HISTORY
Early Inhabitants and Colonial Period
Native American peoples related to the Maya inhabited present-day El Salvador from an early date. Several notable archaeological sites contain dwellings and other evidence of daily life 1400 years ago; these were found preserved beneath 6 m (20 ft) of volcanic ash. The sites include Tazumal, San Andrés, Cihuatán, Quelepa, Cara Sucia, and Joya de Cerén. Maya groups, including the Pokomam, Lenca and Chortí, remained in the area, but in the 11th century AD, Nahuatl-speaking people related to the Aztec, including Pipil and Ulua, migrated along the Pacific coast from Mexico to El Salvador.
Spaniards first appeared in the area in May 1522, when an expedition headed by Andrés Niño entered the Bay of Fonseca. The Spanish conquest of Cuzcatlán, the Land of Precious Things, as the native peoples called it, began in June 1524. It was led by Captain Pedro de Alvarado, a daring conquistador who had accompanied Hernán Cortés to Mexico and then directed the conquest of Guatemala in early 1524. Diseases brought from Europe preceded the arrival of the Spanish forces, decimating the native peoples and making the conquest easier for the Spaniards. Yet after a month of bloody combat, Alvarado, wounded, retreated into Guatemala. His brother Gonzalo and cousin Diego completed the conquest, and Diego established the city of San Salvador in April 1528 near the present town of Suchitoto. The Spaniards moved San Salvador to its present site in 1540.
Under the Spanish colonial empire, El Salvador was part of the Kingdom of Guatemala, which governed most of Central America. The kingdom was a division of the huge administrative region known as the Viceroyalty of New Spain, based in Mexico City, but officials in the Guatemalan capital made most decisions for the kingdom. El Salvador was part of the province of Guatemala until the late 1700s, divided into administrative areas known as alcaldías mayores around the towns of San Salvador, San Miguel, San Vicente, Santa Ana, and Sonsonate.
The region produced little for export until the 18th century, when the Spanish government encouraged it to increase its production of indigo, needed by European textile manufacturers. Salvadoran indigo became the leading export of the Kingdom of Guatemala, and in 1786 Spain established San Salvador as a separate political unit within the kingdom. With this increased economic and political status, Salvadoran Creoles (colonists born in the Americas but of Spanish descent) resented the continued dominance of Guatemala's merchants, colonial administrators, and church officials, and began to feel a sense of Salvadoran nationalism.
Independence
Salvadorans' resentment of Guatemala strengthened when European wars restricted trans-Atlantic trade after 1793 and contributed to a downturn in Salvadoran indigo exports. By the time Spain's control over its colonies weakened as a result of these wars, San Salvador had become a center of liberal opinion, where Creoles advocated greater political and economic freedom from Spanish rule. On November 5, 1811, a Salvadoran priest, José Matías Delgado, led a rebellion of Creoles, the first open expression of Salvadoran sympathy for independence from Spain. Conservative forces from Guatemala, which remained loyal to Spain, ruthlessly crushed this uprising, increasing Salvadoran hostility.
Central American independence from Spain came suddenly and without a struggle. On September 15, 1821, a council of leaders in Guatemala decided to accept the Plan of Iguala, which created an independent Mexican Empire under the Creole General Agustín de Iturbide. Creoles in San Salvador, however, issued their own declaration of independence from Spain on September 29. They did not want to remain dominated by Guatemala or to join Iturbide's empire.
Civil war resulted. Led by Manuel José Arce, Salvadoran forces defeated a Guatemalan army and consolidated control over El Salvador. Then, in February 1823, a Guatemalan-Mexican army under Mexican General Vicente Filísola captured San Salvador. Arce fled to the United States. In the meantime, however, Iturbide's government in Mexico fell, and Filísola allowed the Central Americans to convene a congress.
The congress declared absolute Central American independence on July 1, 1823, and formed the United Provinces of Central America, a loose federation of the five Central American states that promised each a high degree of sovereignty. But upper-class Central Americans were divided by regional rivalries and split between liberal and conservative factions, which disagreed over political, economic, and religious policies. Liberals generally sought to limit the role of the Catholic clergy and promote capitalism, while conservatives favored the traditional power structure, controlled by large landowners and a powerful church.
