SINCE the attempted insurrection of 1932 was defeated by the army with the massacre of 30,000 workers and peasants the Salvadorean people have been trying to put an end to poverty, hunger and repression. Seventy per cent of children under the age of five die each year from malnutrition. Sixty per cent of the population is without land or stable employment.
in the struggle against the national ruling class and US imperialism. Women forefront of the student movement of the seventies and the female dominated teachers' union ANDES has played an important role in the workers' movement, while its members have often helped peasant mobilisations in the countryside.
bul unt recently wie hosl workers and peasants remained isolated from the popular struggle. The macho ideal of women as passive, combined with women's double day of work in the factory or field as well as in the home, meant that few women participated directly in the struggle.
demands were seeI the Salvadorean struggle groups which existed were bourgeois feminist.
Few last few years however things have been changing. organisations have been formed to represent the demands of working class and peasant women and women are increasingly in volved in all aspects of the struggle. They work in the diplomatic bodies of the FDR/FMLN on the leadership the politico-military organisations. TOLLY per cent of the FPL leadership is female.
Women are involved in the mass organisations and in the provisional governments of the FMLN con trolled zones. They participate in barrio commitrees organising support for the FMLN the poor of El Salvador's cities and one fifth of the guerilla fighters women. The heavy into vement of women he struggle is a reflection severe oppression they suffer under the present regime in El Salvador.
Life in the countryside for the whole Salvadorean seasantry is hara with Cong hours, low wages, high unemployment constant assassination by death But tor sadi on anace worse.
ocasalll women marry at thirteen or fourteen years of age and have had five pregnancies by the time they are twenty.
In the whole EI Salvador there is maternity MOSSILO sixty-seven per of Salvadorean women have always been involved students were the women in the countryside give birth without any medical attention whatever. Women have a double day of work: they do a full day's work in the field well as domestic work.
Davadoredu peasant women are expected to supplement the family income by weaving cloth akie (an alcoholic drink) as well as cooking, cleaning looking after the children.
Six out of ten families.
water and one third of all Salvadoreans live in one roomed shacks. Sixty per cent of the population have an income of less than £140 a year.
Under these conditions women's tasks of keeping the house family cooking ccall. budgeting the family income become harder and harder. During the harvest wages are three-quarters those of me samee they Moreover at the same not even the woman who receives this wage but her husband who is paid on her behalf.
Men In the factories of El Salvador women are paid on average twenty-five per less than men.
Women Colsulule auvul seventy-four per cent of all unemployed as result, many migrate from Ine countrvside small towns look for work the big cities. Tonse they work slavery tions near slavery are expected to be on call twenty-four hours day, many only allowed to leave the house one cav a mould and ency have no rights to social benefits sCLulILy They are frequently subare frequently subjected to unwanted sexual demands by their employers.
Once pregnant they are thrown out of the home in WACO they have Decr working, faced with The prostitutes who work San Salvador's 'Calle Celis' are constantly subiected to harrassment by the police who make them pay bribes in money or in sexual services to stay out of prison. Working in tinv "rooms' formed cardboard partitions they earn about thirty pence a client.
There are now three organisations belonging the FMLŇ/FDR. These CUMS, the United Committee of Salvadorean Women, AMPES, the Association of Progressive Women of El Salvador; and AMES, the Association of Women of EI Salvador. Set up in the last few years they have taken on the tasks of integrating women into the rein lai tionary struggle Salvador; working with Salvadorean retugees: anc winning solidarity the Salvadorean struggle.
Six hundred thousand refugees, the majority whom women children, have fled refugee camps in Costa Rica, Honduras, Mexico Nicaragua since the war began. Conditions in the camp often deplorable.
In one .camp of one thousand six hundred and eighty refugees, of whom OVCI hundred were children under seven, eighty-two cent were suffering tion.
STOP THE D organisations help with health care. teach basic hygiene and also help organise work shops where refugees can learn the manual technical skills they need to earn a living.
The women's organisation with the largest mass base in AMES. Set up in 1978/79 as a resull or une struggie. of San Salvador's women sureel agallls. police and state harrassment, it now also Incor porates peasants, factory workers, students, teachers and housewives.
Levels AMES is involved at all levels of the struggle: givzozistical SUDOUIL the guerrillas, organising committees the barrios has representation on the provisional government Chalatenango. AMES also sees Dari work propaganda within the revolutionary organisations over women's role.
AMES says that order for women to participate fully in the strug gle male militants must share housework childcare responsibilities with their companions. They believe that the need for women to raise their consciousness of their oppression necessary before during and after the revolution, and that the iberation of women is inseperable from the liberaof the Salvadorean people as a whole. Operator at FMLN's Radio Venceremos