the peasants got left with when the big landowners took all the best land for their plantations. That was a really terrible period in our history. But many women don't even have a minifundio to live on and so they lack even the security of a home and family around them. They have to make their living as migrant labourers.
I think this is the hardest life of all : when she has to travel, caring for her children all the while, from the cotton harvest down on the coast to the coffee harvest up near the volcanoes of the central plateau. It's a terrible life and it's getting worse because there's less and less work available as agriculture gets more mechanised with so-called development. I think this is one of the reasons why women are getting more politicised and joining one of the popular organisations or the guerillas."
Miriam's words reminded us of the many women in different countries in Latin America who migrate from the countryside to the city to become domestic servants or empleadas for well-off families. We asked Miriam whether this happened in El Salvador as well.
"Definitely ! Peasant women have always done this because there's so little work in the countryside. Even more are migrating now because the repression in the countryside is horrific.
Some find work as empleadas and unless they're very lucky, end up exploited as workers and as women. It's just expected that an empleada will service her boss and the sons of the family sexually as well. If she refuses she loses her job. It's the same for many nurses and secretaries, they are forced to give into the sexual capriciousness of their bosses or the directors of the hospital to keep their jobs.
There's another area where women who come to the city try to find work and that's in the free trade zone areas that have been set up. These were supposed to help us develop, but the only thing that develops are the profits of the firms because they don't have to pay taxes and trade unions are illegal. We found out that some 70 per cent of the firms in these areas are North American owned - another reason for the USA's concern. Women work in the pharmaceutical and textile factories - making things like Maidenform bras I
But there's still many women who can't find any sort of work — especially if they're illiterate, which lots of women are. But they've got to eat and so they fall easily into prostitution and all its evils : beatings, illness, endemic syphilis. But what can they do ? They can't go back to the countryside because of the situation there. They're stuck.
The social structure in El Salvador is inhuman. It's important to say this because, yes, machismo, is a real problem, but nothing's ever going to change until we have the basic necessities of life : economic security; housing; health and education At the moment most people don't have either. And we're never going to get them until we change the whole power structure in El Salvador. We must join with our men who suffer too, as well as fight for our specific rights. That's why we set up the Association of El Salvadorean Women (AMES) on International Women's Day last year - to make sure that women could do both these things."
We asked Miriam to explain more about the social structure We asked Miriam to explain more about the social structure in El Salvador, for as well as telling us more about women's lives these were facts that had been missing from our TV screens and daily newspapers.The El Salvadorean elite - the oligarchy - is tiny. It's just 2 per cent of the population, but these 60 or so families own 60 per cent of the land - and it's the best land. The land where all the cotton, coffee and sugar cane is grown for export. It goes mainly to the USA and West Germany. Of course the oligarchy keeps the profit, or, to be precise, they share a profit with the firms who buy their crops - another reason for US interests I Well, they have no intention of giving up anything, land, power or privilege.
It's always had the military in its pockets and its own paramilitary It's always had the military in its pockets and its own paramilitary forces like ORDEN, who have terrorised the peasants for years — nothing's changed, things have just got worse. We've tried every democratic means of change. Some people thought it might work as late as last year when they backed the present government of Napoleon Duarte which tried to implement a very small land reform. Really this was just a strategy to try and buy off the peasants and justify the repression of the left which was thought up by the US State Department.
But when they tried to take the land from the oligarchy -But when they tried to take the land from the oligarchy -well, that was when El Salvador blew up I The military and paramilitary went on the rampage. Peasants were murdered;whole villages were destroyed; workers suspected of being left-wingers were knocked off. The Roman Catholic Church has estimated that over 13.000 people have died in the year that has followed. As for the government - well, lots of people left and joined the FDR. Duarte stayed, but now he's just a puppet of the military. The land reform has been abandoned.
"But what, we asked Miriam, about American intervention ? Wasn't she frightened of it ?
