Salvadoran Civil War

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Salvadorian Civil War
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 Salvadorian Armed Forces, the National and Treasury Police are dissolved (new civilian-overseen police created); FMLN becomes a political party, its combatants are exonerated
Belligerents
Salvadoran Government: Salvadoran Armed Forces National Police Treasury Police Death Squads  United States	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 and losses
~75,000 dead[1]

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) mainly between 1980 and 1992. A violent insurgency existed already in the 1970s. The United States supported the Salvadoran government.^[2] Cuba and other Communist states supported the guerrillas. In total the civil war killed 75,000 people.^[3]

Contents 1 Prelude 2 1979 coup and growing unrest 3 Escalation 4 Costs 5 United States role 6 References 7 Further reading 8 See also 9 External links

[edit] Prelude

The FMLN insurgency was rooted in the 1960s when reform-minded groups emerged to challenge the alliance of the right-wing military and the landowning oligarchy. With the electoral option blocked by fraudulent presidential elections in 1972 and 1977, leftist groups resorted to militant demonstrations and terrorism to promote change. A pattern of mounting violence and polarization resulted. As in the early 1930s, the growing conflict had focused on the peasant population; most campesinos still lived at a subsistence level, and about two-fifths of rural families had no land at all. The regime's token land reform of 1976 did little to address this longstanding problem. Political violence and the suspension of rights through the declaration of states of siege only served to further radicalize the left, including the Catholic groups increasingly influenced by liberation theology.^[4]

[edit] 1979 coup and growing unrest

On October 15, 1979, the Revolutionary Government Junta (JRG), a group of reformist 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. 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. Measures were enacted restricting landholdings to a maximum of 100 hectares (Decree No. 43 of 6 December 1979). The paramilitary organization ORDEN was dissolved.

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 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.

The US Ambassador to El Salvador, Robert E. White summarized the situation by saying that:

The major, immediate threat to the existence of this government is the right-wing violence. In the city of San Salvador, the hired thugs of the extreme right, some of them well-trained Cuban and Nicaraguan terrorists, kill moderate left leaders and blow up government buildings. In the countryside, elements of the security forces torture and kill the campesinos, shoot up their houses and burn their crops. At least two hundred refugees from the countryside arrive daily in the capital city. This campaign of terror is radicalizing the rural areas just as surely as Somoza's National Guard did in Nicaragua. Unfortunately, the command structure of the army and the security forces either tolerates or encourages this activity. These senior officers believe or pretend to believe that they are eliminating the guerillas.^[5]

One of the most infamous death squad assassinations occurred when the Archbishop of San Salvador, Óscar Romero, was murdered in 1980 one month after having publicly urged the U.S. government not to provide military support to the Salvadoran government. Romero was well-known critic of violence and injustice and, as such, was perceived in right-wing civilian and military circles as a dangerous enemy. He was shot dead while officiating mass on March 24. His funeral was the scene of a massacre by snipers and a bomb. Forty-two mourners were killed.

On 7 May 1980, former Major Roberto D'Aubuisson was arrested on a farm, along with a group of civilians and soldiers. In the raid, a significant quantity of weapons and documents were found. They implicated the group in the organization and financing of death squads allegedly involved in Archbishop Romeros murder and of plotting to overthrow the government by means of a coup détat. The arrests triggered a wave of terrorist threats and institutional pressures which culminated in D'Aubuisson release. This strengthened the most conservative sector in the Government and was a clear example of the passivity and inertia of the judiciary during this period. Post-war investigations found that Roberto D'Aubuisson had ordered Romero's assassination. Romero's death has been seen as a spark for a full scale civil war.[7]

[edit] Escalation

The civil war quickly became very bloody and destructive as both the extreme right and the extreme left escalated their operations. Infrastructure collapsed as the FMLN seized portions of the country and launched major unsuccessful offensives in January 1981 and again in April 1982.

