Revolution In El Salvador

From Civil Strife To Civil Peace, Second Edition

Tommie Sue Montgomery

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9780429977237
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Since the first edition of this book appeared in 1982, El Salvador has experienced the most radical social change in its history. Ten years of civil war, in which a tenacious and creative revolutionary movement battled a larger, better-equipped, US-supported army to a standstill, have ended with 20 months of negotiations and a peace accord that promises to change the course of Salvadorean society and politics. This book traces the history of El Salvador, focusing on the oligarchy and the armed forces, that shaped the Salvadorean army and political system. Concentrating on the period since 1960, the author sheds new light on the US role in the increasing militarization of the country and the origins of the oligarchy-army rupture in 1979. Separate chapters deal with the Catholic church and the revolutionary organizations, which challenged the status quo after 1968. In the new edition, Dr Montgomery continues the story from 1982 to the present, offering a detailed account of the evolution of the war. She examines why Duarte's two inaugural promises, peace and economic prosperity could not be fulfilled and analyzes the electoral victory of the oligarchy in 1989. The final chapters closely follow the peace negotiations, ending with an assessment of the peace accords, and evaluate the future prospects for El Salvador and for the 1994 elections.

1
The Roots of Revolution, 1524–1960

Cuando la historia no se puede escribir con la pluma, hay que escribirla con el fusil.^*

—Augustin Farabundo Marti

The Bottom Line

In 1993, El Salvador had over 5 million people crammed into a territory the size of Massachusetts. Thus it had the highest population density in all of Latin America (256.8/square kilometer) (see Table 1.1). Salvadoreans are privileged to live in one of the most breathtakingly beautiful countries in the Western Hemisphere: Except for a narrow strip along the Pacific Coast, it is a land of undulating mountain ranges punctuated by a string of mostly extinct volcanoes that begins in Mexico and runs through most of the isthmus. It is a land that has produced incredible wealth since the Spanish conquest in the mid-1520s but in which 65 percent of the people (80 percent in rural areas) still live in abject poverty.

The dimensions of that poverty can be grasped by considering the following: In 1986, as in 1980, 51 percent of the rural population had no land, whereas in 1961 the landless had been 11.8 percent. At the other end of the economic scale, in 1971, 3.3 percent of all landowners (3,624) held 56 percent of the arable land; in 1987, 2.9 percent of the landowners (7,190) held 46 percent of the land.¹

The effects in human terms of this inequality can be measured by comparing the income distribution to the minimum amount needed to maintain even the most basic life-style. According to official sources, a family of six in 1975 needed a monthly income of US$59 in order to provide life’s basic necessities. But a Planning Ministry survey in 1976–1977 revealed that 12.4 percent of all families earned $40 per month or less; another 29 percent earned between $40 and $80; and 21 percent earned between $80 and $120. Furthermore, about 60 percent of rural families did not earn enough ($44) to provide even a minimum diet.² Another measure: In 1969, a World Bank report found that the bottom 40 percent of the population earned 11.2 percent of-total personal income. By 1985, this percentage had been reduced to 10.9 pecent. Meanwhile, the richest 10 percent of the population earned 36.4 percent of all income, whereas the poorest 70 percent earned 34 percent of the total. For 946,590 families in 1985, the average monthly income was $126, but the cost of living for basic needs (food, housing, clothes, health, and transportation) was $241. Rural families were far worse off than their urban cousins: Ninety-six percent versus 80 percent, respectively, did not earn enough to cover basic needs. Meanwhile, for the richest 5 percent (47,330 families), the average monthly income was $610; for the richest 1 percent (9,466 families), $1,078.³

Table 1.1 El Salvador: Basic Demographic Data

Land size (square kilometers)	20,935
Population (1993)	5.4 million
Population density (1991 per square kilometer)	256.8
Average annual rate of growth (1970–1980)	4.2%
(1982–1991)	1.6%
Percent urban (1979)	40.2
(1988)	48.2
Percent literate (1984)	66.9
Urban (1979)	82
Rural (1979)	47
Landless	34
Female	59
Male	65.5
Birthrate per 1,000 inhabitants (1978)	39.7
(1980–1985)	38.0
(1990)	32.9
Mortality rate per 1,000 inhabitants (1978)	6.9
(1980–1985)	10.8
(1990)	7.7
Infant mortality per 1,000 live births (1977)	59.5
(1980–1985)	77.0
(1990)	52.9
Years of life expectancy at birth (1979)	62.2
(1980–1985)	57.1
(1990)	66

Sources: Inter-American Development Bank; Dirección General de Estadística y Censos, El Salvador; World Development Report, 1993.

