Background[edit]
El Salvador is the smallest country in Central America after Belize. As in many nations of Latin America, the history of El Salvador has been characterized by marked socioeconomic inequality.[5] In the late 19th century, coffee became a major cash crop for El Salvador, bringing in approximately 95% of the country's income. However, this income was restricted to only 2% of the population, sharply dividing the people between a small powerful elite and an impoverished majority.[27]Socioeconomic tension grew through the 1920s, and were compounded by a drop in coffee prices following the stock-market crash of 1929.[28][29] In 1932 the Central American Socialist Party was formed and led an uprising of peasants and indigenous people against the government. The government brutally suppressed it in what became known as the 1932 Salvadoran peasant massacre or simply "La Matanza" (the Massacre), with the military murdering between 10,000 and 40,000 Indians. Farabundo Martí, the leader of the uprising, was eventually arrested and put to death, and the military subsequently took power over the country.[30] "La Matanza" also served to reinforce feelings of strong distrust and animosity among the populace towards the government, the military and the landed elite.
On July 14, 1969, an armed conflict erupted between El Salvador and Honduras over immigration disputes caused by Honduran land reform laws. The conflict (known as the Football War) lasted only four days, but had major long-term effects for Salvadoran society. Trade was disrupted between El Salvador and Honduras, causing tremendous economic damage to both nations. An estimated 300,000 Salvadorans were displaced due to battle, many of whom were exiled from Honduras; in many cases, the Salvadoran government could not meet their needs. The Football War also strengthened the power of the military in El Salvador, leading to heightened corruption. In the years following the war, the government increased military spending and expanded purchases of weaponry from sources such as Israel, Brazil, West Germany, and the United States in an attempt to modernize the Salvadoran army.[31]
The 1973 oil crisis had led to rising food prices and decreased agricultural output. This worsened the existent socioeconomic inequality in the country, leading to increased unrest. In response, President Arturo Armando Molina enacted a series of land reform measures, calling for large landholdings to be redistributed among the peasant population. The reforms failed, thanks to opposition from the landed elite, reinforcing the widespread discontent with the government.[32]
On 20 February 1977, General Carlos Humberto Romero, representing the National Conciliation Party (PCN), defeated the National Opposing Union in elections marred by blatant fraud and voter intimidation by government-sponsored paramilitary forces such as the feared ORDEN, who intimidated voters with machetes.[33] The period between the election and the formal inauguration of President Romero on 1 July 1977 was characterized by massive protests from the popular movement, which were met by state repression. On 28 February 1977, a crowd of political demonstrators gathered in downtown San Salvador to protest the electoral fraud. Security forces arrived on the scene and opened fire, resulting in a massacre as they indiscriminately killed demonstrators and bystanders alike. Estimates of the number of civilians killed range between 200[34] and 1,500.[35] President Molina blamed the protests on "foreign Communists," and immediately exiled a number of top UNO party members from the country.[36]
Repression continued after the inauguration of President Romero, with his new government declaring a state-of-siege and suspending civil liberties. In the country side, the agrarian elite organized and funded paramilitary death squads, such as the infamous Regalado's Armed Forces (FAR) led by Hector Regalado. While the death squads were initially autonomous from the Salvadoran military and composed of civilians (the FAR for example had developed out of a Boy Scout troop), they were soon taken over by El Salvador's military intelligence service - ANSESAL, led by Major Roberto D'Aubuisson - and became a crucial part of the state's repressive apparatus, murdering thousands of union leaders, activists, students and teachers suspected of sympathizing with the left.[37] The Socorro Jurídico Cristiano (Christian Legal Assistance, a legal aid office within the Archbishop's office and El Salvador's leading human rights group at the time) documented the killings of 687 civilians by government forces in 1978. In 1979, the number of documented killings increased to 1,796.[38] The repression prompted many in the Catholic Church to denounce the government; The government responded by repressing the clergy.[39]
Coup d'état, repression and insurrection: 1979-1981[edit]
With tensions mounting and the country on the verge of an insurrection, the civil-military Revolutionary Government Junta (JRG) deposed President General Carlos Humberto Romero in a coup on October 15, 1979. The United States viewed the coup as a fortuitous event, given the recent overthrow of the Somoza regime in Nicaragua, and embraced the junta with large offers of military and economic aid, including a six-man Mobile Training Team (MTT) in November 1979 and $5.7 million in military aid for FY 1980, in order to prevent at all costs "another Nicaragua."[40][41]
Under pressure from the military, all three civilian members of the junta resigned on January 3, 1980, along with 10 of the 11 cabinet ministers. On January 22, 1980, the Salvadoran National Guard attacked a massive peaceful demonstration, killing up to 50 people and wounding hundreds more.[42] On February 6, US ambassador Frank Devine informed the State Department that the extreme right was arming itself and preparing for a confrontation in which it clearly expected to ally itself with the military.[43][44]
Wishing to project a populist image, the JRG enacted a land reform program, which restricted landholdings to a hundred-hectare maximum, nationalised the banking, coffee, and sugar industries, scheduled elections for February 1982, and disbanded the paramilitary private death squad ORDEN on November 6, 1979.[42]
