El Salvador’s Civil War

Questions: 1. Examine the factors that led to the creation of the FMLN in El Salvador: Historical

issues, economic, political, social, the US, Cuba, the Cold War2. Assess the impacts/consequences of the FMLN: civil war, economic issues for the

government, social issues with forced collaboration.... political impacts…. international impacts

The seeds of El Salvador’s civil war were sown in the late 1800’s. The legacy of Spanish colonialism, the creation of an unstable democracy, the unequal ethnic makeup of society, the unpredictable economy, the intervention of the United States and the Cold War combined to create the atmosphere for the civil war that began in the late 1970’s. These conditions were out of the average Salvadorans control. El Salvador’s economic elites, their military officers and their collective alliance with the US government hold much of the blame, since they withheld needed reforms, used terroristic violence against the masses, and refused to negotiate a nonviolent solution. However, others blame the Leftist guerilla leaders and their international allies for using a militant strategy that led to a violent conflict. The political scientist Bill Stanley notes that “extremism on both sides helped start the war and moderation by both sides helped end it.”

In the 1950’s and ‘60’s El Salvador was standing on the edge of a cliff. Its economy was dependent on agriculture and most of the land was owned by a small handful of families, known as the Fourteen. Less than 1% of the landowners controlled more than 50% of the land and more than 80% of the rural households owned less than 4 acres each. The 1960’s saw some economic diversification with the creation of new industries, but coffee still dominated more than 90% of El Salvador’s exports. The population was growing and there was nowhere for people to move to except the city to join the working class or leave the country.

In 1950, the nation’s urban illiteracy rate was 50% and even higher in the rural areas who had little access to basic services like schools and health clinics. In 1951, less than one half of children attended school, and only a small fraction of them stayed beyond 3rd grade. Only 5% of children in school were at the secondary level, and all of them lived in the urban areas. Rural workers faced lower and lower wages as the number of laborers increased. El Salvador was heavily reliant on foreign oil to meet their energy needs. How did El Salvador get to this point?

The simplified answer is: coffee. Despite its small size, El Salvador became one of the world’s top five coffee producers. When this became apparent to investors, it led to an intense competition for land. Of the three areas suitable for coffee cultivation, only the Eastern highlands was sparsely populated by peasants, who lived in communal land holdings. It was easy to get the government to put their land up and sell it off. The other two areas created more problems as there were

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large numbers of peasant communities, some of which had been acquired from the Spanish crown in the 1500’s. A majority of those communities were of indigenous peoples, which created ethnic tensions.

The government passed a series of land decrees in the early 1880’s that abolished all forms of communal landholding, ordered all such parcels of communal land to be divided up into lots, and transferred to private hands. (The United States also did this to its own Native Americans in an attempt to force assimilation into American society). The process was not designed to get rid of all the peasants and create coffee barons. The law stipulated that the residents of the land were entitled to take ownership of the property they were using, with the remaining lands to be sold off. A new class of private landowners came into existence. The size of these holdings was not large enough to sustain multiple generations of family members, and many had leave in search of work elsewhere. Many peasants ended up selling off their land to the coffee elites. Thus, the land privatization decrees of the 1880’s led to a small number of elite families owning most of the land, with the rural peasants working it for them.

By the Great Depression, coffee was 90% of El Salvador’s export earnings. This built family fortunes that would define Salvadoran society and consolidate the Salvadoran oligarchy called the Catorce (Fourteen Families, although the actual number was in the many dozens). These elites lived increasingly privileged lives. They were distinguished from the masses not only by class but also by ethnicity. The Coffee elite relied more and more on coercive violence to maintain control and power. This led to an increased militarization. In the 1920’s in the coffee dominant region of Ahuachapán, one out of six adult males were involved in military service, and most of their duties involved policing the local population rather than defending the nation from a foreign attack.

