History of El Salvador

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Before the Spanish conquest, the area that now is El Salvador was composed of three great indigenous states and several principalities. The indigenous inhabitants were the Pipils, a tribe of the nomadic people of Nahua settled down for a long time in central Mexico. The region of the east was populated and governed by the Lencas. The North zone of the Lempa river was populated and governed by Mayan the Chortis.

Early in their history, the Pipil, became one of the few Mesoamerican indigenous groups to abolish human sacrifice. Otherwise, their culture was similar to that of their Aztec and Maya neighbours. Remains of Nahua culture are still found at ruins such as Tazumal (near Chalchuapa), San Andrés (northeast of Armenia), and Joya de Cerén (north of Colón).

The first Spanish attempt to subjugate this area failed in 1524, when Pedro de Alvarado was forced to retreat by Pipil warriors. In 1525, he returned and succeeded in bringing the district under control of the Captaincy General of Guatemala, which retained its authority until 1821, despite an abortive revolution in 1811. It was Alvarado who named the district for El Salvador ("The Savior.")

Eruption of Ilopango volcano, 1891

1 Independence
2 From Military to Civilian Rule
3 Ending the Civil War
4 El Salvador Since 1992
5 Human Rights and Post-War Reforms
6 National Civilian Police
7 Judiciary
8 See also

[edit] Independence

The first "shout of independence" in El Salvador came in 1811, at the hands of criollo elite. Many intellectuals and merchants had grown tired of the overpowering control that Spain still had in the American colonies, and were interested in expanding their export markets to Britain and the United States. The Indigenous uprisings aimed at Spanish subjugation plagued the territory at this time, and they were re-interpreted by the Republicans to serve their purpose and show popular support for independence. Thus a movement grew amongst the middle class criollo and mestizo classes. Ultimately, the 1811 declaration of independence failed when the viceroyalty of Guatemala sent troops to San Salvador in order to crush the movement. The momentum was not lost however, and many of the people involved in the 1811 movement became involved in the 1821 movement.

In 1821, El Salvador and the other Central American provinces declared their independence from Spain. When these provinces were joined with Mexico in early 1822, El Salvador resisted, insisting on autonomy for the Central American countries. Guatemalan troops sent to enforce the union were driven out of El Salvador in June 1822. El Salvador, fearing incorporation into Mexico, petitioned the United States Government for statehood. But in 1823, a revolution in Mexico ousted Emperor Agustín de Iturbide, and a new Mexican congress voted to allow the Central American provinces to decide their own fate. That year, the United Provinces of Central America was formed of the five Central American states under Gen. Manuel José Arce.

In 1832 Anastasio Aquino led an indigenous revolt against creoles and mestizos in Santiago Nonualco, a small town in the province of San Vicente. The source of the discontent of the indigenous people was lack of land to cultivate. The problem of land distribution has been the source of many political conflicts in Salvadoran history.

The Central American federation was dissolved in 1838 and El Salvador became an independent republic.

El Salvador in its early history was impenetrably localized, aided by its geography, its unbridged rivers that could only be crossed at fords and its lack of any linking highway that could take wheeled vehicles. The first highway for wheeled traffic was begun in 1855. Thus the "Fourteen Families" (actually many dozens of families) that have controlled El Salvador's history were all but independent territorial magnates. Through the nineteenth century, the much-amended (1859, 1864, 1871, 1872, 1880, 1883, 1886) constitution of 1824 provided for a unicameral legislature of 70 deputies, in which 42 seats (a majority) was set aside for the landowners (3 representing each of the 14 departments), technically chosen by the popular vote. Each departmental governor however, was appointed by the president. The system was easily manipulated. During the later nineteenth century smaller landholding, and traditional communal holdings that predated written deeds, were absorbed into the coffee plantations (fincas). The great majority of Salvadoreans were landless.

El Salvador's early history as an independent state—as with others in Central America—was marked by frequent revolutions; not until the period 1900-30 was relative stability achieved. The economic elite, based on agriculture and some mining, ruled the country in conjunction with the military, and the power structure remained in the control of the "Fourteen Families" of wealthy landowners. The economy, based on coffee-growing after the mid-19th century, as the world market for indigo withered away, prospered or suffered as the world coffee price fluctuated. From 1931—the year of the coup in which Gen. Maximiliano Hernández Martínez came to power until he was deposed in 1944 there was brutal suppression of rural resistance. The most notable event was the 1932 Salvadoran peasant uprising, commonly referred to as La Matanza (the massacre), headed by Farabundo Martí and the retaliation led by Martinez's government, in which approximately 30,000 indigenous people and political opponents were murdered, imprisoned or exiled. Until 1980, all but one Salvadoran temporary president was an army officer. Periodic presidential elections were seldom free or fair.

