11.5: Civil War in El Salvador- 1979-92

 US Involvement in Latin America

As the largest investor in Latin America, US involvement in Latin American affairs during the twentieth century was extraordinarily deep, especially after Cuba’s alignment with the Soviet Union in the 1960s. The politics of the Cold War left no place for neutrality. American policymakers tied economic development to the National Security Doctrine because they feared that communism would thrive in poor Latin American nations. No Latin American nation is a member of NATO. During the 1950s and 1960s, many Latin American nations witnessed political mobilizations, anti-government protests, emergence of guerrilla and social movements led by peasants, unionists, students, and women. US diplomats worried that anti-government uprisings would eventually close markets. Efforts to maintain its hegemony over resources and markets led the US support to overt and covert operations that suppressed demands for reform, labor rights, or better wages and living conditions. Although the goal of US policies was to contain communism, there were many countries where U.S intervention was not based on a threat from the Soviet Union and was against the will of citizens of those countries (for example, Argentina, Chile, El Salvador, and Guatemala). 

The US considered Latin America as part of its sphere of influence and supported pro-American governments to counter the spread of communism in the region. US intervention was based on three main considerations: counterinsurgency, geopolitics, and economic development. Counterinsurgency blurred the lines between internal and external enemies. Rather than addressing the concerns of citizens and demands for socioeconomic reforms, Latin American elites, with US support, became fearful of poor people. Consequently, poor citizens became victims of state violence because they were seen as hostile and dangerous to the social order. In 1946 the US established the School of the Americas (SOA) for the formal training of Latin American military officers; the training school was renamed the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation in 2001. The founding of the SOA was consistent with a US Cold War policy that favored the installation of military governments as a way of maintaining order. 

Although the United States boasted that it had replaced blatant military intervention and “dollar diplomacy” with a “Good Neighbor Policy,” nations like Costa Rica, Guatemala, and Honduras were still thoroughly dominated by the United Fruit Company (UFC). After World War II, the Dulles brothers became leaders in developing U.S. foreign policy in Latin America. John Foster Dulles (seen in Figure 11.5.1) was a corporate lawyer who had helped negotiate huge land giveaways to UFC by the governments of Guatemala and Honduras. After serving as a Senator from New York, Dulles was appointed secretary of State by Dwight Eisenhower in 1953. His brother Allen Dulles was on UFC’s board of directors before he served as President Eisenhower’s CIA Director. Figure 11.5.1 is a photograph of President Eisenhower and John Foster Dulles seated at a table. They seem to be discussing the documents on the table. The UFC had close ties to the Eisenhower Administration, and the New York law firm of John Foster Dulles, namely Sullivan and Cromwell, represented UFC, and Allen Dulles was a shareholder. In 1954 the democratically elected government of Guatemala contemplated seizing some of the vast tracts of land the United Fruit Company had acquired but was not using. The government planned to buy back the land from UFC and implement land reform that would benefit poor peasants. The Guatemalan government offered UFC a price for the lands it took back based on the values claimed in the corporation’s tax filings. The Dulles brothers accused the Guatemalan government of having close ties with the Soviets and sent in the CIA to overthrow it in a military coup. This was the first successful US overthrow of a Latin American government during the Cold War. Guatemalans resisted the new regime and the country fell into a civil war that lasted from 1960 to 1996 and killed up to 200,000 people. Overall, US support for Guatemalan dictators was part of its broader Cold War strategy, driven by concerns about strategic, economic, and ideological interests. 

Figure \(\PageIndex{1}\): President Dwight Eisenhower with John Foster Dulles, National Archives, in the Public Domain.

Leaders such as Getúlio Vargas in Brazil, Juan Peron in Argentina, or Lázaro Cárdenas in Mexico, who nationalized the Mexican oil industry, were not marxist, or even particularly socialist in their orientation or policies. Import Substitution Industrialization was a capitalist approach to reducing dependency, and even when nations like Mexico nationalized natural resource extraction, they usually compensated foreign companies for the assets they were expropriating and then they ran the extractive industries as businesses in the world economy. Starting in the 1960s, the influence of the Cuban Revolution, Che Guevara, Liberation Theology, dependency theory, and guerrilla warfare intensified US scrutiny. US efforts shifted to focus on counterrevolutionary movements and development programs. In 1961, President John F. Kennedy launched the Alliance for Progress for economic development. It was the biggest US aid program toward the developing world until then. Although the charter had impressive goals and called for substantial reform of Latin American institutions, meaningful political and socioeconomic reforms remained illusory. Because Alliance funds were also used to create counterinsurgency programs and to train paramilitary forces to counter the spread of communist influence in Latin America, many Latin Americans remained deeply skeptical of American motives. The 1961 Bay of Pigs fiasco and the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, undermined much of the credibility of Kennedy's claim that the US was acting without self-interest in Latin America. Despite spending more than a billion dollars in its first year, not a single Latin American nation committed itself to a comprehensive development program. By the end of the 1960s, thirteen constitutional governments were replaced by military dictatorships. The Alliance for Progress was dissolved in 1973 by the Organization of American States (OAS). The sections on Argentina and El Salvador explain this regional shift to authoritarianism and state repression and shed light on human rights abuses committed by governments against large parts of their populations. 

