The Tide Pushes Us All Toward Peace : El Salvador: The world has changed since the last negotiations between the FMLN and the government. We now have models for a return to true, unthreatened democracy.

A new round of negotiations opens here today between the government of El Salvador and the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN). The last time the two parties met was October 16, 1989, in San Jose, Costa Rica. No progress toward a negotiated solution was made at that time.

But dramatic events have occurred in the intervening months in El Salvador, and continue to occur in the Central American region and around the globe, with repercussions on the possibility for a solution of the conflict in El Salvador.

I have little doubt that the tide of history will push all parties toward an end of the armed conflict, toward peace, toward models of genuine democracy that exclude the domination of military forces over civil society and the maintenance of unjust economic and social structures. The historical tide will also certainly leave stranded those models of revolution and social progress based on totalitarian or single-party regimes with excessive state control of the economy and society.

It is not necessary to accept the much-discussed “end of history” put forth by political scientist Francis Fukuyama, or even the “ideological evolution of humanity” (which is what, more precisely, Fukuyama ought to have proposed as his thesis) in order to accept the basic principles of the liberal democratic state as a rational form of society and state to which we can legitimately aspire.

So, leaving aside for now all of the obfuscation put forth by proponents of the end of history and the proclaimers of the victory of Western-style liberalism, we of the FMLN believe, with great enthusiasm, that the possibilities for real democratization and peace in our country are better now than ever before.

The end of the Cold War leaves the United States without its ideological or geopolitical concern and/or justification for supporting anti-democratic armies and governments in Latin America. This is acknowledged even by the most conservative ideologues in the United States.

Events in the Soviet Union, Poland, Hungary, East Germany and Czechoslovakia have established precedents of great political importance to the case of El Salvador: Political constitutions can be changed, new houses of Parliament can be created, general elections can be called--all in a matter of days and without bloodshed--if there exists the political will to resolve problems in a democratic manner.

The electoral process in Nicaragua, its outcome and the imminent peaceful transfer of the control of the state apparatus also provide important political dividends to the democratic and revolutionary forces of El Salvador. In Nicaragua, the Sandinista National Liberation Front refuted the contention that revolutionary movements cannot accept--much less push forward--an authentic democratic process. This fact could translate into a gain in credibility for the similar democratic option that the FMLN is proposing for El Salvador.

The size of the army in Nicaragua is going to be reduced substantially, as a product of political negotiations between the government and the opposition. This is another precedent applicable to El Salvador, despite the great political differences between the right-wing Salvadoran government and the Sandinistas.

Nicaragua’s elections will be the yardstick, strict and demanding, by which the democratic will of the Cristiani government in El Salvador will be measured. The six months of international monitoring in Nicaragua exposed, by comparison, the purely cosmetic purpose served by “international observers” on Election Day in El Salvador’s last vote in March, 1989. Nicaragua’s electoral registry, the makeup and functioning of the Central Elections Council and the enforcement of laws guaranteeing the rights of political parties to equitable access to the media will also be models.

This is the context in which the negotiations in Geneva are beginning. It is an unquestionably positive context for attaining democracy and peace. It is our hope that the Cristiani government will understand that the political winds, rather than blowing against the FMLN, as many in his government say, may well be blowing against the intransigence and obsolete authoritarianism of his own party, his own army, and his own regime.

If President Alfredo Cristiani can read the signs of the times well, no more blood need be shed in El Salvador, and for the first time in our history the possibility of real peace--based on the democratization of society--will be opened.