Salvadoran Civil War

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Part of the Cold War

Map of El Salvador

Date	1980–1992
Location	Central and Eastern El Salvador
Result	Chapultepec Peace Accords of 1992; Restructuring of Salvadoran Armed Forces, the National and Treasury Police are dissolved (new civilian-overseen police created); FMLN becomes a political party, its combatants are exonerated

Combatants

Salvadoran Government:

Salvadoran Armed Forces, National Police, Treasury Police, Death Squads

Revolutionary Forces:

FMLN
FDR
ERP

RN
PRTC

Commanders

Roberto D'Aubuisson
Álvaro Magaña
José Guillermo García
José Napoleón Duarte
Alfredo Cristiani

Cayetano Carpio†
Leonel González
Schafik Handal
Joaquin Villalobos
Nidia Díaz

Strength

About 50,000

8,000-10,000

Casualties

~75,000 dead^[1]
18,000 missing

The Salvadoran Civil War was predominantly fought between the government of El Salvador against a coalition of four leftist guerrilla groups and one communist group known as the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN) between 1980 and 1992. The United States supported the right-wing government.^[2] In total the civil war killed 75,000 people, left 8,000 more missing and a million homeless with another million exiled. The war became notorious for government massacres and its Death Squad's killing of civilians, nuns and priests, such as the murder of Archbishop Óscar Romero and for massacres at El Mozote.

1 Prelude
2 1979 coup and growing unrest
3 Escalation
4 United States role
5 References
6 Further reading
7 See also
8 External links

Prelude

The origins of the war lie in the early 1970s. Salvadorean industry and economy was devastated by the Football War with Honduras in 1969. In such an impoverished climate, opposition parties and guerrilla armies formed to challenge the military regime of the time. The government stayed in power throughout the 1970s only through fraudulent elections, leading in 1977 to mass riots and suppression that left 7,000 people dead. In this unstable environment the United States government supported a coup d'état in 1979 that installed another right-wing military junta.

1979 coup and growing unrest

On October 15, 1979, the Revolutionary Government Junta (JRG), a group of military officers and civilian leaders, ousted the right-wing government of the President, General Carlos Humberto Romero (1977–79). The leader of the Christian Democratic Party (PDC), José Napoleón Duarte, joined the junta in March 1980, leading the provisional government until the elections of March 1982. In an effort to project a more moderate image, the JRG initiated a land reform program and nationalized the banks and the marketing of coffee and sugar. PDC leaders including Duarte also pledged to end human rights abuses from the military and affiliated death squads. However, the JRG was torn by internal divisions, institutional pressure from the military, and a continuing insurgency from the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN). The extreme Right viewed moderates in the new government as Marxist sympathizers, and death squads linked to the junta continued to orchestrate a campaign of terror against armed and civilian opponents alike, targeting not only suspected FMLN sympathizers but local PDC leaders as well. One of the most infamous death squad assassinations occurred when the Archbishop of San Salvador, Óscar Romero, was murdered in 1980 after having publicly urged the U.S. government not to provide military support to the Salvadoran government. Romero, the most high-profile critic of the military dictatorship, was shot dead by agents of the government while officiating mass on March 24, and his funeral was the scene of a massacre by government snipers and bombers. Forty-two mourners were killed. Carlos Mauricio, a professor of biology at the University of El Salvador, was also kidnapped by death squads in June of 1983. Post-war investigations found that Major Roberto D'Aubuisson, head of Military Intelligence at the time, had ordered Romero's assassination. Romero's death was a spark for a full scale civil war. The country's opposition united and in October of 1980, five anti-government organizations formed a major military resistance known as the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN), named after national hero Farabundo Martí, executed in 1932 by National Guard.

