El Salvador

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With only 21,476 square kilometers (8,260 square miles) of territory, El Salvador is Central America's smallest state, but its 6.3 million inhabitants make it the region's most densely populated nation. Traditionally, Salvadorans have professed Roman Catholicism, but evangelical Protestants constitute a growing minority. Indigenous groups gave up their Native American dress and customs following the 1932 peasant uprisings that the government brutally suppressed, but in 2004 more than 90 percent of Salvadorans were considered mestizos (persons of mixed European and Indian heritage). The national literacy rate of 80 percent is relatively high for Central America, although the rate is lower in rural areas.

El Salvador's traditional agro-export economy, which was heavily dependent on coffee, has diversified to the extent that commerce (27.2%), services (18.7%), and manufacturing (17.6%) employed nearly two-thirds of the workforce in the early twenty-first century. The country has positioned itself to be a leader in maquila manufacturing (the assembly of finished goods from parts manufactured elsewhere), and its political leadership has sought strong ties with the United States as well as membership in the Central American Free Trade Agreement. El Salvador was the first Central American country to "dollarize" its economy, introducing the dollar as legal tender on January 1, 2001.

El Salvador is a unitary republic. The president is popularly elected to a five-year term, whereas representatives in the unicameral National Assembly are elected to three-year terms: Sixty-four are elected in multiseat constituencies and twenty by proportional representation. An independent Electoral Commission runs national elections, which, since the signing of the Chapultepec Peace Accords in 1992, have been contested by political parties from across the political spectrum. Since the accords, the government has made sustained efforts to strengthen judicial independence and create a more professional judiciary consistent with republican principles.

For much of its modern history, a landowning oligarchy dominated Salvadoran politics. Because this elite ruling class depended on a system of forced labor to harvest major export commodities such as coffee, the Salvadoran regime came to rely heavily on internal security forces and the armed forces to assure stability. This authoritarian and repressive political system has been described as "reactionary despotism" because of the way it militarized political life and violently resisted social change. From the late 1970s to the early 1990s the country was wracked by a devastating internal war, which killed 75,000 citizens. The crucial turning point toward a more democratic system occurred when the government and the armed opposition,

the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN), signed the 1992 Peace Accords, which called for extensive political reforms and demilitarization. Critical reforms included disbanding the internal security forces, which had committed terrible human-rights abuses during and before the war, purging the military leadership and depoliticizing the army, creating a national human rights ombudsman, and forming a new national civilian police force.

Since 1992 El Salvador has held open elections, but with steadily declining voter participation. Power has been transferred peacefully from one administration to the next. Executive power has resided with the right-wing National Republican Alliance (ARENA) party throughout the period of democratic transition, while seats in the National Assembly have been nearly evenly divided between the left-wing FMLN (now a legal political party) and the right-wing ARENA. For example, the FMLN won a plurality of thirty-one seats in the 2003 elections, whereas ARENA garnered twenty-seven seats. Parties of the center had lost appeal in the early 2000s and held few seats in the assembly; the Christian Democratic Party, for example, won only five seats in 2003. ARENA policy makers have promised to promote free trade and macroeconomic growth, reduce crime, and increase employment. The enormous social and economic losses caused by three major earthquakes in January and February 2001 greatly complicated the government's efforts to fulfill these policy goals. Nevertheless, in the March 2004 elections ARENA captured the presidency for the fourth consecutive time.

Ombudsmen.

Baloyra, Enrique. El Salvador in Transition. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1982.

Byrne, Hugh. El Salvador's Civil War: A Study of Revolution. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 1996.

Danner, Mark. The Massacre at El Mozote. New York: Vantage Books, 1994.

Popkin, Margaret. Peace Without Justice: Obstacles to Building the Rule of Law in El Salvador. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2000.

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