(2 of 2)
For the guerrillas, the partnership with Salvadoran laborers offers more than a windfall profit from economic blackmail. There is no evidence that the Liberation Front charges workers a fee for its bargaining "services," but involving themselves in the wage negotiations adds to the rebels' political weight. Last November the rebels began distributing leaflets in one of their mountainous northern strongholds, Chalatenango department, urging local peasants who travel south for the coffee harvest to band together for negotiating purposes. At about the same time, a full-page advertisement appeared in a newspaper in the capital, San Salvador, putting forth wage and working demands. The advertisement was signed by two mysterious organizations previously unknown in Salvadoran labor circles, the National Association of Campesinos and the National Federation of Agricultural Cooperatives. The ad campaign appeared at a time when El Salvador's National Assembly was setting minimum wages for coffee pickers of $3.62 per 100 lbs. of beans. The original guerrilla target was 40% higher, a fact widely touted in F.M.L.N. propaganda broadcasts over the clandestine radio stations Radio Venceremos and Radio Farabundo Marti.
Significantly, many Salvadoran coffee growers seem less resentful of the rebels' role in labor negotiations than of government export and foreign- exchange taxes, because these levies are higher. Even in a country as bitterly divided as El Salvador, political enmity can take a back seat to economic self-interest.