This dyad belongs to the conflict El Salvador: Government
Summary of conflict El Salvador: Government
The conflict in El Salvador broke out in 1979 when guerrillas, critical to the rightist government, took arms. In 1980 most of the opposition groups united and formed FMLN. During the 1980s the level of violence was at the level of war, but following the election of a legislative in 1982 and a president in 1984 minor attempts towards negotiations were taken. UN-mediated negotiations did not start until 1989, however, but these resulted in a series of agreements, finally ending the conflict in 1992.
Background to the conflict
El Salvador gained independence in 1856 after having been a Spanish colony and a member of the United Provinces of Central America. After independence, the country was controlled to a high degree by a coffee oligarchy which has been known as ‘los catorce’ (the fourteen), which was originally made up by the fourteen richest families in the country but later expanded. In the post-Second World War period El Salvadoran politics was dominated by conservative politicians, to a high degree made up by members of ‘los catorce’, and military leaders. This composition was altered in the late 1970s following a decade of growing opposition groups finally resulting in the outbreak of intrastate conflict.
The conflict that broke out in 1979 was predominantly between the government and two rebel groups known as ERP (Ejército revolucionario del pueblo/People’s Revolutionary Army) and FPL (Fuerzas populares de liberación farabundo Marti/Farabundo Marti Popular Liberation Forces). In the 1980s it escalated when a number of guerrilla groups, including the two mentioned above, united into the FMLN (Frente farabundo Marti para la liberación nacional/Farabundo Marti Front for National Liberation), named after the revolutionary leader of the 1930s.
There were eruptions of violence in El Salvador as early as the 1930s. The oligarchs, ‘los catorce’, owned approximately 90 percent of the land in the country and used it for coffee cultivation. Some of the plantation workers were not content with their situation and under the leadership of Augustin Farabundo Martí they revolted in 1932. The military was brought in and responded to the revolt with has been called ‘la mataza’, or “the massacre”. In the massacre 30 000 people were killed, Farabundo Martí was captured and executed. The relationship between the oligarchs and the military was congealed preventing any attempt to rid either group of their position of power for the coming four decades.
Though El Salvador experienced a short-lived interstate conflict in 1969 with neighboring Honduras it is the intrastate conflict that has marked the country’s recent history. The resistance against the rightist and military based rule of the country started to grow more seriously in the early 1970s. Following electoral fraud in 1972 some groups took to arms. One of these was a group of young officers led by Col. Benjamin Mejia. The group launched a coup against the government to place the candidate reported to lose the elections, Duarte, as president. The coup failed and is reported to have caused as many as 200 casualties. In the aftermath the right and military leadership prevailed and held on to the power until the late 1979 when things started to stir in El Salvador.
The leftist resistance had started to grow during the 1970s. FPL was formed in 1970, while ERP was formed by a group of students following the turbulence in 1972. FPL had broken out of the communist party as a reaction to discontent with the turn the organization was taking. Instead they, the FPL, intended to gain power through violent struggle. The ERP were also coming from a communist background but broke away from the party in 1975. Other groups, like the FARN (Fuerzas armadas de resistencia nacional/Armed Forces of the National Resistance), were also formed in the 1970s but did not reach high levels of action before joining into the FMLN.
The year 1979 played a distinctive role in the Salvadoran history. Not only was it the first year that the violence reached levels of conflict but altering events occurred on many different levels that influenced the situation in the country. In March there were massive strikes and BPR (Bloque popular revolucionario/Popular Revolutionary Bloc), a labor organization closely associated with the ERP, organized demonstrations in support of the strikes. The events led to retaliations by the army in April, killing peasants in rural areas, which BPR responded to by seizing control of a number of embassies in San Salvador.
The occupiers were not able to hold out for long and once they withdrew, the police was there to capture their leader, Facundo Guardado. In response to the arrest BPR supporters occupied the cathedral in the capital. The Defense Minister, Gen. Frederico Castillo, claimed at that point that they had found evidence that BPR were planning to take power through armed struggle. When, on 8 May, the BPR supporters were abandoning their occupied cathedral the police opened fire on the group killing 24 in a massacre that was recorded by TV teams and spread around the world. The massacre was then followed by a series of new embassy occupations and related shootings of BPR supporters.
