Reagan Digs in Behind Vador

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California protests against US role in El Salvador The brutal face of the Reagan administration's foreign policy has emerged within weeks of taking office.

It has been made plain. that Reagan regards it as a priority to prop up the bloody military dictatorship in El Salvador which is daily murdering workers, peasants and left wing liberation forces.

Declaring that they will take "whatever steps are necessary" to defend this regime against mounting popular iesistance, the US imperialists are now talk-. ing openly of a possible military blockade of Cuba to prevent the flow of arms to the rebels in El Salvador.

Meanwhile the flow of American arms, mercenaries and advisors to the junta has been stepped up by Reagan after the temporary disruption caused by embarrassment at the murder of four American women by projunta rightists.

Military steps

But it is clear that Reagan will be forced to take even more military steps to reinforce the junta if it is to be put in a position to defeat the tenacious struggle by the guerrillas of the FMLN.

Latest Pentagon studies suggest that the El Salvador army's fighting strength of 14,000 is less than half that necessary to defeat the 5,0008,000 guerrillas.

This takes no account of the divisions and ebbing morale of the armed forces themselves, in which defections and mutinies continue.

It means that if a military victory is to be secured, Reagan must find means to reinforce these troops-either through a Vietnam-style direct US military intervention, or through persuading the neighbouring Honduran and Guatemalan dictatorships, together with remnants from Somoza's Nicaraguan National Guard, to form a surrogate fighting force:

At the same time he must cut off the supply of arms to the guerrillas, at present funnelled extensively through the Sandinista regime in Nicaragua.

The scene is set for a series of grotesque military adventures by US imperialism in Central America, while many neighbouring regimes and European governments look on with considerable unease.

They favour a political solution to the conflict, through deals with the capitalist-led Revolutionary • Democratic Front (FDR) which they see as the best means to establish stable capitalist rule:

And they fear that US military intervention-direct or indirect-could spark off a further wave of mass resistance throughout Central and Latin America, jeopardising the position of regimes in the vicinity of El Salvador.

But with Reagan's government intent upon reasserting US military domination within the NATO alliance and on a world scale, such reformist protests are likely to carry little weight. unemployment.

But employers will benefit from generous increases in tax allowances to bring in jobslashing rationalisation and technology.

Meanwhile the Sunday Times this week has helped underline the nature of the regime Reagan is so keen to defend by providing proof of the ghastly army massacre of 300 peasant men, women and children near the Honduran border last May.

Blacking

While American trade unionists must step up the fight that has already begun for blacking of military aid to the junta and an end to AFL-CIO support for the regime, British workers too must fight for practical and political solidarity with the people of El Salvador.

Though the El Salvador Solidarity Campaign offers uncritical support to the capitalist-led FDR, and fails to focus on the need to support the left wing guerrilla forces of the FMLN who are in practice leading the fight against the junta, their booklet El Salvador: The Latin American Vietnam contains much useful information.

It is available (50p plus p&p) from the El Salvador Solidarity Campaign, 29 Islington Park St., London N1. march NOINTERVENTION CENTRAL AMERICA BID country, the seven top leaders of the Francoist security police resigned.

They did not resign in order to retire shamefaced to their country homes.

They resigned as part of an attempt to pull together the forces of the extreme right to prepare to get rid of Spain's "democracy"

The next few hours will tell whether the events today were the result of the plotting of these police chiefs and right wing generals or whether, as on a previous occasion, this is a desperate move by a small group of extreme right wingers within the armed forces which the leading generals will refuse to support-not •because they are opposed to such a coup but because they regard it as a premature move.

Certainly that was their response previously. And the fact that. the attack _on the Cortes was led by the Civil Guard rather thạn taking the form of a coordinated coup throughout Spain suggests that. this might well be their response