Under the federation's liberal republican constitution of 1824, Arce won a hotly contested and disputed election to become the first Central American president in 1825. But Arce alienated his Salvadoran supporters when he failed to separate El Salvador from the Catholic diocese of Guatemala, another symbol of El Salvador's subordinate status to the capital of Guatemala City. Arce increasingly found himself forced into alliance with Guatemalan conservatives against both Salvadoran and Guatemalan liberals, and he finally resigned. Guatemalan conservatives then took over the federal government, leading to renewed civil war from 1827 to 1829. Although all the states became involved to some degree, the fighting occurred mainly between Guatemala and El Salvador. Liberal forces won the war in 1829, and their leader, Honduran General Francisco Morazán, became the new federal president in 1830. El Salvador regained a prominent role in the Central American federation, whose capital was moved in 1834 to Sonsonate, in western El Salvador, and in 1835 to San Salvador.
However, the federation's liberal government faced continued challenges. As part of Morazán's economic policies, the government took land from Native Americans, other rural groups, and the church and turned it over to private landowners. When some of these projects threatened the Pipil way of life, these native people rebelled in 1833. Morazán defeated them, but his weakened forces then faced a rural uprising in Guatemala, led by Rafael Carrera, who overthrew the liberal Guatemalan government. Carrera then routed Morazán in battle at Guatemala City in March 1840, and the federation collapsed.
Although El Salvador became nominally independent after 1840, it was dominated by the conservative Carrera, who ruled Guatemala until 1865. Military leaders installed by Carrera often controlled El Salvador, which did not formally declare itself a sovereign republic until 1856.
In 1856 and 1857 Salvadoran troops joined other Central American forces to drive a U.S. adventurer, William Walker, out of Nicaragua, where he had taken power. The commander of the Salvadoran forces in that struggle, General Gerardo Barrios, served as provisional president of El Salvador in 1858 and again in 1859-1860. After becoming president in 1861, Barrios launched liberal economic reforms, encouraging coffee production through land grants and tax cuts, and tried to limit the role of the Catholic clergy by requiring priests to pledge obedience to the state. This brought him into conflict with Carrera, who invaded El Salvador and eventually defeated Barrios, installing a more conservative president, Francisco Dueñas.
The Coffee Revolution
After Dueñas, however, liberal presidents were elected who continued the reforms Barrios had begun. This began a long period of liberal rule, from 1871 to 1944, that saw the transformation of El Salvador's economy, political structure, and society. The major factor behind this change was the development of a coffee industry as the economic mainstay of the nation. This produced a new, wealthy ruling class and deepened the gulf between rich and poor Salvadorans.
After 1885 Salvadorans were finally free from Guatemalan control. The governments that followed concentrated on economic growth and improving the country's basic facilities, such as roads and ports. Indigo exports, which had provided much of El Salvador's income, declined after chemical dyes were developed in 1856. But coffee rapidly replaced indigo as an export crop, bringing El Salvador such prosperity that by the early 20th century it was considered the most progressive of the Central American states. New ports and railways were built, and El Salvador became the first nation in Central America with paved highways. In San Salvador, impressive public buildings were constructed, including a new national palace, national library, and military school. Upper-class residents built lavish private homes, and the city's streets were paved and lighted. The population increased, and a small but growing middle class emerged to staff the government bureaucracy and to work in other businesses that grew up around the coffee boom.
However, this progress benefited only a small group; most Salvadorans remained poor. Land was taken from rural residents and Native Americans and devoted to coffee growing, decreasing the amount of food that could be grown. Prices for food, much of it imported, rose, but wages remained low and the population increased rapidly. The elite group of coffee planters, often called the Fourteen Families, dominated the government as well as the economy. Between 1885 and 1931, members of these families presided over the government, while the armed forces maintained order.
Criticism of the governing elite grew during the 1920s. Alberto Masferrer, a Salvadoran intellectual whose ideas led to the founding of the Labor Party in 1930, called on the elite to take responsibility for the welfare of El Salvador's poor. He advocated moderate social-welfare programs and the right of workers to form unions and strike. More radical opposition came from Agustín Farabundo Martí, who began to organize rural workers into Communist Party cells. Martí sought a revolution that would overthrow the government and give peasants control over the land.
The worldwide depression that began in 1929 paved the way for the election in 1930 of the Labor Party candidate Arturo Araújo as president. Araújo was a member of the planter elite, but the upper class would not permit him to enact the social reforms he and Masferrer had proposed. After a year of strikes and disorder, on December 2, 1931, the military removed Araújo from office and replaced him with his vice president, General Maximiliano Hernández Martínez.
Military Rule, 1931-1979
Almost immediately, Martí led a revolt of farm workers, Native Americans, and other rural Salvadorans, armed mostly with machetes. Hernández Martínez directed the army to put down this insurrection, which was defeated within days. The military then executed between 10,000 and 30,000 rural Salvadorans. This event, known as La Matanza (the massacre), became a turning point in El Salvador's history. Before the uprising, the governing elite had tolerated some dissent and allowed labor organizations to form. But after the rebellion, the terrified elite turned to the military to maintain their power. The 1932 revolt also destroyed indigenous culture in most parts of El Salvador, for Native Americans had been especially targeted during the massacre. To survive, the remaining native people adopted mestizo dress and customs.