The results are unequivocal: In the last decade of the twentieth century, El Salvador has the lowest per capita calorie intake of any Latin American country; 77 of every 1,000 infants die; half the houses consist of one room for families that average 5.6 members; 73 percent of the children suffer from malnutrition, and—in the countryside—63 percent of the people have no sanitary facilities, 55 percent no access to potable water, and 62 percent no electricity.⁴

These facts of Salvadorean life, although current, are not new. They are the result of developments that can be traced to the colonial period and were consolidated after independence—developments that in the last third of the twentieth century contributed to massive political unrest and eleven years of civil war. It is to the post-Columbian era that we first turn our attention before a more complete discussion of contemporary social, political, and economic realities is possible.

Historical Patterns

The history of El Salvador can be understood in terms of an interlocking and interacting series of phenomena that took shape during three hundred years of Spanish colonial rule and continued after independence. These phenomena may be summarized as follows:

1. An economic cycle of booms and depressions that replayed itself as variations on a theme several times between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries
2. Dependence on a monocrop economy as the key to wealth, a focus that led to dependence on outside markets
3. Exploitation of the labor supply, first the Indians and later the peasants
4. Concentration of the land in the hands of an ever-decreasing number of proprietors
5. Extreme concentration of wealth in few hands, coupled with the utter deprivation of the overwhelming majority of the population
6. A laissez-faire economic philosophy and an absolute belief in the sanctity of private property
7. A classical liberal notion of the purpose of government—to maintain order
8. Periodic rebellion by exploited segments of the population against perceived injustices

These phenomena produced two persistent patterns: (1) The distribution of resources was unequal from the beginning, and the effects were cumulative as population pressures exacerbated inequities in the extreme; (2) there was always conflict between communal lands and private property, and the latter regularly gained at the expense of the former.

Conquest and Settlement

First sighted by the Spanish in 1522, the land called Cuzcatlán repelled the first wave of would-be settlers two years later. The Pipil Indians, the dominant group among the Náhua, who had emigrated from Mexico centuries before, sent Hernán Cortés’s captain, Pedro de Alvarado, scurrying back to Guatemala in less than a month. It took the Spaniards four years to establish a permanent settlement and another eleven to establish sufficient control over the indigenous population to consider them “subjects of the royal service.” The social and political system that the Spanish disrupted and ultimately destroyed was a “military democracy organized by tribe, with common ownership of the land.”⁵ Pipil society was a class society that practiced monogamy and included the institution of slavery. In Cuzcatlán, however, people were enslaved as a result of war or civil wrong, and slavery was not hereditary.

The “Keys to Wealth”

The earliest colonists in Cuzcatlán, like their countrymen in Mexico and Peru, were driven by a desire for instant wealth that could be sent back to Spain as a nest egg (after giving the crown its share) to await the master’s return. Others soon came to stay, but in contrast to the Aztec and Inca empires, there was little gold or silver in Cuzcatlán—although the conquistadores proceeded to extract what there was through the laborious method of panning, an endeavor they continued for approximately thirty years using conscripted indigenous labor. Meanwhile, cattle and sheep were introduced, and the cultivation of cereals for local consumption by the colonists began. With few natural resources to exploit, the search for a “key to wealth” began.⁶ This search was the first step in a cycle that would play itself out in the following manner:

• Discovery of a new crop
• Rapid development of the crop
• Period of great prosperity from the export of the crop
• Dramatic decline or stagnation
• Economic depression during which a frantic search for a replacement ensued
• Discovery of a new crop and the beginning of another cycle