[edit] From Military to Civilian Rule

From the 1930s to the 1970s, authoritarian governments employed political repression and limited reform to maintain power, despite the trappings of democracy. The National Conciliation Party was in power from the early 1960s until 1979. Fidel Sánchez Hernández was president from 1967 to 1972. In July 1969 El Salvador invaded Honduras in the short Football War. During the 1970s, the political situation began to unravel. In the 1972 presidential election, the opponents of military rule united under José Napoleón Duarte, leader of the Christian Democratic Party (PDC). Amid widespread fraud, Duarte's broad-based reform movement was defeated. Subsequent protests and an attempted coup were crushed and Duarte exiled. These events eroded hope of reform through democratic means and persuaded those opposed to the government that armed insurrection was the only way to achieve change. As a consequence, leftist groups capitalizing upon social discontent gained strength. By 1979, leftist guerrilla warfare had broken out in the cities and the countryside, launching what became a 12-year civil war. A cycle of violence took hold as rightist vigilante death squads in turn killed thousands. The poorly trained Salvadoran Armed Forces (ESAF) also engaged in repression and indiscriminate killings, the most notorious of which was the El Mozote massacre in December 1981 in which some 900 civilians were slaughtered.

On October 15, 1979, the Revolutionary Government Junta, a group of military officers and civilian leaders ousted the right-wing government of the President, General Carlos Humberto Romero (1977-79). PDC leader 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 junta 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 Junta was torn by internal divisions, institutional pressure from the military, and a continuing insurgency from the 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 El Salvadoran government. Future investigations found that Major Roberto D'Aubuisson, head of Military Intelligence at the time, had ordered the assassination.

During this period, political parties were allowed to function again, and on March 28, 1982, Salvadoreans elected a new constituent assembly. Following that election, authority was transferred to Álvaro Alfredo Magaña Borja, the provisional president selected by the assembly. The 1983 constitution, drafted by the assembly, ostensibly strengthened individual rights, established safeguards against excessive provisional detention and unreasonable searches, established a republican, pluralistic form of government, strengthened the legislative branch, and enhanced judicial independence. It also codified labor rights, particularly for agricultural workers. However, despite these nominal reforms, in practice the human rights record in El Salvador continued to be plagued by a terror campaign instituted by the death squads, though, and thus these changes did not satisfy the guerrilla movements, which had unified as the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN). Duarte won the 1984 presidential election against rightist Roberto D'Aubuisson of the Nationalist Republican Alliance (ARENA) with 54% of the vote and became the first freely elected president of El Salvador in more than 50 years. Fearful of a D'Aubuisson victory, the CIA had used approximately $2 million to support Duarte's candidacy. D'Aubuisson and his ARENA party had close ties to the death squads, and was described as a "pathological killer" by former U.S. Ambassador Robert White. In 1989, ARENA's Alfredo Cristiani won the presidential election with 54% of the vote. His inauguration on June 1, 1989, marked the first time that power had passed peacefully from one freely elected civilian leader to another.

In 1986, the Human Rights Commission of El Salvador 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 Salvadoran Human Rights Commission was assassinated. Carlos Mauricio, a professor of biology at the University of El Savador, was kidnapped by death squads in June of 1983.

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.

[edit] Ending the Civil War

Cristiani attempted to begin negotiating an end to the war through direct talks with the FMLN, which began in Mexico City on September 13, 1989. However, a peace agreement proved elusive.The armed forces stepped up their counterinsurgency war; four days later, six Jesuit priests (among them the scholars Ignacio Ellacuria, Ignacio Martín-Baró and Segundo Montes) and their two servants were shot and killed by the special military force called "Atlacatl Battalion". This event provoked international outrage, and led to a cutoff in military aid from the U.S. Cristiani attempted to calm people down by seeking to bring those responsible for the crime to justice. Four officers, three non-commissioned officers, and two soldiers were found guilty and imprisoned by a special committee set up in January 1990.

In early 1990, following a request from the Central American presidents, the United Nations became involved in an effort to mediate direct talks between the two sides. After a year of little progress, the government and the FMLN accepted an invitation from the UN Secretary General to meet in New York City. On September 25, 1991, the two sides signed the New York City Accord. It concentrated the negotiating process into one phase and created the Committee for the Consolidation of the Peace (COPAZ), made up of representatives of the government, FMLN, and political parties, with Catholic Church and UN observers. On December 31, 1991, the government and the FMLN initialed a peace agreement under the auspices of then UN Secretary General Javier Pérez de Cuéllar. The final agreement, called the Chapultepec Peace Accords, was signed in Mexico City on January 16, 1992. A nine-month cease-fire took effect February 1, 1992, and was never broken. A ceremony held on December 15, 1992, marked the official end of the conflict, concurrent with the demobilization of the last elements of the FMLN military structure and the FMLN's inception as a political party.

In July 2002, a Miami, Florida, jury determined that two former Salvadoran defense ministers, José Guillermo García and Carlos Eugenio Vides Casanova, were responsible for the torture by Salvadoran death squads during the 1980s of three men. The victims sued the former commanders under a U.S. law that permits such lawsuits. The former commanders were ordered by the jury to pay $54.6 million to the victims.