Hernández Martínez ruled El Salvador as a military dictator, suppressing dissent, until he was overthrown in 1944 by students, workers, and progressive military officers. In the years that followed, military officers continued to control the government, but new political parties and labor unions were allowed to form, giving the urban middle class an opportunity to participate in politics.
After World War II ended in 1945, the economy became more diversified as new crops were grown for export, which helped increase the size of both the elite and the middle class. But poverty grew more widespread among the lower classes, especially rural Salvadorans who were forced off their land by the expansion of export agriculture. More export crops meant less land available for growing food, and Salvadorans became among the most malnourished people in the world.
The Central American Common Market (CACM), established in 1960, increased trade among the Central American states and helped Salvadoran industry to expand. Much of the industrial development resulted from investments by the same powerful families who had developed the agricultural exports, but for the first time foreign investment also became important to the Salvadoran economy.
The Liberal Party that had dominated Salvadoran politics since the 1860s disappeared during this period, but new parties that were also controlled by the coffee-growing upper class and the military continued to hold power. The Party of Democratic Revolutionary Unification (PRUD) governed until 1961, when it was replaced by the similar Party of National Conciliation (PCN). Led by General Julio Rivera, PCN ruled until 1979. However, other parties became important, drawing support from a wider segment of the population. The most effective were the National Revolutionary Movement (MNR), led by Guillermo Ungo, and the Christian Democratic Party (PDC), headed by José Napoleon Duarte. Backed by students, workers, and many Catholic clergy, Duarte was elected mayor of San Salvador in 1964.
In 1969 El Salvador's economic and social problems contributed to the outbreak of war with neighboring Honduras. The so-called Soccer War began as rioting among fans during World Cup soccer playoff matches between teams from the two nations. But the fundamental underlying cause was the condition of the poor in overpopulated El Salvador. About 300,000 Salvadorans had migrated into more sparsely populated Honduras, taking over land and jobs. Large Honduran landowners and workers who felt threatened by the Salvadorans campaigned to have them expelled, and in 1968 the Honduran government enacted an agrarian reform law that forced thousands of Salvadorans back to their country.
These tensions, along with long-standing border disputes between the two nations and conflicts over trade, flared into military action after riots at the June 1969 soccer match. On July 14 Salvadoran troops launched an invasion, driving 75 miles into Honduras. Honduras responded with damaging air strikes against Salvadoran ports. The Organization of American States quickly negotiated a cease-fire and Salvadoran troops withdrew on August 3. However, a peace treaty was not signed until 1980.
El Salvador's troubled economy worsened as refugees from Honduras poured back into the country, where land and food were already scarce. Opposition to the military-led government increased, while Duarte's popularity rose. In 1972 Duarte ran for president at the head of a coalition of the PDC and MNR, with Ungo as his vice-presidential candidate. Duarte's coalition appeared to win the election, but the government declared its candidate, Colonel Arturo Molina, the winner. Duarte and Ungo were arrested, then exiled. During the next seven years, the repressive military government clung to power against rising public defiance, and El Salvador became known for human-rights abuses. Protests by students, workers, and peasants were often met with violence by the police or army. Government security forces and right-wing terrorist groups known as death squads were held responsible for the disappearance of union activists, priests, and others who opposed the government. Left-wing guerrilla movements formed, aiming to overthrow the government.
The nation's serious social and economic inequities continued to worsen, as rapid population growth exceeded economic growth. Even as San Salvador became a modern, urban center, poverty and malnutrition continued to rise.
Civil War
While these problems haunted El Salvador, a revolution in neighboring Nicaragua, led by the Sandinista guerrilla movement, overthrew the Somoza dynasty in July 1979. El Salvador's military feared a similar uprising, as public protests continued to grow against the government, and in October 1979 military officers took over the government in a coup. The officers wanted primarily to maintain the power and reputation of the military, but they offered concessions to moderate and leftist groups, giving them seats on the ruling junta. The junta ordered the feared paramilitary death squad, ORDEN, to disband, but other death squads soon appeared to continue the political assassinations and torture. Nearly all the civilians on the junta soon resigned in protest over the continued repression. This crisis ended in January 1980 when the Christian Democratic Party agreed to collaborate with the military to form a new junta. Duarte returned from exile and became leader of the new junta, with the support of the United States.