Soviet Influence in Latin America

During the Cold War, the USSR had largely accepted US dominance in Latin America, but the USSR did not hesitate to develop ties with leftist parties and capitalize on two issues in the region: capitalist exploitation and foreign domination. Unlike the US, the USSR was not able to develop a consistently favorable trade balance with Latin American nations. Soviet trade in Latin America consisted mostly of Soviet purchases, especially from Cuba. The Cuban Revolution of 1959 was a watershed on Soviet relations with Latin America. Its biggest victory was the establishment of a Marxist-Leninist regime in Cuba, which was unexpectedly achieved through Fidel Castro. However, that victory was maintained at a huge cost to the Soviet economy. The USSR developed an expansive network of communist parties throughout the Western Hemisphere. Although that was a big achievement for the Soviets, no communist party seized control of government by force in Latin America. The revolutionary parties that took power were radical nationalist, not Marxist-Leninist in their origins.

The US considered Latin America as part of its sphere of influence and supported pro-American governments to counter the spread of communism in the region. US intervention was based on three main considerations: counterinsurgency, geopolitics, and economic development. Counterinsurgency blurred the lines between internal and external enemies. Rather than addressing the concerns of citizens and demands for socioeconomic reforms, Latin American elites, with US support, became fearful of poor people. Consequently, poor citizens became victims of state violence because they were seen as hostile and dangerous to the social order. In 1946 the US established the School of the Americas (SOA) for the formal training of Latin American military officers; the training school was renamed the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation in 2001. The founding of the SOA was consistent with a US Cold War policy that favored the installation of military governments as a way of maintaining order. 

Although the United States boasted that it had replaced blatant military intervention and “dollar diplomacy” with a “Good Neighbor Policy,” nations like Costa Rica, Guatemala, and Honduras were still thoroughly dominated by the United Fruit Company (UFC). After World War II, the Dulles brothers became leaders in developing U.S. foreign policy in Latin America. John Foster Dulles (seen in Figure 11.5.1) was a corporate lawyer who had helped negotiate huge land giveaways to UFC by the governments of Guatemala and Honduras. After serving as a Senator from New York, Dulles was appointed secretary of State by Dwight Eisenhower in 1953. His brother Allen Dulles was on UFC’s board of directors before he served as President Eisenhower’s CIA Director. In 1954 the democratically elected government of Guatemala contemplated seizing some of the vast tracts of land the United Fruit Company had acquired but was not using. The government planned to buy back the land from UFC and implement land reform that would benefit poor peasants. The Guatemalan government offered UFC a price for the lands it took back based on the values claimed in the corporation’s tax filings. The Dulles brothers accused the Guatemalan government of having close ties with the Soviets and sent in the CIA to overthrow it in a military coup. This was the first successful US overthrow of a Latin American government during the Cold War. Guatemalans resisted the new regime and the country fell into a civil war that lasted from 1960 to 1996 and killed up to 200,000 people. Overall, US support for Guatemalan dictators was part of its broader Cold War strategy, driven by concerns about strategic, economic, and ideological interests. 

Civil War in El Salvador: 1979 to 1992

Figure \(\PageIndex{2}\): Map of El Salvador, Pressenza, is licensed under CC BY.

El Salvador is the smallest, but most densely populated Central American country. Figure 11.5.2 is an outline map of Central America that shows the location of El Salvador, and its capital city San Salvador is marked with a large star in the map. It is the only Central American nation that does not have a Caribbean coast. There are several volcanoes, some are still active, in Salvador, and that explains why it is also called the "Land of Volcanoes." The volcanic ash has made the soil fertile for agricultural production. Salvadoran coffee beans are of the highest quality and considered to be one of the most flavorful. Coffee production started in the late nineteenth century and became the nation’s primary export crop by 1920. Coffee production was controlled by a small elite (aka Las Catorce, translated as fourteen families) that owned the best agricultural land. Gradually this powerful group expanded its control over banking, industry, construction, media services, etc.  By 1970, El Salvador became the fourth largest coffee exporter in the world, but by then six families owned as much land as 80% of the rural population combined. The privatization of communal lands owned by indigenous peoples led to the concentration of land in the hands of a few wealthy families. This small but powerful propertied elite group, in cahoots with the military, did not implement socioeconomic reforms and became increasingly repressive. ORDEN (Democratic Nationalist Organization) was created in the early 1960s as a rural vigilante/paramilitary force to suppress opposition to the government. As income disparity increased, many peasants, urban workers, teachers, and community leaders began to organize and demand reforms and better living conditions. Figure 11.5.3 is a photo that shows several Salvadoran women standing on both sides of a long narrow table sorting and processing coffee beans. Although coffee became one of the major export crops and generated a lot of wealth to the landed elite, the majority of plantation workers did not benefit from the exports.

Figure \(\PageIndex{3}\): Salvadoran women processing green coffee beans in Ahuachapan, The Cockroach via Flickr, in the Public Domain.