The increased instability sent the message to the country and the world that the president Carlos Humberto Romero (1977-79) was losing his grip over El Salvador’s future. In the shadow of the Sandinista victory in Nicaragua there was fear of a spread of leftist power takeovers in the region. After receiving the encouragement from the US embassy, intellectuals at the Catholic University and parts of the Jesuit leadership, a group of army officers launched a coup on 15 October 1979. Intended to save the country from an approaching civil war the coup failed in this regard. As the 1980s showed, three more coups were going to take place before the end of March 1982, with following junta rule.
The years to come were also to see increased levels of violence, reaching levels of war throughout most of the 1980s. In 1991, negotiated agreements between the parties were brokered by the UN representative Alvaro de Soto, but the conflict had only begun, as Romero was replaced by the first of many ensuing juntas.
The Violent 1980s
Following the increased instability and violence in El Salvador in 1979, the 15 October coup intended to bring stability and prevent an otherwise seemingly pending intrastate conflict. However, the new junta was not able to deliver what they had hoped and only two weeks after the coup several people, protesting the new regime, were killed. The Communist Party had at its congress in May 1979 proclaimed that armed revolt was necessary if a change was to come. Groups affiliated, or previously affiliated, to the communist party had increased their actions against the previous government of Carlos Humberto Romero (1977-79) and were hesitant to the junta that replaced him. The violence thus continued and it became fairly obvious that the left wing was not going to support the new junta. Leftists were not only attacking the government but also performed attacks against those who protested against the disorder and thus, indirectly, against the guerrillas.
Turning to the new decade of the 1980s, the situation in El Salvador seemed to be deteriorating rather quickly. As a response to the leftist Sandinista victory in Nicaragua, the US government increased the security support to prevent a similar thing to happen in El Salvador. This was, not least, demonstrated in the delivery of security aid to El Salvador. While nothing of the aid delivered from the US in 1979 was earmarked for security purposes, the 1980 aid for security summed US$6,2 million, close to two-thirds of the total aid in 1979. But the reason for the increase is not only the turn of government in Nicaragua; the El Salvadoran army was already suffering from the increased guerrilla activities. Adding to the situation the political leftist movements united in January 1980 forming CRM (Coordniadora revolucionaria de las masas/Coordinated Revolutionaries of the Masses). Only a few months later the armed left followed the example and formed a Unified Revolutionary Directorate (DRU, Dirección Revolucionaria Unificada). The DRU was made up by some of the most well known groups of the late 1970s; FPL (Fuerzas populares de liberación farabundo Marti/Farabundo Marti Popular Liberation Forces), ERP (Ejército revolucionario del pueblo/People’s Revolutionary Army) and FARN (Fuerzas armadas de resistencia nacional/Armed Forces of the National Resistance).
After the creation of DRU the former separate guerrilla groups had some difficulties finding common ground. At times members became so upset with the process that they left the group temporarily but in October 1980 the PCS (Partido comunista salvadoreño/Salvadoran Communist Party), which had previously been trying to change the path of Salvadoran politics the legal way, joined the guerrilla struggle. With PCS joining the group of united guerrillas it was renamed FMLN, (Frente farabundo Marti para la liberación nacional/Farabundo Marti Front for National Liberation) after the leader of the 1930s revolt of the coffee plantation workers.
The strength of the united guerrillas and the armed forces made 1980 extremely violent. It has been argued that as many as 15 000 people were killed as a result of the violence, directly or indirectly related to the conflict. The early years of the 1980s saw high levels of violence where both parties believed they were going to end up victorious in the end. For the government side however the early 1980s was turbulent also internally. Including the October 1975 coup there were four coups before the elections of 28 March 1982 which placed a provisional president in power before regular elections, scheduled for 1984.
The US had been somewhat cautious when it came to supporting the Salvadoran government in the early 1980s. By 1983 it seemed that the government’s troops were at a low point and that it was possible that FMLN would be able to become victorious. In 1984 however, with the election to the presidency of José Napoleón Duarte, the US and El Salvador worked out a political military plan for how to defeat the FMLN. The rest of the decade continued to see high levels of violence and even though there were talks about negotiations there was little to show for progress towards a political solution to the conflict.
