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ON EL SALVADOR WHILE Lech Walesa has been granted his job back at the Lenin Shipyard in Gdansk, the Polish socialist militant Edmund Baluka (above) has been put on trial by the military regime.

And underground Solidarnosc, leader Josef Pinior has been arrested. Solidarnose has called for protests on May Day button-holing, arm-twisting and confidence trickery in order to pressurise Congress into agreeing to Reagan's demands.

Reagan argues that El Salvador is the 'front line' against communist expansion, and that it is the 'moral duty' of the American war machine to stop the emergence of a 'second Cuba' -whatever the cost in lives and human misery.

He claims that modern Soviet fighter planes and even Cuban combat troops may be stationed in Nicaragua. And, so the Reagan story goes, if the bloody regime in El Salvador should fall to the FMLN guerillas, the rot could spread north to Mexico and south to Panama.

Reagan's recipe to deal with this is a further increase in military aid to El Salvador and still more cash and arms for the CIAsponsored counter-revolutionary gunmen currently fighting the Sandinista government in Nicaragua. THE APRIL 7 edition of 'New Scientist' reports that proposals for a road-building scheme in Honduras with sinister implications for anti-imperialists and conservationists alike have been shelved temporarily as a result of forceful protests by environmentalists.

The United States government wished to put $7.5 million into a construction project which would simultaneously cause irreparable environmental damage and greatly strengthen Reagan's plans against the liberation struggle.

The plan envisages a road to be built through a large area of unspoiled natural rain forest near the Nicaraguan-Honduran border.

The 'La Mosquita' rain forest is the ancestral homeland of the Moskito Indians. Highly inaccessible, it is a refuge for ible, it is a refuge for many rare plant and animal species.

As the forest is situated in the key border area, it could become a vital base for the CIA-coordinated raids into the norther provinces of Nicaragua by the counterrevolutionary supporters of the former dictator SomozaThe improved transport links provided by pushing a road through the La Mosquita could enormously enhance the operational ability of the counter-revolutionaries to carry out raids as part of the brutal US strategy of destabilising the Sandinista regime in Nicaragua.

Protests have so far blocked Us funds for the project. If pressure is maintained, then Reagan's schemes to devastate the environment and halt the liberation struggle in Central America can be thwarted. through the fight to a rapid and for nine months. successful conclusion.

Despite ringing phrases from Havana on May Day and other ceremonial occasions, the fight for real political and material solidarity with the struggles of the oppressed in Central America must be waged by the international workers' movement.

In Britain a step can be taken towards this by the national labour movement conference on El Salvador on May 14. Readers are urged to attend.

A Dutch lawyer who › observed part of the Fatsa trial re ports that all the prisoners said they had been tortured during the 2½ years they had been jail led before trial, and that they were in obvious fear of further : violence from military guards.

The delegation is be sing coordinated by the Europe ean Committee for the Defence of RefuMissionstrasse 35, Pos (CEDRI), Posti fach, CH4002 Basel, Switzerland.

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Socialist Organiser no.129 April Page