However, the land reform program was met with hostility from El Salvador's military and economic elites who sought to sabotage the process as soon as it began. Upon learning of the government's intention to distribute land to the peasants and organize cooperatives, wealthy Salvadoran land owners began killing the livestock and moving valuable farming equipment across the border into Guatemala, where many such families had further holdings. In addition, the land reforms were accompanied by an increase in mass killings of peasants and cooperative leaders by the Salvadoran Army and security services. Many cooperative leaders in the countryside were summarily executed by Salvadorean troops soon after being elected.[45]Socorro Juridicio documented a jump in government killings from 234 in February 1980 to 487 the following month.[46]
In February 1980 Archbishop Óscar Romero published an open letter to US President Jimmy Carter in which he pleaded with him to suspend the United States' ongoing program of military aid to the Salvadoran regime. He advised Carter that "Political power is in the hands of the armed forces. They know only how to repress the people and defend the interests of the Salvadoran oligarchy." Romero warned that US support would only "sharpen the injustice and repression against the organizations of the people which repeatedly have been struggling to gain respect for their fundamental human rights."[47] On 24 March 1980, the Archbishop was assassinated while celebrating mass, the day after he called upon Salvadoran soldiers and security force members to not follow their orders to kill Salvadoran civilians. President Jimmy Carter stated this was a "shocking and unconscionable act".[48] At his funeral a week later, government-sponsored snipers in the National Palace and on the periphery of the Gerardo Barrios Plaza were responsible for the shooting of forty-two mourners.[citation needed]
On 7 May 1980, former Army Major Roberto D'Aubuisson was arrested with a group of civilians and soldiers at a farm. The raiders found documents connecting him and the civilians as organizers and financiers of the death squad who killed Archbishop Romero, and of plotting a coup d’état against the JRG. Their arrest provoked right-wing terrorist threats and institutional pressures forcing the JRG to release D’Aubuisson. In 1993, a U.N. investigation confirmed that D'Aubuisson ordered the assassination.[49]
A week after the arrest of Roberto D'Aubuisson, the National Guard and the newly reorganized paramilitary Organización Democrática Nacionalista (ORDEN), with the cooperation of the Military of Honduras, carried out a large massacre at the Sumpul River on May 14, 1980, in which an estimated 600 civilians were killed, mostly women and children. Escaping villagers were prevented from crossing the river by the Honduran armed forces, "and then killed by Salvadoran troops who fired on them in cold blood."[50]Over the course of 1980, the Salvadoran Army and three main security forces (National Guard, National Police and Treasury Police) were estimated to have killed 11,895 people, mostly peasants, trade unionists, teachers, students, journalists, human rights advocates, priests, and other prominent demographics among the popular movement.[38] Human rights organizations judged the Salvadoran government to have among the worst human rights records in the hemisphere.[51]
The US Bureau of Affairs later justified American aid, stating: "The immediate goal of the Salvadoran army and security forces—and of the United States in 1980, was to prevent a takeover by the leftist-led guerrillas and their allied political organizations. At this point in the Salvadoran conflict the latter were much more important than the former. The military resources of the rebels were extremely limited and their greatest strength, by far, lay not in force of arms but in their "mass organizations" made up of labor unions, student and peasant organizations that could be mobilized by the thousands in El Salvador's major cities and could shut down the country through strikes."[52] Critics of US military aid charged that "it would legitimate what has become dictatorial violence and that political power in El Salvador lay with old-line military leaders in government positions who practice a policy of 'reform with repression.'" A prominent Catholic spokesman insisted that "any military aid you send to El Salvador ends up in the hands of the military and paramilitary rightist groups who are themselves at the root of the problems of the country."[53]
On December 2, 1980, members of the Salvadoran National Guard were suspected to have raped and murdered four American nuns and a laywoman. Maryknoll missionary nuns Maura Clarke, Ita Ford, and Ursuline nun Dorothy Kazel, and laywoman Jean Donovan were on a Catholic relief mission providing food, shelter, transport, medical care, and burial to death squad victims. U.S. military aid was briefly cut off in response to the murders but would be renewed within six weeks.[54]
As government-sanctioned violence increased, previously non-militant political groups metamorphosed into guerrilla forces. In May 1980, the Salvadoran revolutionary leadership met in Havana, forming a consolidated politico-military command, which soon morphed into the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN) honoring insurgent hero Farabundo Martí, killed by the National Guard in 1932. The FMLN immediately announced plans for an insurrection against the government, which began on 10 January 1981 with the FMLN's first major attack. The attack established FMLN control of most of Morazán and Chalatenango departments for the war's duration. Attacks were launched on military targets throughout the country, leaving hundreds of people dead.
In addition, the outgoing Carter administration increased military aid to the Salvadoran armed forces to $10 million which included $5 million in rifles, ammunition, grenades and helicopters. In justifying these arms shipments, the administration claimed that the regime had taken "positive steps" to investigate the murder of four American nuns, but this was disputed by US Ambassador, Robert E. White, who said that he could find no evidence the junta was "conducting a serious investigation."[54]
During the same month, the JRG strengthened the state of siege, imposed by President Carlos Humberto Romero in May 1979, by declaring martial law and adopting a new set of curfew regulations.[55] Between January 12 and February 19, 1981, 168 persons were killed by the security forces for violating curfew.[56]
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