By the end of the 1980s a new growing power on the political arena in El Salvador had emerged, ARENA (Allianza republicana nacionalista/National Republican Alliance). The party had its allegiances to the right and was able to mobilize support from the business community which had felt hostility against Duarte’s economic policies. ARENA won a the majority of seats in the mayoral elections in 1988 and the presidential elections in 1989 when the party leader Cristiani defeated previous president Duarte’s son (the previous president was terminally ill with cancer). Though some had feared that Cristiani would bring a reign of even higher levels of violence, negotiations, mediated by the UN, started as early as 1990. These negotiations were to lead to the final agreement to end the El Salvadoran conflict.
Negotiating a settlement to the conflict
The FMLN (Frente farabundo Marti para la liberación nacional/Farabundo Marti Front for National Liberation) was created when the major rebel groups of the late 1970s and the PCS (Partido comunista salvadoreño/Salvadoran Communist Party) united in October 1980. Following the unification, the level of violence between the guerrillas and the government forces had increased and was constantly high throughout the decade. In the twelve-month period following mid-1982 it has been estimated that close to 3000 soldiers were killed, on the government side only. By the turn of the decade the presidency, which had been occupied for most of the decade by the Christian democrats’ José Napoleón Duarte, was turned over to the right wing party ARENA’s (Allianza republicana nacionalista/National Republican Alliance) leader Alfredo Cristiani. Duarte, and others, feared that with the right wing in power the level of violence would increase even further but already in his inaugural speech in 1989 Cristiani made conciliatory references and opened up for negotiations in order to settle the decade long civil war.
In the fall of 1989 there was an official invitation to begin negotiations and a number of meetings between the government and FMLN were held. However, little progress was made that year, and in November a large military offensive was started by the Salvadoran military. By and large the offensive was a failure for the government and Cristiani saw both his presidential house and private house in San Salvador occupied by FMLN. The failed military offensive did not damage the president’s position but rather strengthened his position among some of the hard-liners who had previously been doubtful about Cristiani.
In January 1990 contacts were made with the UN regarding the possibility of unbiased mediation to get the negotiation process back on track. The adviser to the UN Secretary General, Álvaro de Soto, who had already been in contact with the FMLN, was one of many who were being considered for the position. In the rest of the year much of the process was focused on finding an agenda for negotiations and target dates for issues to be settled by. Somewhat unorthodox, Cristiani left much of the proposal for the agenda up to the FMLN, arguing that it was up to them to file their complaints against the government and for the government to respond to these. Likewise he refused to negotiate in person, arguing that he had been elected president – not negotiator. This rendered some complaints and worries as the parties continued to meet with de Soto in order to find a path towards a negotiated solution. That the non-presence of de Soto provoked the FMLN became apparent when it was time to discuss the Geneva accords, stipulating the agenda for the talks. de Soto sent a delegation consisting of one minister and three ambassadors accredited to Europe to a meeting where both de Soto and UN Secretary General Pérez de Cuéllar were to be present. FMLN took the low key representatives from the government as an insult but responded by sending its highest officials. The outcome was to become much more than the mere protocol meeting that FMLN assumed it would be going in.
The signing of the Geneva Accords was the start of a process that was finally to conclude the FMLN insurrection in El Salvador. It set out the format and pace of the peace process and a ceasefire was to start as soon as some issues that FMLN had brought up would be attended to. However, the final agreement was not to be signed until almost two years later, in January 1992. One of the tough issues to settle was the role and strength of the army after an agreement. As the time started to close up on elections, and thus the campaigning season, there was a growing concern from de Soto’s side that continued negotiations might have to be postponed until after elections. The process continued, however, and pressure was getting stronger from the outside on all parties, including the mediator, to find an agreement. Progress came in the final month of 1990 when the political parties in El Salvador signed their unified support for a negotiated settlement on paper.
In 1991 legislative elections were coming up in El Salvador and just before the elections FMLN signaled to its constituents not to boycott the election which was a major step for the previously anti-democratic organization. In April, after the elections, the Assembly started to pass reforms to the constitution of El Salvador which signaled that there was major legislative support for the peace process. The hopes that an agreement was to be reached before the retirement of UNSG de Cuéllar on 31 December 1991 decreased when the meeting in New York in September only partially settled the issues. In a final attempt to meet the perceived deadline the parties met again in late December in New York. With less than an hour left of de Cuéllar’s tenure, the parties agreed on issues to concentrate on in the coming nine months in order to meet an agreement. The final peace treaty was signed at Chapultepec Castle in Mexico City in mid-January and on the last day of January the leaders of the armed forces and FMLN ordered their soldiers to stand down.
