The U.S. ruling class, together with its allies in Central and Latin America, is preparing a qualitative new level of military action against the deepening revolutionary struggles of the workers and peasants of Central America and the Caribbean.
Spokesmen for American imperialism, such as U.S. Secretary of State Alexander Haig and Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger, state that the moves being actively considered include:
e use of troops from Argentina and other Latin American dictatorships in El Salvador, together with a qualitatively expanded force of U.S. “advisers” and massive new shipments of military matériel to the Salvadoran junta.
@ attempts to blockade Nicaragua by sea and land, including an escalation of military action by the Honduran armed forces and Somocista units that operate out of Honduras.
e a “show of air power” directed against Cuba, and a “quarantine” of Cuban shipping to stop the alleged arms flow to El Salvador.
The military chiefs of staff of Latin American governments that have “common defense interests” with U.S. imperialism met in Washington the first days of November to discuss these various alternatives. The Nicaraguan government was excluded from the meeting. A four-week U.S. naval maneuver in the Caribbean, involving dozens of warships and hundreds of planes began on October 30. The announced site of final exercises for “Operation Readex” is the Puerto Rican island of Vieques.
The exact moves being planned are of course unknown, but the targets are crystal clear:
e the workers and peasants of El Salvador, who have in recent months made major advances toward bringing down the hated military junta; e the workers and peasants of Nicaragua, who continue to put their interests and needs ahead of the profits of imperialism and the Nicaraguan bourgeoisie; e the workers and farmers of Grenada, who are organizing and mobilizing their forces to establish a new social order aimed at meeting the pressing needs of the Grenadian people; e and the workers and peasants of Cuba, who despite twenty-two years of unrelenting pressure from imperialism — including economic blockade, sabotage, invasion, and biological warfare — refuse to be bought off or intimidated. They continue to courageously reaffirm their right and their internationalist duty to aid their brothers and sisters throughout the Caribbean and Central America who are defying imperialism anbd struggling to take their destiny into their own hands.
In recent weeks the U.S. rulers have been carefully preparing the political grounds for their escalated aggression by a campaign of slanderous lies and charges directed against the governments of Cuba and Nicaragua as the alleged sources of the arms and aid being utilized by the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front in El Salvador.
This campaign has reached a new crescendo following the spectacular military and political blow struck by the FMLN on October 15, when they destroyed the strategically important Puente de Oro Bridge over the Lempa River. It was alleged that such a professional action could only have been executed by a special strike force of Cuban troops secretly flown into Nicaragua and infiltrated from there into El Salvador.
Despite repeated challenges by the Cuban and Nicaraguan governments that Washington substantiate such accusations, they have only been reiterated without proof. And new accusations appear daily. On November 8, for example, military spokesmen in El Salvador alleged that planes painted red and black, the Sandinista colors of Nicaragua, had been sighted airlifting supplies to FMLN units.
Behind the dangerous new moves by Washington is one simple fact: all else has failed to halt the revolutionary upsurge in Central America.
Despite massive military aid to the brutal dictatorship in El Salvador, despite the murder of more than 11,000 people in the first nine months of 1981 alone, the Salvadoran military has been unable to stop the advance of the FMLN.
Washington has become convinced that the disintegration of the Salvadoran regime cannot be halted, nor the popular insurrection crushed, without far greater outside military intervention.
Despite two years of unrelenting economic and political pressures on Nicaragua to abandon its course of defending the interests of working people against those of the Nicaraguan bourgeoisie, the Sandinista leadership has resolutely reaffirmed this line of march and 1159 repeatedly mobilized the workers and peasants of Nicaragua to assure victory.
Central to Washington’s concer is the fact that the Nicaraguan people are rapidly building not only a strong professional army, but a powerful popular militia that every day grows more capable of defending the revolution.
The U.S. rulers are now convinced there is no way to stop the creation of a workers state in Nicaragua short of outside military intervention.
Despite the powerful pressures U.S. imperialism has brought to bear against Cuba, the Cuban government has refused to renounce its right to stand shoulder to shoulder with those who are struggling to break the chains of imperialist domination in Central America and the Caribbean. Knowing that the Cuban workers state is the ultimate target in Yankee imperialism’s drive to reverse the revolutionary upsurge in the region, the Cuban people have responded by the millions to Washington’s threats. They have organized and mobilized repeatedly to reaffirm their willingness to help extend the socialist revolution in the region. But imperialism cannot permit the creation of a new workers state in Nicaragua, or anywhere else, without using the various means at its disposal, including direct military intervention, to prevent it.
Given the scope of the revolutionary upsurge in Central America today — the impact of the Nicaraguan revolution not only on El Salvador, but Guatemala and other countries as well — Washington cannot permit the overthrow of the military junta in El Salvador without exhausting its options for preventing it.
When all other means fail, imperialism will not hesitate to escalate their military aggression. That point has now been reached.
The circumstances are reminiscent of other moments in history such as the eve of the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba in April 1961, and the events leading up to the Gulf of Tonkin provocation that preceded the escalation of U.S. aggression in Vietnam in 1964.
That is why the new campaign of lies, slanders, and threats emanating from Washington must be taken with the greatest seriousness. The decision of the Cuban and Nicaraguan governments to go on a full military alert is not crying wolf. The danger is real.
The imperialist warmakers cannot ultimately be stopped until the workers of their own countries succeed in taking power out of their hands. But they can be deterred. That is why a massive response to their threats is important now, before they move.
The workers movement, solidarity organizations, the antimilitarist movement, all have a responsibility to help get out the truth about Washington’s new moves and work to mobilize the broadest possible response.
The time to act is now!