In May 1980, the guerrilla leaders met in Havana and formed a political-military command, the Unified Revolutionary Directorate (Direccion Revolucionaria Unificada--DRU), as their central executive arm for political and military planning. Unification of forces reportedly was a precondition for Cuban aid to the Salvadoran insurgents. The guerrilla groups took a step toward closer unity in October 1980 by forming the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (Frente Farabundo Marti de Liberacion Nacional-Frente Democratico Revolucionario--FMLN-FDR, which constituted an umbrella entity or alliance for operational and strategic coordination among the insurgent forces and their popular fronts. The FMLN had a leadership structure (DRU), a regional military organization (five guerrilla fronts), and a political-diplomatic front (the FDR). A self-described Marxist-Leninist movement with a generally pro-Soviet and pro-Cuban orientation, the FMLN-FDR committed itself to seizing power through a two-pronged military strategy of economic sabotage and a prolonged guerrilla war of attrition based on a combination of Maoist, Vietnamese, and Guevarist principles. It sought to entrench its rural guerrilla forces while developing urban support bases in preparation for an eventual general insurrection. During the 1980-82 period, politically related violence in El Salvador increased dramatically as the former terrorist groups completed their transition to primarily guerrilla organizations.^[6] The Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN) was named after insurgency hero Farabundo Martí who was executed in 1932 by National Guard.

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.

During the war several there were several 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.^{[citation needed]}

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 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.

On October 26, 1987, Herbert Ernesto Anaya, head of the CDHES, was assassinated. 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" 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. 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." 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.^[7]

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. 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.^[8]

[edit] Costs

After the war, the Commission on the Truth registered more than 22,000 complaints of serious acts of violence that occurred in El Salvador between January 1980 and July 1991. Over 60 per cent of all complaints concerned extrajudicial executions, over 25 per cent concerned enforced disappearances, and over 20 per cent included complaints of torture. Those giving testimony attributed almost 85 per cent of cases to agents of the State, paramilitary groups allied to them, and the death squads. Armed forces personnel were accused in almost 60 per cent of complaints, members of the security forces in approximately 25 per cent, members of military escorts and civil defence units in approximately 20 per cent, and members of the death squads in more than 10 per cent of cases. The complaints registered accused FMLN in approximately 5 per cent of cases. Despite their large number, these complaints do not cover every act of violence. The Commission was able to receive only a significant sample in its three months of gathering testimony.[8]

In retrospective assessments, human rights organizations and truth commissions have echoed the claim that the majority of the violence was attributable to government forces.^[9][10][11]A report of an Amnesty International investigative mission made public in 1984 stated that "many of the 40,000 people killed in the preceding five years had been murdered by government forces who openly dumped mutilated corpses in an apparent effort to terrorize the population."^[12] In all, there were more than 70,000 deaths, some involving gross human rights violations, and more than a quarter of the population were turned into refugees or displaced persons before a UN-brokered peace deal was signed in 1992.^[13][14]

While peasants were primarily victimized, the killing of civilians extended to clergy, church workers, political activists, journalists, union members, health workers, students, teachers, and human rights monitors.^[15]The state terror took several forms. Salvadoran security forces, including army battalions, members of the National Guard, and the Treasury Police, performed numerous clearance operations, killing indiscriminately, and perpetrating many massacres and massive human rights violations in the process.^[16][17]

Death squads worked in conjunction with Salvadoran Security services to eliminate opponents, leftist rebels, and their supporters.^[18] The squads were a means by which members of the armed forces were able to avoid accountability. Typically dressing in plainclothes and using vehicles with smoke-tinted windows and numberless license plates, terror tactics included publishing death lists of future victims, delivering empty coffins to the doorsteps of future victims and sending potential victims invitations to their own funeral.^[19] Cynthia Arnson, a long-time writer on Latin America for Human Rights Watch, argues that “the objective of death squad terror seemed not only elimination of opponents, but also, through torture and the gruesome disfiguration of bodies, the terrorization of the population.”^[20] In the mid-1980s state terror in El Salvador increasingly took the form of indiscriminate air forces bombing, the planting of mines and harassment of national and international medical personnel- “all indicate that although death rates attributable to death squads have declined in El Salvador since 1983, non-combatant victims of the civil war have increased dramatically.^[21]