[edit] El Salvador Since 1992

El Salvador is struggling to cope with growing gang violence, perpetrated by groups such as Mara Salvatrucha and the 18th Street Gang. The violence is exacerbated by ongoing social unrest, economic devastation from the civil war, the breakdown of families and social structures, and the presence of refugees turned gang members from the United States who came home or were deported to El Salvador after 1996.

Agriculture was one of the sectors of the economy that was most affected by the civil war. Therefore, one of the biggest social problems in post-war El Salvador has been rural unemployment. This has been the explanation for increased migration to the cities and to other countries, especially the United States. Unofficial estimates say that the United States is the home of around 2 million Salvadorans.

The ARENA governments that have been in presidency since 1989 have implemented a program of policies of liberalization of the labor, goods and financial markets. In a context of unprotected markets, El Salvador's economic development has therefore relied on the income provided by exports. Since the international coffee prices fluctuate too much, ARENA governments have regarded them unreliable. Because of this they have tried to implement economic policies that stimulate the growth of non-traditional exports. The most important of these policies are measures that favor foreign investment in "maquilas", which are tax-free industrial complexes for companies from abroad that outsource their production activities, in order to take advantage of cheap labor force. However, the foreign currency coming into the Salvadoran economy has not been able to keep up with the value of the goods imported by Salvadorans, which has implied a growing deficit in the trade balance. The only thing that has kept the Salvadoran economy in balance is the growing transfers received by Salvadorans from their family members living abroad, especially in the United States. American dollars became legal tender in El Salvador and the accounting unit of the financial sector in January 2001.

[edit] Human Rights and Post-War Reforms

During the 12-year civil war, human rights violations by both the government security forces and left-wing guerrillas were rampant. The accords established a Truth Commission under UN auspices to investigate the most serious cases. The commission reported its findings in 1993. It recommended that those identified as human rights violators be removed from all government and military posts, as well as recommending judicial reforms. Thereafter, the Legislative Assembly granted amnesty for political crimes committed during the war. Among those freed as a result were the El Salvador Armed Forces (ESAF) officers convicted in the November 1989 Jesuit murders and the FMLN ex-combatants held for the 1991 murders of two U.S. servicemen. The peace accords also established the Ad Hoc Commission to evaluate the human rights record of the ESAF officer corps.

In accordance with the peace agreements, the constitution was amended to prohibit the military from playing an internal security role except under extraordinary circumstances. Demobilization of Salvadoran military forces generally proceeded on schedule throughout the process. The Treasury Police, National Guard, and National Police were abolished, and military intelligence functions were transferred to civilian control. By 1993—9 months ahead of schedule—the military had cut personnel from a war-time high of 63,000 to the level of 32,000 required by the peace accords. By 1999, ESAF strength stood at less than 15,000, including uniformed and nonuniformed personnel, consisting of personnel in the army, navy, and air force. A purge of military officers accused of human rights abuses and corruption was completed in 1993 in compliance with the Ad Hoc Commission's recommendations. The military's new doctrine, professionalism, and complete withdrawal from political and economic affairs leave it the most respected institution in El Salvador.

More than 35,000 eligible beneficiaries from among the former guerrillas and soldiers who fought the war received land under the peace accord-mandated land transfer program, which ended in January 1997. The majority of them also have received agricultural credits. The international community, the Salvadoran Government, the former rebels, and the various financial institutions involved in the process continue to work closely together to deal with follow-on issues resulting from the program.

Despite the official abolition of the National Guard and overall reduction in the Salvadoran military after the 1992 Peace Accords, human rights abuses associated with the Guard and the military during the 1980s have continued. Union activists have been targeted with harassment, violence and imprisonment. Some, such as Gilberto Soto, the former leader of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, have been murdered. Others have been disappeared. Salvadoran activists working against CAFTA, the abuse of prisoners, the privatization of water, and environmental destruction have all encountered various forms of repression.

[edit] National Civilian Police

The civilian police force, created to replace the discredited public security forces, deployed its first officers in March 1993, and was present throughout the country by the end of 1994. The National Civilian Police (PNC) has about 16,500 officers. The United States, through the International Criminal Investigative Training Assistance Program (ICITAP), led international support for the PNC and the National Public Security Academy (ANSP), providing about $32 million in non-lethal equipment and training since 1992.

[edit] Judiciary

Both the Truth Commission and the Joint Group identified weaknesses in the judiciary and recommended solutions, the most dramatic being the replacement of all the magistrates on the Supreme Court. This recommendation was fulfilled in 1994 when an entirely new court was elected, but weaknesses remain. The process of replacing incompetent judges in the lower courts, and of strengthening the attorney generals' and public defender's offices, has moved more slowly. The government continues to work in all of these areas with the help of international donors, including the United States. Action on peace accord-driven constitutional reforms designed to improve the administration of justice was largely completed in 1996 with legislative approval of several amendments and the revision of the Criminal Procedure Code—with broad political consensus.