Escalation

The civil war quickly became very bloody and destructive. Infrastructure collapsed as the FMLN seized portions of the country and launched major unsuccessful offensives in January 1981 and again in April 1982. The FMLN's first major military offensive was launched on January 10 1981. During this offensive, the FMLN established operational control over large sections of the departments of Morazán and Chalatenango, which remained largely under guerrilla control throughout the rest of the civil war. Revolutionaries ranged from children to the elderly, both male and female, and most were trained in FMLN camps in the mountains and jungles of El Salvador to learn military techniques. Government bombing and repression in the countryside killed thousands. Priests and nuns were among those targeted. In 1981 Mexico and France recognised the FMLN and called for settlement. But this appeal did not cause any change in United States policy. Even after the El Mozote massacre that year, president Ronald Reagan continued to certify that the Salvadoran government was making progress in human rights and reducing abuses by the Salvadoran military. This certification was required under the 1974 amendment to the Foreign Assistance Act so that the U.S. Congress would continue funding military aid to El Salvador. The Reagan administration claimed that aid to El Salvador was needed to prevent any additional left-wing influence in Latin America, and to offset the Soviet Union's support of the FMLN. The recent takeover of Nicaragua by the left-wing Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN), appeared to strengthen the United States concerns. During the war several attempts were made at elections, but these were marred by paramilitary violence and/or FMLN boycott. In 1986 the aftermath of a strong earthquake brought three years of relative peace and negotiations. The same year, the Human Rights Commission of El Salvador (CDHES) published a 165-page report on the Mariona men's prison. The report documented the routine use of at least 40 kinds of torture on political prisoners, and that U.S. servicemen often acted as supervisors. On October 26, 1987, Herbert Ernesto Anaya, head of the CDHES, was assassinated ^[3]. Anaya's death triggered demonstrations during four days, during which his corpse was brought before the US embassy and then before the headquarters of the Salvadoran Armed Forces. The National Union of Salvadoran Workers issued a statement according to which "Those who bear sole responsibility for this crime are José Napoleón Duarte [the Salvadoran head of state], the US embassy ... and the high command of the armed forces" ^[3]. On the other hand, the FMLN and the Revolutionary Democratic Front (FDR) also protested against Anaya's assassination by suspending negotiations with the Duarte government on October 29 1987. ^[3]. The same day, Reni Roldán resigned from the Commission of National Reconciliation, stating that "The murder of Anaya, the disappearance of university labour leader Salvador Ubau, and other events do not seem to be isolated incidents. They are all part of an institutionalised pattern of conduct." ^[3] Anaya's assassination also triggered international indignation. The West German government, the West German Social Democratic Party and the French government requested that Duarte clarify "the circumstances of the crime." UN secretary general Javier Perez de Cuellar, Americas Watch, Amnesty International and other human rights groups also protested against this crime ^[3]. A march of "Mothers of Political Prisoners and the Disappeared" on December 21 1987 was disrupted by the police, an event which went unnoticed in the New York Times ^[4]. Despite the controversies regarding repression and brutality from the Salvadoran Armed Forces, the U.S. continued to give aid to El Salvador. However, the country's chaotic situation did not seem to be improving. In November 1989, the FMLN launched a new offensive, capturing parts of San Salvador. In response government forces bombed heavily populated areas of the capital. By 1991, however, a new willingness towards co-operation was emerging. A truce was declared in April and negotiations concluded in January 1992. A new constitution was enacted, the Armed Forces regulated, a civilian police force established. The FMLN became a legal political party. Following the twelve year long civil war an amnesty law was passed in 1993.^[5]

United States role

The role of the U.S. in shoring up the Salvadoran governments before and during the Civil War became tremendously controversial after the rape and murder of four American churchwomen by a National Guard death squad on December 2, 1980. Maura Clarke, Ita Ford, Dorothy Kazel were American nuns, and Jean Donovan was a young laywoman doing a Catholic relief mission to provide food, shelter, transportation, medical care and burial to the poor. At that time, there were officially only 19 American soldiers in El Salvador, sent there in January of 1980 by President Jimmy Carter to train El Salvador's military.^[2] They would be joined in the early days of the Reagan Administration by 26 additional U.S. military, also described officially as trainers. In addition, Salvadoran military were trained by the U.S. at the School of the Americas. However, many investigations, including a report filed by four United States Army Lieutenant-Colonels working at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, put the number of U.S. military personnel in El Salvador at much higher than 55, the maximum allowed by the U.S. Congress. U.S. Congressman George Miller, Democrat of California, wrote in The New York Times that "the [Reagan] Administration has evaded a 55-person cap on military personnel in El Salvador by redefining 'military personnel.' According to the Army analysts' report, the number of American military service people exceeded 150 in 1987."^[6] The U.S. sponsored the Salvadoran government with a US$7 billion ten-year aid package which began in the Carter years and continued through the administrations of Reagan and George H. W. Bush. After the murder of the churchwomen, Carter suspended the program for a time, but funding was soon resumed. Reagan's foreign policy favored the regime even more strongly, and the supply of money, men, and material increased. In a retrospective report entitled El Salvador's Decade of Terror: Human Rights Since the Assassination of Archbishop Romero, Human Rights Watch summarized the administration's behaviour thusly, "During the Reagan years in particular, not only did the United States fail to press for improvements...but in an effort to maintain backing for U.S. policy, it misrepresented the record of the Salvadoran government and smeared critics who challenged that record. In so doing, the administration needlessly polarized the debate in the United States and did a grave injustice to the thousands of civilian victims of government terror in El Salvador." ^[7] The slaughter of the four women, all American citizens, brought U.S. aid to the Salvadoran government into the public eye, and much controversy ensued. A second mass murder of clergy on November 16, 1989, nine years after the assassination of Bishop Oscar Romero and the four American churchwomen, re-ignited the controversy in the U.S. over the American women's deaths and fueled public demands regarding U.S. support of the Salvadoran regime. The 1989 victims were six Jesuit priests — Ignacio Ellacuria, Segundo Montes, Ignacio Martin-Baro, Joaquin Lopez y Lopez, Juan Ramon Moreno, and Amado Lopez — their housekeeper, Elba Ramos, and her daughter, Celia Marisela Ramos. Long after the war, the families of the four churchwomen brought civil suit against two Salvadoran generals who had moved to Miami, Florida in the United States federal court there. The case was styled Ford v. Garcia. The jury did not find the generals, Carlos Eugenio Vides Casanova, former head of the National Guard and later Minister of Defense in the Duarte cabinet, and José Guillermo Garcia, responsible. The families lost again at the appellate level, and in 2003, the United States Supreme Court refused to take their final appeal. A second case against the same two men in the same court was successful. The three plaintiffs in Ramagozo v. Garcia won a judgment over US$54 million for the torture inflicted on them by the Salvadoran military during the civil war, but that verdict was later reversed.^[8]