Duarte's government initiated social and economic reforms, including a plan for land reform, and tried to control abuses by the armed forces. But the military chiefs still controlled the nation. Right-wing death squads carried out political assassinations to intimidate their opponents. In 1980 San Salvador's Archbishop Oscar Arnulfo Romero, a critic of the military government, was murdered during a religious service, several Christian Democratic leaders were assassinated, and three U.S. Catholic nuns and another church worker were raped and killed. Five members of the Salvadoran National Guard were later convicted of murdering the churchwomen.
On the left the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN), a coalition of guerrilla organizations, declared war against the government. These revolutionary organizations conducted military campaigns, but also carried out assassinations, kidnappings, bombings, and sabotage. In regions they controlled, the guerrillas demanded payments from landholders and business owners. As violence escalated on both sides, many innocent civilians were caught in the middle.
Major Roberto d'Aubuisson, who was accused of taking part in the assassination of Archbishop Romero, organized a new right-wing political party, the National Republican Alliance (ARENA), to challenge Duarte. In the election of 1982, the leftist parties refused to participate, and Duarte's Christian Democrats won a plurality of the seats in the national assembly. However, a coalition of ARENA and the PCN won the majority of the seats. D'Aubuisson became head of the Salvadoran Constitutional Convention, which wrote the constitution of 1983. This constitution returned the government to an elected, civilian presidency and enlarged the assembly to 84 members.
Duarte won the presidency in the 1984 election, but he was unable to end the destructive civil war. To add to his problems, a massive earthquake destroyed much of San Salvador in 1986, while he himself was dying of cancer. However, by signing the 1987 Central American Peace Accord (known as the Arias Plan), Duarte began a process that would eventually end the civil war and restore peace to the war-torn country. His party, meanwhile, was accused of corruption, and the nation's economy suffered from low prices for its exports. With the population exhausted by years of warfare, ARENA won broader support and took control of the legislature in 1988. In 1989 ARENA's presidential candidate, Alfredo Cristiani, won the election to succeed Duarte.
A major FMLN offensive in 1989 succeeded in capturing large areas of San Salvador before the guerrillas retreated again. The following year, peace talks began between the government and the FMLN, mediated by the United Nations (UN). After long, difficult negotiations, the two sides reached an agreement, known as the Chapultepec Accord, at the end of 1991. Under the agreement, much of the FMLN forces and the government army was disbanded; the old security forces and the national police were abolished; and a new civilian police force was formed that included both former National Police and FMLN members. A UN commission assisted the Salvadorans in implementing the agreements in the areas of human rights, military, police, and elections.
The civil war took a terrible toll on the country's people and property. More than 100,000 people died in the conflict, with thousands more wounded and displaced from their homes. Hundreds of thousands more fled the country. A United Nations Truth Commission investigated the most flagrant cases of human-rights abuses committed during the civil war and reported its findings on March 15, 1993. It recommended reforms of the armed forces and the judiciary and urged that individuals guilty of human-rights violations be removed from office and from the military. The Legislative Assembly gave amnesty from criminal prosecution to all those implicated in this report, including officers suspected of murdering six Jesuit priests at the Central American University in 1989. However, the legislature implemented the reforms, purging many officials from office and retiring hundreds of officers from active military duty. The Legislative Assembly elected a completely new Supreme Court in July 1994, complying with the Truth Commission's recommendation that none of its justices be allowed to continue in office.
El Salvador after the Civil War
Recovery from the ravages of the war began slowly, but after 1992 the Salvadoran economy improved significantly. The new civilian police force was deployed in all departments by mid-1994 and reached its full strength early in 1996. The first postwar elections took place in March 1994. The FMLN, which became a legal political party in December 1992, joined with other leftist parties in a coalition supporting Rubén Zamora for president. ARENA's candidate, Armando Calderón Sol, benefited from Cristiani's successful peace negotiations and improvement in the economy, and in a runoff in April 1994 defeated Zamora with 68 percent of the vote. The FMLN established itself as the leader among the leftist opposition parties. In elections in March 1997, the FMLN gained significant political influence, winning 27 seats in the Legislative Assembly, just one fewer than ARENA. FMLN candidates also won mayoral races in many Salvadoran cities, including the capital, San Salvador.
The government, in collaboration with international organizations, has resettled many of those displaced by the war and also provided land, jobs, and credit for many former members of the military and the guerrilla forces. These efforts have gone more slowly than planned, however, and many difficulties remain. Despite reform efforts, poor land distribution continues to be a serious problem. Poverty is widespread in the cities and rural areas, and both poverty and lagging food production cause continued malnutrition. Despite improvements in El Salvador's export economy and balance of payments, most of the serious social and economic problems that existed before the civil war remain.
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