Cacao. Although balsam trees were discovered along the Pacific Coast of Izalcos (now Sonsonate) and became an important export crop for the Audiência between 1560 and 1600, it was cacao that provided the first key to wealth in El Salvador. The cacao plantations were owned and operated by the Indians, but they were soon forced to deal only with Spanish or mestizo exporters. This arrangement evolved rather quickly into the encomienda (royal grant of authority over a defined area and persons living in it but not of the land itself) system, and within twenty years the export of cacao came to be dominated by three encomenderos. As the popularity of cacao in Europe grew, prices rose. The first massive fortunes for the encomenderos, their progeny, and between 100 and 200 creole and mestizo merchants who benefited from the spillover were assured.

The plantations, which were located largely in the southwest, remained in indigenous hands, but the growing demand for cacao brought a corresponding need for more labor. However, the indigenous inhabitants, susceptible to imported disease, were dying in droves. Many migrated from the highlands to the coast but could not adapt to the climatic change. Meanwhile, the Spaniards began enslaving other Indians and shipping them to Panama and Peru. As the indigenous population declined, the colonists began importing slaves from Africa. By 1550 there was a large African population in El Salvador. The primary source of exploitation in this period, however, came from the system of tribute, a carryover from the Aztec system and a legalized form of extortion. Tribute was extracted from indigenous households or levied on property (primarily on cacao plantations), which kept many theoretically wealthy Indian growers in virtual poverty.

The first economic cycle peaked in the 1570s and had all the earmarks of a monoculture boom. Then the population decline, coupled with a halt in the importation of slaves, produced a crisis for the indigenous growers, who were unable to meet production demands and therefore to pay the required tribute. This situation produced a ripple effect that became a tidal wave. Smaller encomiendas began reverting to the crown; the larger ones consolidated their power. By 1600 the boom was over and economic decline had set in. Depression hit with full force in 1610 and continued for half a century; it produced the first extended economic crisis in Central America.

Indigo. The decimation of the indigenous population had three effects. It destroyed the traditional forms of tribal organization, spurred the development or reformation of indigenous villages, and created a Spanish-speaking peasantry for an emerging agrarian society. The decline of cacao set off a protracted search for a replacement crop, a new emphasis on cattle breeding and the cultivation of maize, and a consequent deemphasis of the cities.

The quest for a substitute export crop centered for a time on cochineal, a scarlet dye produced by the wingless female cochineal insect. But the Central American dye was never able to compete with that of Oaxaca, Mexico, and it waned as an export crop in the 1620s.⁷ Another dye, however, fared much better. Indigo (anil), a deep blue dye, became the second key to wealth. Unlike cacao, which was labor-intensive, indigo required little attention. Fields could be “weeded” by cattle, which ignored the indigo plants. By 1600 indigo had replaced cacao as the chief export, but it was another century before the boom arrived. When it did, it lasted for 150 years.⁸

Enduring Patterns

The development of a monocrop economy, in which the cycles of development and decline were similar and only the crop changed, had significant consequences for El Salvador’s later history:

1. The decline of cacao and the extended economic depression that followed created a need for the colonials quickly to find a means of survival. This led to development of the hacienda system; the haciendas were not unlike plantations in the antebellum South in that they were largely self-suffic...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Tables and Illustrations
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction—Fifteen Years Later: Peace at Last
• Prologue: Recollections and Reflections—Fifteen Years in El Salvador
• 1 The Roots of Revolution, 1524–1960
• 2 Challenges to Power, 1960–1980
• 3 The Church
• 4 The Revolutionaries
• 5 Descent into Anarchy; 1980–1982
• 6 High-Intensity Politics and Low-lntensity Conflict, 1982–1984
• 7 Electoral Authoritarianism and the Revolutionary Challenge, 1984–1989
• 8 The Road to Peace, 1989–1994
• Epilogue: The Electronic Tamale
• Notes
• Glossary
• List of Acronyms
• Bibliography
• About the Book and Author
• Index