The rebels also committed human rights violations. It was considered legitimate to physically eliminate people who were labelled military targets, traitors or "orejas" (informers), and even political opponents. The murders of mayors, right-wing intellectuals, public officials and judges are examples of this mentality.[9] The FMLN, one guerrilla groups, was also accused of human rights violations, using terrorist tactics such as kidnappings, arson, and bombings to destabilize the regime.[10]

[edit] United States role

The U.S. provided a US$7 billion ten-year aid package, much of this nonmilitary, which began in the Carter years and continued through the Reagan administration and George H. W. Bush administration.

The role of the U.S. became controversial after the rape and murder of four American churchwomen by a National Guard of El Salvador death squad on December 2, 1980. Maura Clarke, Ita Ford, and 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. 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.^[22] After the murder of the churchwomen, Carter suspended the program for a time, but funding was soon resumed. Under Carter generally there was little military aid.

Reagan's foreign policy favored the regime 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 stated, "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."^[23] 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.

During the Carter administration, 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."^[24]

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^{[citation needed]} 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.

Defenders argue that one reason for the military aid was that it was necessary for defending U.S. National Security Interests. The FMLN guerrillas military efforts, including terrorist acts committed by them, seriously threatened the Salvadoran government. President Reagan argued in his national television address in 1984, "San Salvador is closer to Houston, Texas than Houston is to Washington, D.C. Central America is America; it's at our doorstep. And it has become a stage for a bold attempt by the Soviet Union, Cuba and Nicaragua to install communism by force throughout the hemisphere,"^[25]. The U.S. State Department provided detailed evidence for the links between the FMLN, Nicaragua, Cuba and the Soviet Union in its White Paper,"The Communist Interference in El Salvador." The document argues that the U.S. chose the most viable middle path between the right and left extremes undermining the country. The U.S. supported the Duarte government which worked with "some success to deal with the serious political and economic problem that most concern the people of El Salvador."^[26] The recent takeover of Nicaragua by the left-wing Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN), appeared to strengthen the United States concerns.

Furthermore, there was substantial developmental aid during the Carter administration but very little military. The Reagan administration pressed for free elections. The Salvadoran right reluctantly joined this process after it became clear that the administration did not favor a conservative military coup.^[27] US officials say that President Bush senior's policies set the stage for peace, turning El Salvador into a democratic success story.[11]

[edit] References

[edit] Further reading

• Americas Watch [1993]. El Salvador's Decade of Terror: Human Rights Since the Assassination of Archbishop Romero. New Haven, London: Yale University Press. 

• Bonner, Raymond [1984]. Weakness and Deceit: U.S. Policy and El Salvador. New York, NY: Times Books. 

• Commission on the Truth for El Salvador [1993]. From Madness to Hope: The 12-Year War in El Salvador. UN Security Council. 

• Federal Research Division [1988]. A Country Study: El Salvador. Washington, DC: US Library of Congress. 

• LeoGrande, William M. [1998]. Our Own Backyard: The United States in Central America, 1977-1992. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press. 

• Montgomery, Tommie Sue [1995]. Revolution in El Salvador: From Civil Strife to Civil Peace. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. 

• Whitfield, Teresa [1995]. Paying the Price: Ignacio Ellacuría and the Murdered Jesuits of El Salvador. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press. 

• Binford, Leigh [1996]. The El Mozote Massacre. University of Arizona Press. 

[edit] See also

• Category:Assassinated Salvadoran people
• Command responsibility
• History of El Salvador
• Human rights abuse
• International law

[edit] External links

• Report of the Commission on the Truth for El Salvador (1993)
• Questionnaire for the New York Times on Its Central America Coverage, FAIR (Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting), February 1998
• http://www.innocentvoicesmovie.com/eng/HTML/story.html
• Labor Movement in El Salvador Part 1, Accessed online February 24, 2008.
• Labor Movement in El Salvador Part 2, Accessed online February 24, 2008.
• Labor Movement in El Salvador Part 3, Accessed online February 24, 2008.