As public discontent grew, popular support for leftist guerilla groups increased. In 1972, in the face of 60 percent inflation and 30 percent unemployment, a coalition of opposition parties (UNO), spanning the ideological spectrum from moderate-right Christian Democrats to more moderate-left, to the Communist left supported a centrist businessman named José Napoleon Duarte to run against the oligarchy’s candidate Colonel Arturo Armando Molina. Although Duarte won the election by some 72,000 votes, the electoral commission declared Colonel Arturo Molina as the winner. To prevent Duarte from contesting the results, the military arrested, tortured, and exiled Duarte to Venezuela, where he remained until his return to El Salvador in the late 1970s. To defuse domestic discontent, Col. Molina hosted the Miss Universe pageant in 1975, which cost $30 million. There were widespread protests, but the military responded by firing on protestors, and killed 37 people in the days leading up to the pageant. 

Tensions increased after another fraudulent election in 1977 that established General Carlos Romero in power. On February 15, 1977, the police and military opened fire on a peaceful protest in San Salvador and killed over 200 people as they scrambled for shelter inside the cathedral on the central plaza. This horrific event was captured on film by the international press and was shown on the nightly news throughout the world. This event was pivotal in the life of El Salvador’s leading Catholic cleric, Archbishop Oscar Romero (seen in Figure 11.5.4). Oscar Romero was a Salvadoran Catholic priest who ws ordained in Rome in 1942. Figure 11.5.4 is a photo of Oscar Romero taken in 1942. He is wearing a long coat and holding a hat in his right hand while standing in a balcony overlooking St. Peter's Square in Vatican City. After Romero returned to El Salvador, he steadily climbed the clerical ladder and was appointed archbishop in 1977.

Figure \(\PageIndex{4}\): Archbishop Oscar Romero, Arzobispado de San Salvador, in the Public Domain.

In 1979, President Carlos Romero was overthrown by a military coup and the Revolutionary Government Junta (JRG), took power. The Carter administration supported the JRG, despite the confirmed human rights abuses committed by the Salvadoran military in the name of preventing the spread of communism in El Salvador. In 1980 Archbishop Oscar Romero called for an end to US military aid to his government which was using foreign aid to murder innocent civilians. He also appealed to individual Salvadoran soldiers to disobey their superior officers and to stop the killing. Soon after that, on March 24, 1980, Romero was assassinated by a death squad during mass in church. Since the order to kill such a prominent figure in Salvadoran society would have had to be cleared at the very top of the military chain of command, it has been assumed that it came come from Roberto D’Aubuisso, the head of the far-right-wing ARENA party (National Republican Alliance). 

By the mid-1980s support for the Salvadoran government and military, estimated at over $200 million, was highly unpopular among US citizens. Not only the expense, but the reports of human rights abuses, news footage of atrocities committed in broad daylight, and the deaths of Catholic workers and priests, as well as two USAID technicians who were shot execution-style while sitting in a downtown hotel café. Within a 12-month period in 1980–81, death squads reportedly killed 30,000 civilians. Death squad violence, growing malnutrition and misery from failed land policies, the battle between the government and opposition forces, and extremely high rates of unemployment spurred more than 500,000 Salvadorans to migrate to the US. Most entered illegally, settling in Los Angeles and other California cities. 

In 1980 several guerilla groups came together and formed a coalition named after a martyr from the 1930s, Farabundo Martí. They organized under the banner of the FMLN (Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front), with an above-ground wing, the FDR (Democratic Revolutionary Front) based in Costa Rica. The rebels demanded land reform, nationalization of key industries, and an end to US influence in the country. The FMLN struggled against enormous odds for over a decade and fought the Salvadoran army which was trained and funded by the US, which feared that the Marxist-oriented rebels would establish a communist government.  The FMLN guerrillas fought with weapons and uniforms taken from fallen soldiers. Although the guerrillas received support from Cuba, Nicaragua, and the USSR, and enjoyed the support of Salvadoran civilians, the FMLN never had the resources to launch a full-scale assault to take control of the government.

The Salvadoran civil war was one of the bloodiest wars of the twentieth century. It is estimated that over 75,000 people were killed in the war and over a million were displaced from a nation with a total population of approximately 5 million. The civil war ended in a stalemate. Finally in 1992, a UN negotiated settlement, Chapultepec Peace Accords signed in Mexico City,  ended the war and paved the way for elections. In 1992 the FMLN disarmed and emerged in 1994 as a legal left-wing party, the second largest, in the national assembly. As part of the settlement, the Salvadoran government and the FMLN agreed to the establishment of a U.N.-appointed Truth Commission to investigate the abuses committed during the war. The Truth Commission’s report attributed the overwhelming majority of the human rights abuses to the Salvadoran armed forces and the paramilitaries. The UN played an unprecedented and key role in El Salvador’s peace process.

Review Questions

• What caused the civil war in El Salvador?
• Why did the United States support a repressive government during the civil war?
• Who was Oscar Romero? Why was he assassinated?