El Salvador experienced its first free and fair election in 1931. Arturo Araujo, a landowner who promised economic and social reforms won. After nine months Araujo was ousted by a military coup promoted by the coffee elites. His successor, General Maximiliano Martínez returned El Salvador to its authoritarian roots. Communists believed the peasants were ready for an uprising and planned an insurrection, however their plot was found out and the leaders were arrested. This did not stop the uprising from occurring though in January of 1932, peasants, led by Augustin Farabundo Martí, Mario Zapata and Alfonso Luna rebelled in Western El Salvador. They attacked a dozen municipalities, targeting sites of local/ state power, military garrisons, government offices and the homes/ businesses of local elites. The peasants gained control over six towns, killed one hundred people and caused economic damage from looting and destruction. The military quickly gained control, kicked out the rebels from the towns in three days and embarked on a murder spree for the next two weeks. They murdered people indiscriminately in what came to be known as La Matanza (the Massacre) where anywhere from 10,000 to 40,000 people were slaughtered.

For many years the coffee economy had subjected the peasants to increasing pressures that undermined their ability to make a living, as well as threatened their personal security. The Great Depression only heightened their misery. The rebellion

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was a wakeup call that the coffee system had negative consequences and the people would fight back. It also set a precedent that the Salvadoran military/government would not hesitate to kill thousands in order to save the system that kept them in power. Roque Dalton captured the legacy of this trauma in his poem, “Todos” – “we were all born half dead in 1932. To be a Salvadoran is to be half dead.”

The military coup and La Matanza represent a transitional moment in history that created a symbiotic relationship between the military and the coffee elite. Military officials held executive level political offices and kept the order while business ran as usual. Most military officers came from humble backgrounds, had little in common with the elites, and in fact on occasion blamed the elites for causing the social unrest due to their business practices and poor treatment of workers. The elites recognized the role the military played in keeping them in power, but distrusted the officers because some of them were willing to make social and economic reforms. The succession of military governments after 1931 went through phases of reform and repression.

In 1948, the Partido Revolucionario de Unificación Democrática (PRUD), a group of young officers came to power in a coup d’etat and promised to create reforms. In order to make informed decisions, they accumulated data. They realized something needed to be done to create jobs for a growing rural peasant population. Industrialization was needed, but that threatened the power of the coffee elites and would require a transformation of the economy. The state had to play an active role in making change because the wealthy elites had little incentive to do so. They would never agree to land reform, progressive tax reform or changes to tariffs laws.

The elites supported industrialization, however they would not support state intervention in the economy. Therefore, the PRUD government produced little in making actual changes and they were overthrown in 1960. This new coup promised more genuine democratization, however they were overthrown in 1961 after being labeled as communists. The new group of officers, the PCN, actually made more reforms than PRUD had done. They created a massive education reform in 1968 to train the population for a new industrial economy. These education reforms, however, alienated teachers who were the nation's largest sector of public employees. The teachers saw the decree as authoritarian and in the face of government intransigence and repression; many teachers became radicalized as a result of those reforms.

In 1976, the PCN half-heartedly attempted land reform and then abandoned it under pressure from the business elites. They continued to use repressive violence to control dissidents, especially in the countryside. They created a massive paramilitary force: Organización Democrática Nacionalista (ORDEN). ORDEN stopped dissent by use of terroristic violence in the 1960’s and 70’s. From time to time, social movements emerged against the government and each time they were beaten down by the military government. In 1972, electoral fraud robbed José Duarte of a presidential victory and led many to turn away from politics and support

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a more militant action. Election fraud (again) in 1977 turned even more people away from supporting democratic elections and toward the guerrillas.

While the 1972 and 1977 elections may have led to the formation of the guerillas, opposition in El Salvador can be traced back to the creation of the communist party (Partido Communista Salvadoreño PCS), the Socorro Rojo Internacional (SRI) and various unions. These organizations had roots in the urban areas and tried reaching out to the peasants. After 1932, many of these parties were crushed, the communist party barely survived. Soviets documents reveal that nearly half of the entire Salvadoran communists were killed in the early 1930’s. The success of the Cuban revolution convinced Salvadoran communists to form a militant wing. This led to the creation of the Frente Unido de Acción Revolucionaria (FUAR). It only lasted two years (1960-1962). Its mere existence shows that there were differing views within the communist party, a foreshadowing of the factionalism to come.