Of direct military intervention ? Yes I dread it. It will be a Of direct military intervention ? Yes I dread it. It will be a blood bath and the people who suffer will be the poor; the dispossessed. All this stuff about Russian and Cuban intervention is a lie : an insult. We are fighting to bring an end to the day to day suffering of the people, not because any out side force is telling us what to do. Look at the lives of the women I've told you about - wouldn't they make you want to fight ?Nobody has seen any Russian sub-machine guns or tanks in El Salvador, but they've seen plenty of US ones.Tons of military arms are being used to kill the people. Green Beret para troops who are already inside the country. We are also fighting US imperialism which has dominated our country and has backed the oligarchy because the oligarchy does its dirty work. What people don't know is that the US has been intervening in El Salvador for years : training army officers in techniques of counter-insurgency; spying, imposing programmes of population control and sterilising women without their consent; dumping dangerous drugs which killus. Many things. Had it not been for the US my people would have been at the door of their liberation many years before now.
We were all silent when Miriam finished speaking, a shared We were all silent when Miriam finished speaking, a shared anger stopping our words. After a time we began to speak again, as Miriam told us about the participation of women in the war:
The late 60s and the 70s saw the growing participation of women in the guerilla armies and in the popular organisations
They have always been closely linked to the guerilla forces,They have always been closely linked to the guerilla forces,but they based their work in trade union struggles; struggles for housing and water - popular struggles that really related to people's day to day needs. Women have taken to the streets in protest at the repression; organised strikes for improved living and working conditions; produced an enormous amount of political propaganda. Their courage is immense, because these activities are answered with a bullet.Women have joined the guerilla armies too, but not in such great numbers. Many women still believe that the armed struggle is a matter for men and there are still many men who cannot accept a woman fighting alongside them. There's a long way to go before women pick up a machine gun as easily as a casserole ! But things are changing. Many of the women in the guerillas - often at top level - are fighting through discussion and general assemblies to incorporate more and more women into the army. In one of the liberated zones the people in charge of civil engineering, campaign hospitals and weapon production are women.
Women have suffered terribly too, through repression. Now Women have suffered terribly too, through repression. Now it's common practice to stab pregnant women in the stomach to make sure they are not carrying arms.
"In this sort of situation we wondered what the role of the Association of El Salvadorean Women (AMES) was.
Miriam explained that:
AMES was set up for two reasons : one, to provide an organisation AMES was set up for two reasons : one, to provide an organisation through which women such as housewives, nurses and secretaries could participate in the liberation struggle;and two, to provide all women with an organisation which would fight for the specific rights of women : for the right to maternity and an end to forced sterilization; to safe family planning; to free child-care; to education and training.
We believe that our liberation from a machista society won't We believe that our liberation from a machista society won't come until we achieve our national liberation, for it is an integral part of this, not separate. But we believe that women's liberation — establishing her own rights, carrying out her aspirations — is going to be done much quicker than in other countries such as Cuba. Cuba has begun to look, a little late, at the specific situation of women. Nicaragua is going more quickly, and we think we will go pretty fast too.
"Finally we asked Miriam what women in other countries could do to support the women of El Salvador :
Women must get their organisations to condemn US intervention Women must get their organisations to condemn US intervention in El Salvador and to demand recognition of the FDR.What I'd also like is for women to donate the price of a packet of tampons or sanitary towels to the Solidarity Campaign which can be used to buy protection for the women in the guerilla armies for often they have to fight using nothing. Both these things would help us tremendously."
EL SALVADOR - THE COUNTRY
Area - 8.100 sq. miles
Population — 4.5 million
Health - lowest calorie intake in Latin America. 73 percent of children under 5 years suffer from malnutrition.
Housing - 200.000 people in San Salvador, the capital,live in paper and cardboard huts.
Wealth - 2 per cent of the population control 60 per cent of the land. 8 per cent of the population receive 50 percent of the national income.