Alfredo Cristiani

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Alfredo Cristiani Burkard born on November 22, 1947 in San Salvador in El Salvador, was President of El Salvador between 1 June 1989 and 1 June 1994.

[edit] Career

Born into a wealthy coffee-producing family and educated at Escuela Americana (American School) in San Salvador, and then graduated in Administrative Sciences at the Georgetown University in Washington DC in the United States of America. He returned to El Salvador to work in the family business, which included pharmaceuticals and cotton. He also married Margarita Llach, with whom he has 3 children. He remained outside politics until the beginning of the eighties when the leftist FMLN guerrillas and their campesino followers began squatting on farms. As the civil war became more widespread, he became involved with the rightist ARENA founded by military intelligence officer Roberto D'Aubuisson. In March 1985 D'Aubuisson resigned after the ARENA suffered a defeat in the congressional elections, and Cristiani took over as leader of the party. In the local and congressional elections of March 1988 ARENA won 80% of the local votes and 31 of the 60 seats in the Congress.

[edit] President

In May, ARENA chose him rather than D'Aubuisson to be their presidential candidate and on March 18, 1989 he won the election in the first round, gaining 53.8% of the vote. This result brought with it pessimism about the possibility of concluding the peace negotiations with the FMLN. Yet on September 13, 1989 the government did begin negotiations with the FMLN, that began in Mexico and then moved to Costa Rica. On November 11 these talks received a setback when the FMLN launched an attack on the capital, San Salvador, in which hundreds of people died. The army immediately intensified their war against the guerrillas, and 4 days later 6 Jesuit priests and a cook and her daughter were murdered in the University of Central America (Universidad Centroamericana "José Simeón Cañas"), including Ignacio Martín-Baró, a social psychologist and Vice-Rector of the university, as well as the Rector Ignacio Ellacuría Beascoechea, a prominent Liberation theologian and part of the talks with the FMLN. This crime created an international uproar which Cristiani tried to calm down by promising to bring those responsible to justice. A special commission was set up and in January 1990 4 officers, 3 Non-commissioned officers and 2 soldiers were arrested. It has not been clarified which other members of the military hierarchy were involved in the murders and how much Cristiani himself knew about the plans, something that is quite likely, considering the international consequences of murdering such profiled personalities.

Cristiani and the ARENA Party argued that their intelligence showed Cuban-Soviet assistance to the communist insurgents throughout Central America, and he and his entourage made several trips to other capitols in an attempt the gain assistance for their country. Whilst in London they were féted by the far-right anti-communist group, the Western Goals Institute, who held a major dinner in honour of Cristiani and his cabinet on the 25th September 1989, and arranged meetings with several British M.P.s.

In 1992 the Chapultepec Peace Accords ended the civil war. The end of the bloody conflict was the greatest achievement of the Cristiani administration.