The war between El Salvador and Honduras in 1969 broke the communist party. El Salvador claimed Honduras was mistreating El Salvadoran refugees. The communist party, out of nationalist fervor, supported the war against Honduras. Cayetano Carpio opposed the war on the grounds that the El Salvador government was too horrible to ever give their support (after all, why would there be El Salvador refugees in Honduras if the government was good?). Carpio led a group to form the Fuerzas Populares de Liberación (FPL). They committed themselves to the revolutionary overthrow of the state. They followed a Marxism inspired by China and Vietnam, which supported the strategy of “prolonged popular war.” This focused on building up a wave of mass militancy among the peasants before striking the government. Mass mobilization would take time, but once accomplished, it would be impossible to overcome.

As the FPL was forming, another revolutionary group was taking shape as well, the El Ejército revolucionario del Pueblo (ERP). Its founding members were mostly university students from San Salvador who became “radically conscious” through education, student activism, Liberation Theology, and involvement in the Christian Democratic Party. Their strategy was called the “insurrectionary line”, which focused on going on the offensive sooner rather than later. The thought was that if the peasants saw the action of the militants they would flock to join it. The ERP drew their inspiration from Che Guevara (although if memory is correct, Cubans did not rush to join the Cuban revolutionaries right away…). The ERP had a strong sense of democracy, and a modest opinion on Marxism.

While the ERP and FPL were the largest and strongest groups in El Salvador, and would do most of the fighting and dying during the war, there were three other smaller organizations too. The Resistencia Nacional (RN) formed in 1975 as a result of a split within the ERP over the decision to execute Roque Dalton (the poet previously quoted)1. The RN was ideologically aligned with the ERP. The second organization formed in 1977, was the Partido Revolucionario de los

1 Dalton was accused of being a spy first for the CIA and then for Cuba. He was not a spy. He was an internationally respected writer and poet.

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Trabajadores Centroamericanos (PRTC). Many of their members also came out of the ERP, but their focus was a pan-Central American revolution, not just in El Salvador. However, when the civil war erupted, its members focused their attention on home. Ideologically, they were more aligned to the RN and ERP. The last organization of significance was the Fuerzas Armadas de Liberación (FAL), the armed wing of the communist party. The PCS remained loyal to the Moscow line of thinking until the late 1970’s when they decided El Salvador was ready for a revolution and created the FAL. Before this, the PCS was critical of the guerrilla movements, saying they were rash and doing more harm than good. Ideologically the PCS/FAL were Marxist-Leninist and closer to the FPL, although their leaders had an intense hatred for each other.

All five organizations originated in the cities, mostly in the capital of San Salvador. They built ties to non-militant organizations and used the state's repressive responses to peaceful organization as propaganda. By the mid 1970’s the guerilla organizations began making ties to the rural population. They would have been doomed had they stayed in the cities, with the effectiveness of the government's counter insurgency tactics. Urban guerrillas reached out to the peasantry, organizing, and radicalizing them at a time when they were ready to be mobilized. The Liberation Theologians in the catholic Church had played an important role in “raising consciousness” and promoting community organizing in the rural areas.

The links between the rural and urban guerrillas set the geographical patterns for the civil war. Each guerrilla organization established ties with a particular geographic area of the country. The ERP held the Northeast corner in the Morazán department as well as the southern departments of San Miguel and Usulután. The FPL’s stronghold was north of the capital in Chalatenango, as well as in the south-central part of San Vicente. The RN was centered around Suchitoto and the northern slope of the Guazapa Volcano. The FAL was on the southern side of the Guazapa Volcano toward San Salvador and the PRTC was confined to small areas around the Usulután department.

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The Civil War

The event that allowed the guerrillas to wage war against the government was the uniting of the five groups into a single entity: the Frente Farabundo Martí para la Liberación Nacional (FMLN) in late 1980. It occurred slowly and reflected the distrust and ideological differences the leaders had about one another. They ultimately understood that none of them had the ability to take on the Salvadoran military alone. They had to set aside their differences and create a unified front. One of the most impressive features of the FMLN was its ability to present a singular image of itself to the world when in reality, factionalism played an important role. They each had their own specific zones and they each had their own fundraising channels and supply chains. These logistic and ideological factions made it difficult to coordinate combat operations together. Whatever their ideological differences, they spoke as a united front to the world against the government.

Combat between the guerrillas and the army had been occurring for some time, but the “Final Offensive” of January 1981 would mark the beginning of the civil war. The guerillas took inspiration from the examples of Nicaragua (1979) and Cuba (1959). The idea was akin to the strategy of the ERP: the guerrilla army would throw everything they had at the army, the population would see it and rise up against the military in support of the FMLN, and the regime would collapse. They wanted to hit before Reagan took office in 1981, knowing he would give the regime support. It failed. The guerrillas lacked the coordination and capacity to stand up to the military...and the popular uprising of the masses never occurred. As a consequence of the failed offensive, they were forced to retreat to the countryside and prepare for a longer fight. The failure led to disagreement about the course of action. The ERP continued to fight skirmishes throughout 1981, and tried to organize another offensive in 1982, but the FPL, FAL and PRTC refused to join. Only the RN fought. Not surprisingly, the “Extended Offensive” failed too. It did however; deliver some stings as the army barracks in Usulután nearly collapsed.

The Salvadoran army was not prepared to fight a guerrilla insurgency at the beginning. It was trained for conventional wars against foreign countries (like Honduras). The Salvadoran military had to be restructured. At the beginning, they had 10,000 troops and 3,000 in the National Guard. Soon enough, they would have 50,000 troops, most were conscripted teenagers who spent their time guarding potential targets like dams, bridges or power stations. The military also improved its offensive strategy, thanks to training by the United States in counter Insurgency at the School of the Americas. They created five new Batallones de Infantería de Reacción Inmediata (BIRIs). These were elite fighting units of about 1,000 men whose goal was to kill guerrillas. The most notorious of these was the Atlacatl Battalion, who committed some of the worst human rights abuses during the war. They weren’t effective in the beginning at finding guerrillas and ended up doing sweeping massacres of civilians, like:

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- the Sumpul River (1980 – 200 peasants killed) - La Quesera (1981 – 500 peasants killed)- El Mozote (1981 – 800 peasants killed) - Copapayo Viejo (1983 -142 peasants killed).

The Northern Morazán’s population declined by nearly 50% and the entire area around Lake Suchitlán was more or less depopulated by 1983.

In a 1982 interview, ERP leader, Joaquin Villalobos stated, “the problem (of the war) is who recuperates more rapidly, them or us?” At the time, the guerrillas were successfully keeping up with the army. The FMLN faced logistical challenges of getting food and munitions to 6,000 or more combatants and their support, but the army was having difficulty keeping up even with support from the United States. Villalobos, along with many US analysts believed that if everything remained as it was at that moment, the guerrillas could win.

In addition to standard hit-and-run strikes, the guerrillas fought the army in open combat. Both the ERP and FPL created special forces units. By 1983, they could claim roughly 25% of El Salvador’s territory under their control. But...something changed in 1983 to turn the tide against the guerrillas. The United States ramped up its support of El Salvador’s government. This included economic aid and sophisticated weapons, especially for the air force (attack helicopters and fixed wing fighters). The US also advised the military on its human rights abuses. At its height, the US was giving the El Salvador government $1 Million dollars a MONTH.

For the first three years of the war the counterinsurgency program and paramilitary units killed as many as 1,000 people a month. At this time, Reagan was under extreme pressure from domestic agents to end/reduce support for the regime. The military purged some of the most abusive colleagues from their ranks, scaled back the repression and thus continued to receive US aid. The biggest threat to the guerillas were the attack helicopters and the increased support of the El Salvador air force. The guerillas had to change their strategy. It would have been suicide to maintain large battalion units against an air force that the guerillas had no defense against. They needed surface to air missiles, but those would be long in coming (not until 1990).

The FMLN downsized their units and the smaller units would go into the countryside for extended periods of time, engage with the civilian population and monitor the enemy. They began targeting infrastructure (bridges, power stations, railroads) and anything that would cost the government money to repair/rebuild. This had a negative consequence though, as their attacks on infrastructure often also impacted regular citizens by leaving them without transportation routes and/or power. Instead of defeating the army on the battlefield, the new goal was to “bleed them dry” economically. This change did not hinder the FMLN from organizing large attacks on military installations or engaging the enemy in the field (as an example, look up the attack on the Fourth Brigade in Chalatenango in 1986).

The military also changed strategy from using large sweeps to downsizing their battalions and relying on smaller units, cazadors (hunter units) that could enter the guerrillas’ rearguard for longer periods of time. They also ran long range

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reconnaissance patrols (Patrullas de Reconocimiento de Alcance Largo - PRALs). These were small groups of soldiers trained to survive in enemy territory for days/weeks with the objective of finding guerilla camps through surveillance, tips from civilians and then calling in fast moving air strikes. It was very effective; many guerilla memoirs discuss the devastating impact of the PRALs. Nevertheless, the army could not stop the guerillas, nor could it stop their supplies from Nicaragua and Cuba. in 1988, the US embassy expressed dismay that not one supply chain had been discovered. The war became a stalemate.

Four events occurred between 1989 and 1990 that ended that stalemate. The army and the US had been claiming that they were wearing the guerillas down, and the FMLN would give up any day now. But, reminiscent of the Tet Offensive, the guerillas launched a “Second Final Offensive”, a massive nationwide attack in November that targeted all of El Salvador’s major urban areas, particularly San Salvador. Until this time, people in San Salvador had been fairly sheltered from the war. Most of the direct fighting was done in the countryside. The Second Final Offensive brought the war to them, and disproved the army’s claim that the guerillas were losing. It took two weeks to push the guerillas out and while they suffered a military defeat, it was a public relations victory. The FMLN exposed the military as being inept and corrupt and demonstrated their own capabilities by moving thousands of armed fighters undetected into every major city. The Salvadoran military resorted to carpet bombing poor neighborhoods in the capital and assassinated six Jesuit priests at the Universidad Centroamericana José Simeón Cañas (UCA). This resulted in widespread international condemnation. The guerrillas also acquired surface to air missiles which were introduced shortly after the Second Final Offensive. The military’s control over the skies was now threatened and the guerrillas were able to push the air force’s safety zone higher, making it possible to focus more attention on the ground fighting. This gave the FMLN more of a chance.

Another important factor was the end of the Cold War. This took away the United States primary justification for supporting the military regime to stop the spread of communism. US diplomats began pressuring the Salvadoran military to find a way to negotiate peace since a military victory was not forthcoming. Another significant incident was the loss of the Nicaraguan Sandinistas in the election of 1990. This eliminated a key ally for the Salvadoran guerrillas and took away their strategic rearguard. As a result of these four events (1) Second Final Offensive (2) Guerrillas gaining Surface to Air Missiles (3) the end of the Cold War and (4) the electoral defeat of the Sandinistas in Nicaragua, representatives from both sides met in various cities over two years under the mediation of the United Nations to hammer out a peace deal. The fighting continued in El Salvador, but eventually common ground was met, and a final accord was signed in Mexico City in January 1992, ending the war.

The Peace Accords required: Demobilization of the FMLN fighters, who would surrender their weapons and

turn itself into a political party that would participate in the provincial and national elections.

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The Army would downsize, and paramilitary sectors demobilized (BIRIs). The national police would remain BUT would be restructured to contain

members of the FMLN combatants. To the irritation of the FMLN activists nothing would be done about economic

or land reform, one of the MAJOR reasons the organizations within the FMLN were formed in the first place, leaving many disenchanted with the FMLN as a political force.

There would also be amnesty of abuses committed during the war, for both sides. No one, from the military or guerrillas would be held accountable for the human rights abuses committed during the war.

In the elections immediately after the war, the conservative party supported by the wealthy elite, ARENA, won the elections and continued business as usual. ARENA was founded in 1980 by Roberto D’Aubuisson, who was a soldier and the leader of a Death Squad. D’Aubuisson was president of El Salvador from 1982-1984, when he lost the election to José Napoleon Duarte, who ruled from 1984-1989. The FMLN did not win the presidential elections until 2009, with their candidate, Mauricio Funes. El Salvador continues to suffer. The war took 75,000 lives and created nearly one million + refugees. Nearly 80% live below the poverty line. Many refugees came to the United States whereas young people, many became entangled with gang violence. Then, they would be deported back to El Salvador where they set up their own gangs. Now, over 10% of the population of El Salvador belongs to a gang which has caused another exodus of people, searching for peace. Recently there have been accusations against FMLN leaders paying bribes to gang leaders.

Adapted from: Ching, Erik. Stories of Civil War in El Salvador: A Battle over Memory. North

Carolina: University of North Carolina Press, 2016.

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